Rallying around the flag in times of COVID-19: Societal lockdown and trust in democratic institutions

Jonas Krogh Madsen,Martin Baekgaard,Kim Sass Mikkelsen,Julian Christensen

doi:10.30636/jbpa.32.172

Jonas Krogh Madsen, Martin Baekgaard

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.32.172

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Abstract

In times of severe international crises, such as wars and terrorist attacks, citizens tend to ‘rally around the flag’ and increase their support for political leaders. We ask if the rallying effects identified in the literature extend to the societal lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19-related lockdowns differ from crises studied in the existing literature because they are political crisis responses with severe and immediate negative effects on the economy. Using daily responses right before and after the announcement of the Danish lockdown on March 11, 2020, we study trust in democratic institutions among unemployed Danes over the first three weeks of a large-scale societal lockdown. OLS estimates show that trust in the Danish Prime Minister’s administration was higher immediately after the lockdown announcement. This increase lasted throughout the entire period of measurement (until the end of March). We find similarly increased trust in other institutions, most significantly the judicial system and the public sector at large, whereas findings for trust in parliament and the media are less clear. Interrupted time series estimates point to the same conclusions albeit they produce estimates with more noise. Overall, our findings are consistent with the idea that citizens tend to ‘rally around the flag’ in times of crisis and furthermore suggest that increased trust tends to spill over to institutions that are not involved in crisis management decisions.

Highlights

In times of severe international crises, such as wars and terrorist attacks, citizens tend to ‘rally around the flag’ and increase their support for political leaders
We investigate how trust in various democratic institutions developed in response to the announcement of a wide-ranging lockdown of one Western European society: the lockdown of Denmark announced on the evening of March 11, 2020
The discontinuity occurs in time: If we consider the abrupt lockdown announcement on March 11 as a threshold, and assume that our respondents sort as-if randomly around answering the survey before and after the lockdown announcement, we can use the announcement as an exogenous treatment, if we narrow our empirical focus to the days immediately preceding and following the announcement

Summary

Empirical and Theoretical Background

On March 11, 2020, at 8.30PM, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen held a press conference, announcing that large parts of the Danish society would be locked down to combat the spread of COVID-19 (Danish Government, 2020). Political leaders may seek (sometimes with success) to improve public support by emphasizing threat and crisis management interventions themselves (Kaufmann, 2004; Willer, 2004), thereby shifting the political agenda away from issues that would leave them in an unfavorable light Independent of their own communication, leaders will tend to be helped by the fact that partisan conflict is often muted during times of international crises, meaning that people are exposed to less critique of their leaders (Brody & Shapiro, 1989) and have less critical considerations accessible for use (Zaller, 1992) when making evaluations of government. Our sample’s low trust in government prior to the pandemic gives us reason to consider unemployed individuals a less-likely case for rallying around the flag

Data and Analysis

Unemployment periods

Findings

Discussion