Perceptions of science and politics during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: technocratic overreach or blame deflection?

Abstract Science and politics function as distinct yet structurally interconnected social systems, creating a delicate need to balance expertise and democratic representation. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed tensions in this relationship, with initial public support for containment measures giving way to growing skepticism. This paper explores two distinct perspectives on this development: (1) the technocratic overreach perspective, which attributes low support to perceptions that experts overstepped their role in political decision-making; and (2) the blame-deflection perspective, which links it to the perception that politicians strategically used appeals to scientific authority to shield themselves from criticism. Using survey data from the Austrian Corona Panel Project, we test hypotheses derived from these contrasting perspectives to better understand public concerns surrounding the boundary between science and politics during the pandemic. Our findings show that both technocratic overreach and blame deflection perceptions are associated with lower support for mitigation measures, but the patterns of underlying attitudes differ. Perceptions of technocratic overreach were associated with low trust in science, but overall levels of trust in science remained high and stable, suggesting that overreach perceptions stemmed primarily from pre-existing skepticism toward science rather than concerns about technocratic policy-making during the pandemic. In contrast, perceptions of blame deflection were related to low trust in government, which strongly declined during the pandemic. Overall, the study identifies crisis management as a key area where a clearer demarcation between science and politics is needed.