Authoritarian Backsliding? Public Support for Liberty Restricting Policies During COVID-19: A Cross-National Study

Recent studies suggest that both trust in government and individuals’ emotional states increase public support for liberty restricting policies during COVID-19, raising concerns about the prospects for democracy. However, it remains unclear how specific emotions such as worry about COVID-19 interplay with governmental trust, and whether these dynamics operate similarly across different regimes. To address these questions, this study analyzes cross-regional two-wave panel data from Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea, as well as cross-sectional data from the U.S. and the U.K. Findings reveal a robust “delinking effect” of worry: heightened worry about the pandemic undermines the positive effect of governmental trust on individual support for liberty restricting policies. Notably, the threshold at which worry nullifies the effect of governmental trust varies across contexts. The theoretical and political implications of these findings are discussed.