Regime and cultural determinants of the acceptance of political decisions in times of crisis (DAPEK)
Under what conditions are people prepared to accept restrictions on their personal freedoms in order to protect their own well-being and health, but above all the well-being and health of others? What do decision-making processes have to look like in order to be regarded as legitimate by citizens? Are there freedoms that people do not want to give up under any circumstances? What role does the democratic quality of a political regime play in these questions, and what is the role of various cultural characteristics?
These questions, which refer to the area of tension between individual liberties and collective welfare, arise with particular urgency in view of the worldwide Corona pandemic, but also with a view to future crises, such as the impending climate catastrophe.
To study these questions, DAPEK surveyed 9,000 respondents from six countries (Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland, South Korea, and Spain – 1,500 respondents each) in November 2021. Core of the data collection are two survey experiments. First, a conjoint experiment is designed to analyze which restrictions in pandemic countermeasures affect citizen support. Second, a combination of a best-worst-scaling approach with a framing experiment scrutinizes which political decision-making procedures citizens prefer and whether that varies by different societal challenges. The experimental data are flanked by extensive individual-level data, a.o. on demographics, as well as political and cultural value orientations.
DAPEK is a short-term project of the DFG-funded Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script", which is located at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, among others.
Keywords: covid-19, value orientations, societal challenges, decision-making process, freedom