Data and Code for: The Health of Democracies during the Pandemic: Results from a Randomized Survey Experiment

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Marcella Alsan, Harvard Kennedy School; Luca Braghieri, Bocconi University; Sarah Eichmeyer, Bocconi University; Minjeong Joyce Kim, University of Michigan; Stefanie Stantcheva, Harvard University. Department of Economics; David Y. Yang, Harvard University. Department of Economics

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
1code			01/03/2023 01:59:PM
2input_data			01/03/2023 02:02:PM
3logs			01/03/2023 02:03:PM
4figures			01/03/2023 02:05:PM
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README.pdf	application/pdf	279.4 KB	01/03/2023 08:55:AM

Project Citation:

Alsan, Marcella, Braghieri, Luca, Eichmeyer, Sarah, Kim, Minjeong Joyce, Stantcheva, Stefanie, and Yang, David Y. Data and Code for: The Health of Democracies during the Pandemic: Results from a Randomized Survey Experiment. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-04-27. https://doi.org/10.3886/E183804V1

Project Description

Summary: Concerns have recently been raised about the potential demise of democracy – although there was a perceived slide in the strength of democratic institutions even before the pandemic – this was possibly accelerated by restrictions on movement and other public health regulations. Using in-depth survey experiments of 8,000 responses from several Western democracies, we find that, following the treatment providing information on restrictions and infringements by China and South Korea to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, subjects become less willing to sacrifice specific and generic rights and more worried about long-term erosion relative to the control group, but there was no effect of our treatment on support for democratic procedures. Taken together, the results suggest that support for democratic processes was inelastic to concerns about the freedoms it enabled very early in the pandemic and might have been a moment of particular vulnerability.

Funding Sources: Harvard Kennedy School; Harvard University. Department of Economics; Foundations of Human Behavior at Harvard

Scope of Project

JEL Classification:
      D80 Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty: General
      I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
      P00 Economic Systems: General

Geographic Coverage: United States, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany

Time Period(s): 3/2020 – 4/2020

Collection Date(s): 3/29/2020 – 4/18/2020

Universe: Individuals older than 18 living in France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States in March-April 2020.

Data Type(s): experimental data; observational data; survey data

Methodology

Weights: We use the unweighted results in our main analysis and provide nationally representative weights in the dataset.

Unit(s) of Observation: Individuals

Geographic Unit: Principal (largest) administrative divisions

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-04-27]

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