Rally-around-the-flag: The Corona Crisis and Trust in Government

• In Event: Relevance, Quality, and Expedience: Political Science Responds to COVID-19: Comparing and Explaining Policy Reactions and Political Consequences

Abstract

The argument behind the rally-around-the-flag effect is that trust in the national government will increase in the short-run during dramatic, international crises. In this paper, we examine whether this effect materialized during the Corona crisis. Differently to many of the issues used in the existing literature to test the rally- around-the-flag argument, the Corona crisis has simultaneously health and economic repercussions. Therefore it allows us to examine the effects on trust in national government of two issues simultaneously on both the ego-tropic and socio-tropic target dimension. The paper provides a longitudinal analysis over several weeks using rare panel data from Austria to check how long the rally-around-the-flag effect lasts and whether its main determinants are of ego-tropic or socio-tropic nature. The main findings are then possibly tested cross-sectionally using data from 9 countries namely Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States with a specific focus on the health and economic dimensions of the crisis. The findings have implications for our understanding of short-term determinants of trust in government and how international crisis affect public opinion perceptions.

Authors

• Sylvia Kritzinger, Institut für Höhere Studien

• Romain Lachat, Sciences Po

• Julia Partheymüller, University of Vienna

• Carolina Plescia, University of Vienna