The Stability of Public Support for the Rule of Law

• In Event: Public Opinion, Court Legitimacy, and Support for the Rule of Law

Abstract

One of the cornerstones of any democratic system is citizens’ support for the rule of law. Yet, despite this concept’s central position in studies of political science, economics, and law, scholars have devoted relatively little attention to its measurement. Moreover, while studies suggest that individual-level support for the rule of law should be stable over time, the horrific effects of the Covid-19 pandemic place strain on the rule of law as citizens habituate to increased governmental intrusion in their day-to-day lives, raising worries that the pandemic has eroded citizens’ support for the rule of law. In this paper, we present a new measure of public support for the rule of law, demonstrate its validity and reliability, and assess the stability of support for the rule of law using twenty repeated cross sectional, nationally representative surveys of the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom as well as a four-wave panel survey of over 4,000 Germans in the year since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The results demonstrate a striking resilience for the public’s support for this key democratic concept even in the midst of a global crisis.

Authors

• Amanda Driscoll

• Jay Krehbiel, West Virginia University

• Michael J. Nelson, The Pennsylvania State University