How COVID-19 pandemic has affected the

popularity of governments in the European

Union

Seminar on International Studies

2020/2021

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Álex Pernas Muñoz

(NIU: 100 384 884)

Group 268

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 Abstract

Concerned with the tense political climate in Europe arising from the crisis
produced by the COVID-19, this paper aims to answer the question of how the
pandemic will affect support for governments and general claims on democracy.
A sample from the EU-27 countries is studied through the comparison of vote
intention for the government parties and support for right-wing populists before
and after the COVID-19 related policy measures. Although guided by concerns
and literature on the damage that crisis can cause to political regimes, no evidence
of relevant changes in any indicator is found, giving hope on European peoples
solid democratic values and convictions even in such a crisis.

Keywords: democracy, COVID-19, right-wing populism, government support, EU

Almost one year ago, in December 2019, a new virus appeared in the Chinese city
of Wuhan, the SARS-CoV-2, which will evolve and turn to the COVID-19 global
pandemic that nowadays disrupts our lives. Lockdowns and other restrictions have
conditioned the movement of people and goods, trade and a great part of the current
economic activity. There is no need to call attention on the tensions that this is producing
within societies: an economic crisis just landing over us that directly points out to the role
of governments in charge of restrictions and the responsibilities. In such situations in
which the government positions itself into a so main role for the caring of our lives, the
very essence of its authority and reason-of-being is suspiciously revised. The distance
between governors and governed becomes a zone of hard friction when such a degree of
responsibility and control is taken over us, in addition to the material/economic
consequences of such measures. Furthermore, while there are crisis that are obviously
unpredictable, COVID-19 crisis was actually expected, if not at least warned. The SARS
outbreak in 2003, Ebola, MERS, H1N1 already alerted of the possible consequences of a
global pandemic, even making the World Health Organization revise and upgrade their
global framework of response. So, besides the very sense of the authority of governments,
there is also a questioning of current incumbents efficiency, adding to a mix that will test
the robustness of democratic convictions and its resistance against simplistic explanations
and authoritarian claims.

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 In this essay I will examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected support
for governments and democracy across the European Union, that forms a really dynamic
political space in which a great variety of current relevant political phenomena can be
observed. As government performance and social safety nets will define how countries
will manage this crisis, I will follow the classification of Esping-Andersen (1990) for
welfare regimes —complemented with later expanding research— and compare for each
one voting intentions in each country before and after the first relevant policy policy
measures concerning the pandemic. In addition to that, I will also compare support rates
for the main right-wing populist parties as a proxy for reactive democratic wills, based on
the risk that their claims and forms pose to it and the assumption that varying social
insurance regimes provide different environments for people to recover from the crisis
and different answers to channel their sufferings. Poll data from Politico database will
supply the necessary information to be used.

The main hypothesis from which this research start is the expected higher decline
in support for governments in liberal and conservative welfare regimes, which, compared
to the social-democratic one, provide a less strong safety net from which people can
evaluate their governments. And, secondly, the general rise in support for right-wing
nationalist and populist parties, following evidence from previous crisis. However, results
yield much less promising conclusions: neither voting intention nor support for right-
wing populist move beyond 5 percentual points of change. However, this seems to be a
nice piece of evidence for hope, as the European peoples are showing their resistance to
a crisis and their democratic strength.

Literature review

Crisis and democracy

The performance theory (Yang and Holzer, 2006) states that a good performance
enhances trust in government. This is driven by macro-performance —issues for which
responsibility is yield to the government as unemployment or inflation— and micro-
performance —quality or government service delivery as education or healthcare—.

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While there are some academics that question the reverse causality between performance
and trust, this theory still becomes a clear intuition to be taken into account.

With respect to the reactions to a crisis, in channelling discontent arisen, Remmer

(1991) points out to the fact that democracy and elections may have a mitigating effect.
Furthermore, as presented by Funke and Trebesch (2017), since 2008 crisis the vote share
of right-wing populist parties have grow, and new ones that have emerged have entered
parliaments in record time. As he argues, crisis in the past 30 years have been a catalyst
for this kind of parties, pointing out to additional explanatory variables as the “cultural
backlash”, globalization and immigration. Additionally, he also argues that this happens
because crisis are seen as failures of policies (rather than external shocks), and the distrust
environment that emerge foster the success of right-wing populist parties, which offer
simple solutions and blame minorities. Furthermore, Rodrik (2020) tells that the COVID-
19 crisis is intensifying the dominant characteristics of each country’s politics in a kind
of “confirmation bias”, fostering the development of this kind of populism as in the
signaled case of Hungary and Poland, whose presidents have taken advantage of the kind
of exceptional situation that we are currently living on and expanded their executive
control, accentuated their blaming to minorities and developed their xenophobic and
reactionary discourse and rhetoric.

Tools of government

A common state-development history for the countries inside is originate different

typologies of welfare regimes, mainly driven by the struggle with traditional institutions,
the commercial development and the influence of masses claims. The classification of
welfare-state regimes done by Esping-Andersen (1990) is composed by three major types
illustrating the kind of arrangements between state-market and the family for each model,
which can be useful to our interest in knowing how this different arrangements can be a
filter for answers to the pandemic. The “liberal” model provides modest and mean-tested
assistance, encouragement of the market and results in market-differentiated welfare. The
“conservative” model provides a strongly corporatist welfare state, not a focus on market
efficiency nor in social insurance, preservation of status differentials (class and rights),
encouragement of the tradition and excluding social insurance, for which providing is the
state the only in charge, without place for the market. The “social-democratic” model

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promote an equality of the higher standards, universalistic programs, strong workers and
the fusion of welfare and work.

This classification covers for the EU only the countries of the United Kingdom,
Ireland, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Later work as
that of Fenger (2007) carry out a cluster analysis based on a series of social and
governmental variables and proposes an expanded typology. First, it adds to the
conservative-corporatist branch the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as Greece and
Spain as as a Southern-European conservative subtype. And he also adds three more
categories for Central and Eastern Europe: Former-USSR, similar to the conservative but
with less trust and score in governmental programmes (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania);
Post-communist European, similar to the previous one but more egalitarian (Croatia,
Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic) and Developing for countries
still not in a mature welfare state (Romania). Minas (2014), adds Portugal to the same
welfare regime typology than the other Southern-European countries. This can be
summarized (after country selection adjustments that will be explained below) in the
following table:

Figure 1. Welfare regime merged classification

Country Welfare state model

Austria Conservative-corporatist
Belgium Conservative-corporatist
Bulgaria Post-communist European
Czech Republic Post-communist European
Germany Conservative-corporatist
Denmark Social-democratic
Estonia Former-USSR
Spain Conservative-corporatist
Finland Social-democratic
France Conservative-corporatist
Greece Conservative-corporatist
Croatia Post-communist European
Hungary Post-communist European

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 Ireland Liberal
Italy Conservative-corporatist
Lithuania Former-USSR
Latvia Former-USSR
Netherlands Conservative-corporatist
Poland Post-communist European
Portugal Conservative-corporatist
Romania Developing
Sweden Social-democratic
Slovakia Post-communist European
United Kingdom Liberal

Source: own elaboration based on Esping-Andersen, Fenger and Minas

Theoretical framework

Crisis are a challenge for democracy. Be economic, political, a health one as the
current COVID-19 pandemic or of any kind affecting the political sphere, a crisis make
people question their political regimes —in this case, democracy— in search for the
solution to what appears to be a failure in the given form of collective management. The
tools that states have to smooth this kind of situations, wider or narrower, vary across
cultures, regions or even geography, as the historical developments of each nation have
seen struggles between different actors and elements. The economic effect of this crisis
is already being suffered and social insurance mechanisms will be of high importance as
its efficiency (and expansion) will greatly determine the support of people for their
governments. So, based on the relative strength of the nets that some models provide
against others, I hypothesize that:

H1: The COVID-19 crisis will affect support for government more positively in
social-democratic regimes —whose welfare mechanisms are strong— than in the
liberal, conservative, former-USSR and developing welfare models; and less in
the post-communist European relative to the two previous models.

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 Beyond efficiency or the accountability of incumbents, the complexity of a crisis
can generate frustration in people, who could prefer to opt for simplistic explanations and
see democratic procedures as inefficient bureaucracy without substantial results in the
moment. Following previous evidence on the growing of right-wing populist parties in
such environments in which democratic forms are questioned and crisis led to the seek of
guilties, and assuming that a strong social safety net could prevent the sufferings
generating the emergence of this kind of parties, I hypothesize that:

H2a: The COVID-19 crisis will boost support for right-wing populist parties, and
this support will be higher in liberal, conservative, former-USSR and developing
models.

Data and method

Data selection and variables

In order to test the hypothesis established, I will make a comparison of both

support for government before and after the first COVID-19 related policy measures
taken by countries. The date is given by the main press news and official governmental
media, presented in Annex I (country, date, source). As the majority of dates converge
around mid-March, I have choose as the first benchmark the polls registered by Politico
database around the start of February, setting thus a distance enough as to isolate any
reaction to premature measures that could distort the analysis. The second point is data
provided by polls around the start of December, a point to which tendencies from March
can be well established and thus rigorously evaluated.

The dependent variables of this analysis will be the change in vote intention
(voteint_change) and change in right-wing populism support (rwpopsup_change). This
variables are created by subtracting the first-point data to the ratio of the second. Vote
intention is measured through that of the major party in government at the time of the
poll, even in cases of coalition governments, as I assume that the main prizes or
punishments go for the main party. This assumption can be backed by the case of the

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German coalition government, in which the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union) have
seen a tremendous support growing compared to the null evolution of its partner, the SPD
(Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands). Right-wing populism support is measured
through the vote intention of the relevant parties (if present) on this category in each
country.

The independent variable will be the welfare model (welfaremodel), a categorical

variable ranging 1 to 6 to cover the six different models to which countries are assigned
in Figure 1: conservative-corporatist (1), social-democratic (2), liberal (3), post-
communist European (4), former-USSR (5) and developing (6).

Sample adjustment

The European sample of the EU-27 do not provide for the purposes of this research
relevant data for all of its units, so adjustment were to be made. Cyprus, Luxembourg and
Malta were eliminated due to the absence of data. Other possible distortions include the
absence of relevant (in terms of presence) right-wing populist or nationalist parties in
Croatia, Ireland and Lithuania or the shortness of the group of developing welfare-regime
model, which is composed only by Romania as the only EU country filling their
characteristics and which can provide only limited information on the reaction of this kind
of models to the pandemic.

Method

In order to test how each welfare regime has answered to the COVID-19
pandemic, data of the independent variables will be plotted along the dependent variable
categories in the form of a box diagram. After that, a oneway ANOVA test will be carried
out in order to determine the relevancy of the differences between means and variances.
The means comparison will illustrate how the groups compare between them in their
reactions to the crisis, and variances will show the elasticity of each group in such
reactions, a proxy for determining their robustness against crisis beyond mean values.

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 Results and discussion

First, the analysis of the change in vote intention variable show how the variation
of each welfare regime mean does not go further than 5 points, except in the case of
developing regime

Figure 2. Box plot of voteint_change variable

The hypothesis is confirmed, as, tough with moderate variation, the social-
democratic model gain support against the declining support in the case of the rest of the
models, with the developing suffering the higher decline and reinforcing my theory on
the importance of social safety nets in filtering pandemic problems. However, the post-
communist European regime, tough more egalitarian, do not seems to reach the efficiency
to gain a higher support for their governments. Furthermore, the liberal (having the
weakest social safety nets) and former-USSR (low trust and governmental presence)
models present the higher variances against the little one of the social-democratic, as less
strong welfare mechanisms contribute to instability and make vote intentions more
elastic.

Secondly, the analysis of the change in right-wing populism support variable show
how, again, the variation of each welfare regime mean does not go further than 5 points,
except with developing.

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 Figure 3. Box plot of rwpopsup_change variable

The second hypothesis can not be confirmed, as, indeed, the crisis seems to have
generally produced a lower support for this kind of parties, although representing a
modest decline. The case of the developing regime and its great support for right-wing
populist parties could instead be in the line of the theory stated above: poor social safety
nets can not channel discontent and suffering and democracy is seen as inefficient,
boosting this parties. The reduced variance of the liberal regime can be due to the culture
inherent to such regimes, valuing democratic forms and procedures over populist claims.
The case of social-democratic regimes would need further research, but can be expected
to relate to the specific rise of xenophobic and populist claims in Nordic countries
recently. And the great variance of post-communist European regimes can be mainly
attributed to the big force that are Hungary and Poland within the group, as the vanguard
of xenophobic and nationalistic populism in Europe.

Figure 4. ANOVA test

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 Finally, and in the line of the actually modest or contrary results obtained, the
ANOVA test show how, difference between means as well as between variances are
irrelevant for further prediction, both being greater than 0.05. While the period selected
(March-December) has been the longest possible, willing to capture well established
tendencies, it does not seem enough as to provide significant comparisons between means
and variances of the selected variables. New research will need to be made once the
pandemic has ended or one that a period long enough has passed as to generate enough
data.

Conclusion

The topic of support for government and democracy in COVID-19 times is a hot
one. The political tensions tendencies urge researchers to make a diagnostic of the current
situation as to illustrate the public, policymakers or other researchers on how this crisis
can put our democratic regimes at risk. However, almost one year of poll data collection
seems to not being providing the relevant enough information as to make strong
conclusions. Although the conclusions obtained and the statistical test for the data
collected say that comparisons may not be relevant for further predictions, the months
passed from the outbreak of the pandemic to the date selected (December 2020) can give
us at least a photograph of the development of pointed phenomena.

Thus, the analysis carried out have generally shown the importance of social
safety nets for channeling the suffering of people, as both in vote intention change and its
elasticity as well as in the case of right-wing populism support have been positively
related with weak welfare mechanisms. Adding to the current literature focus on
performance of governments, this research could add to the branch of crisis of political
regimes study the importance of the welfare providing that each regime configures to its
citizens. Also, the case of the short elasticity of the liberal model in the case of populism
support can be a prove of some sense of political culture as another filter or defense
mechanisms to reactionary political phenomena.

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 Further research will have to be made, as this picture is not neither generalizable
nor the complete landscape, a thing for which we will have to wait to the pandemic
finishing. However, fears to a democratic regression can be well calmed, as the current
data present evidence for the little change in the indicators selected and not major
reactionary tendencies across the countries of the European Union. Even in such a crisis
and dragging a risky populist backlash, peoples of Europe have resisted and reaffirmed
the strong democratic values that are the origin of the European Union project. Despite
bad predictions and landscapes of fear to which may come, there is hope for democracy
and people have strong convictions on its forms and procedures and on tolerance to each
other.

References

- Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Fenger, H. (2007). Welfare regimes in Central and Eastern Europe:
Incorporating post-communist countries in a welfare regime
typology. Contemporary Issues and Ideas in Social Sciences.
- Funke, Manuel; Trebesch, Christoph (2017) : Financial Crises and the Populist
Right, ifo DICE Report, ISSN 2511-7823, ifo Institut - Leibniz-Institut für
Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität München, München, Vol. 15, Iss. 4, pp.
6-9
- Minas, Christos. (2014). Welfare regime, welfare pillar and southern Europe.
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy.
- Remmer, Karen L. 1991. The Political Impact of Economic Crisis in Latin
America in the 1980s. American Political Science Review 85 (3):777-800.
- Rodrik, D., Esmeralda, A., Harrington, M., Simpson, M., Kay, J., Faegre, D., . . .
Pula, E. (2020, April 06). Will COVID-19 Remake the World? by Dani Rodrik.
Retrieved November 22, 2020, from https://www.project-
syndicate.org/commentary/will-covid19-remake-the-world-by-dani-rodrik-2020-
04

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- Yang, Kaifeng, and Marc Holzer. 2006. “The performance–trust link:
Implications for performance measurement.” Public Administration Review,
66(1): 114-126.

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 Annex I: countries start date of policy measures

Country Date Source

Austria 2020-03-16 https://orf.at/stories/3158055/
Belgium 2020-03-18 https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2020/mar/1
8/belgium-enters-lockdown-over-coronavirus-crisis-in-
pictures
Bulgaria 2020-03-13 https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-03-
13/bulgaria-declares-state-of-emergency-over-
coronavirus
Czech 2020-06-16 https://orf.at/stories/3158055/
Republic
Cyprus 2020-03-13 https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-
cyprus-borders/update-1-cyprus-shuts-its-borders-for-
15-days-to-fight-coronavirus-idUSL8N2B67EA
Germany 2020-03-23 https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-
imposes-tougher-restrictions-on-public-life-a-fe5a067b-
ee7a-4521-9940-edfa637f90de
Denmark 2020-03-13 https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-03-11-danmark-
lukker-ned-her-er-regeringens-nye-tiltag
Estonia 2020-03-13 https://news.err.ee/1063224/estonian-government-
declares-state-of-emergency-to-fight-coronavirus-spread
Spain 2020-3-14 https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2020/03/13/5e6b844e2
1efa0dd258b45a5.html
Finland
France 2020-03-17 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coro
navirus-france-lockdown-cases-update-covid-19-
macron-a9405136.html
Greece 2020-03-23 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
greece-curfew/greece-imposes-lockdown-after-
coronavirus-infections-jump-idUSKBN2190Z1
Croatia 2020-03-18 https://www.total-croatia-news.com/news/42223-covid-
19

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Hungary 2020-03-28 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
hungary-restrictio/hungary-pm-imposes-lockdown-sees-
coronavirus-peak-by-july-idUSKBN21E0Q2
Ireland 2020-03-12 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/coronavirus-
schools-colleges-and-childcare-facilities-in-ireland-to-
shut-1.4200977
Italy 2020-03-09 https://www.wsj.com/articles/italy-bolsters-quarantine-
checks-after-initial-lockdown-confusion-11583756737
Lithuania 2020-03-16 https://www.15min.lt/naujiena/aktualu/lietuva/vyriausyb
eje-susauktas-pasitarimas-del-koronaviruso-skelbs-
tolimesniu-veiksmu-plana-56-1289458
Latvia 2020-03-13 https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/health/latvian-
government-announces-widespread-measures-to-
contain-coronavirus.a351529/
Netherland 2020-03-10 https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/03/10/coronablog-10-
s maart-a3993219
Poland 2020-03-13 https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/poland-in-covid-
19-lockdown-pm-orders-bars-restaurants-shopping-
centres-and-borders-closed---and-cancels-all-flights-
11142
Portugal 2020-03-19 https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/state-of-
emergency-explained/53448
Romania 2020-03-25 https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/klaus-iohannis-
anunta-carantina-totala-in-romania-tot-ce-era-pana-
acum-recomandare-devine-obligatoriu-masurile-in-
vigoare-de-maine-1280363
Sweden 2020-03-27 https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/ewa-stenberg-lofven-
vill-hellre-overtyga-an-forbjuda/
Slovakia 2020-03-08 https://dennikn.sk/1789402/v-bratislavskom-kraji-zavru-
pre-hrozbu-koronavirusu-viac-ako-50-strednych-skol-
plus-zoznam/?ref=in
United 2020-03-23 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/23/boris-
Kingdom johnson-orders-uk-lockdown-to-be-enforced-by-police

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