RAPID: Collaborative Research: COVID-19, Crises, and Support for the Rule of Law

法治是现代自由民主的基础。然而，冠状病毒（COVID-19）大流行等危机对这一支撑世界各地现代民主的长期规范构成了挑战。在危机中，一个人对法治的支持受到考验，因为他们对自己、家人和朋友的健康、安全和福利的基本关切与一种抽象的信念相比较，即政府在实施可能挽救生命的政策之前“检查所有的框”。在这种情况下，人们对政府果断行动的渴望可能会压倒，并随后导致人们对法治等抽象民主原则的承诺下降。因此，评估危机如何影响对基本民主规范的支持，对于理解危机对自由民主秩序的健康和稳定的影响至关重要。本项目利用2019冠状病毒病疫情来检验这种关系，并确定(a)政府对危机的反应是否会影响公民对法治的支持；(b)精英和专家的暗示是否会增强或削弱公民对政府努力的信心；(c)危机消散后，公民的态度是否会发生变化。这些理论目标中的每一个都与研究设计的三个独特特征之一有关，研究设计依赖于对欧洲民主国家的调查。首先，为了检验政府应对措施的效果，该项目将于2020年4月在四个西方民主国家（德国、西班牙、英国和美国）收集支持法治的调查数据。其次，在德国进行的一项原创性小组调查将能够评估个人层面的短期、中期和长期法治判断的变化。最后，嵌入式调查实验将提供因果证据，说明精英和专家线索如何影响政策的接受程度和对法治关键方面的支持，如遵守法律和支持对行政权和立法权的司法约束。该项目每个部分的研究结果将深入了解在公民与民主原则的关系中激活的个人层面的动态危机。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The rule of law is at the foundation of modern liberal democracy. Crises like the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, however, pose a challenge to this long-standing norm that buttresses modern democracies the world over. In the midst of a crisis, a person’s support for the rule of law is tested as their fundamental concern for the health, safety, and welfare of themselves, their families, and their friends is pitted against an abstract belief that the government “check all the boxes” before carrying out potentially lifesaving policies. In these situations, one’s desire for decisive government action may overwhelm, and subsequently lead to a decline in, one’s commitment to abstract democratic principles like the rule of law. Consequently, evaluating how crises affect support for fundamental democratic norms is critical for understanding their impact on the health and stability of the liberal democratic order.This project leverages the COVID-19 outbreak to examine this relationship and determine (a) whether governmental responses to crises affect citizens’ support for the rule of law; (b) whether citizens’ faith in government efforts is buttressed or undermined in response to elite and expert cues; and (c) whether citizens’ attitudes change after a crisis has dissipated. Each of these theoretical aims is tied to one of three unique features of the research design, which relies upon surveys of European democracies. First, to examine the effects of governmental responses, the project will make collect survey data on support for the rule of law across four Western democracies in April 2020: Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Second, an original panel survey in Germany will enable the evaluation of changes to individual-level rule of law judgments in the short, medium, and long term. Lastly, embedded survey experiments will provide causal evidence on how elite and expert cues affect both the acceptance of policies and support for key aspects of the rule of law like compliance with laws and support for judicial constraints on executive and legislative power. Findings from each part of the project will provide insights into the individual-level dynamics crises activate in citizens’ relationship with democratic principles.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.