Acceptance of political restrictions and societal polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparative study of Austria and Hungary

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some governments took measures to restrict political liberties, claiming that these restrictions were necessary to contain the spread of the virus. In this study, we scrutinize differences in citizens’ willingness to accept three types of political restrictions: restricting the media, banning protests, and introducing extensive state surveillance. We focus on two European countries: Austria and Hungary. While we find that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions, we also find that citizens differ in their willingness to support the three types of restrictions depending on whether the given measure affects them directly. We also find differences between Austria and Hungary concerning the way political trust and political values affect the acceptance of restrictions, which may be rooted in the larger polarization of Hungarian society. Furthermore, we observe that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions.

Keywords

COVID-19 pandemic perceived threats political culture political restrictions political trust political values

Introduction

Times of emergency offer a unique opportunity to study norms and political culture because prevailing norms and attitudes in such periods of duress come starkly to the fore and can become the catalysts of political change (Pelling and Dill, 2006). This holds particularly for citizens’ attitudes and expectations of authorities. Emergency times call for exceptional measures that may raise intriguing dilemmas regarding the balance of security and civil liberties. The concessions citizens are willing to make on their liberty in exchange for a purported increase in security is a central question for understanding citizens’ attitudes toward and ideas about democracy. While academia has studied this question intensely in the past decades, studies nevertheless rarely differentiated between the types of restrictions introduced.

The COVID crisis induced authorities around the world to introduce a wide range of unprecedented restrictions. Our study focuses on citizens’ responses to restrictions by differentiating between three types of restrictions: restrictions on media, restrictions on protests, and increased levels of surveillance (which are also a form of restriction on civil liberties). We hypothesize that citizens’ reactions and attitudes to restrictions differ depending on whether a citizen is directly affected by a particular restriction. That is, citizens who see the role of critical media as important would be more against restrictions on media freedoms, while citizens ready to protest would be less supportive of restrictions on protest activities. Surveillance, however, is a restriction that affects all citizens in a more similar manner—that is, affectedness plays a less significant role in the case of surveillance.¹ We believe that this claim about affectedness is regime neutral. Still, studying these three types of restrictions, we must recognize that they differ not only in what the notion of “affectedness” captures but also in the fact that restrictions on critical media and restrictions on protest activities are directly linked to means through which citizens practice control over authorities. Surveillance, in contrast, does not have this quality. We hypothesize that control over authority would be reflected in the way political trust operates, which we expect to be reflected in the different ways restrictions are perceived in the two cases we study: Austria and Hungary. Beyond some similarities (e.g. the two countries are central European neighbors with a common history until the early 20th century), we find more differences between Austria and Hungary. The former is a more mature democracy, which, however, according to the V-Dem report 2022, shows “a significant decline on the indicator for transparent laws and predictable enforcement is a decisive change that contributed to Austria falling below the criteria for liberal democracy.” (Boese et al., 2022: 14). The latter is an increasingly illiberal state with democracy being severely eroded.

The two countries also differ considerably in their levels of polarization, with the Hungarian society being extremely polarized (Kopecký et al., 2022), which is reflected, inter alia, in the partisan polarization of voters and the party system alike (Patkós, 2023; Vegetti, 2019).² Although the polarization of Austrian society has been rising in the last decade (Kopecký et al., 2022), in 2018, its level was substantially lower than in Hungary (Patkós, 2023). Further, the two countries also differed in how their governments approached the pandemic—the Hungarian government introduced harsher measures³—and the severity of the crisis.⁴

Thus, we expect citizens of these two countries to show considerable differences in the way they respond to emergency situations (Grajczjár et al., 2019). While we hypothesize that affectedness would operate in a similar way, the past 10 years of illiberal rule in Hungary have created a radical cleavage between supporters and opponents of the regime (e.g. Patkós, 2023),⁵ which would be reflected in the way political trust operates. In other words, we contend that it is reasonable to believe that in a more polarized society like Hungary, keeping control over authority would be more important for those not trusting the regime, while those trusting the regime would be less concerned about authorities extending their powers and introducing restrictions. Our findings support both these hypotheses and hopefully offer a step toward a better understanding of citizens’ attitudes to restrictions in times of emergency.

In the following, we will first delineate the general background of the survey (section 2), then we discuss the theoretical background of our study with a focus on why citizens support or resist restrictions (section 3). Third, we discuss the differences between the three types of restrictions that we focus on (section 4). Next, we introduce the hypotheses, methods, and results (section 5). We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results and the further directions in which this inquiry could be pursued (section 6).

Background of the study

Although states frequently introduce emergency measures for various reasons, terrorism was the security issue that simultaneously affected numerous Western democracies during the past decades, which subsequently led to great interest in citizens’ responses to the introduction of extensive surveillance technologies (e.g. Ziller and Helbling, 2021). Many earlier studies on restrictions focused on the question of surveillance in response to terrorist attacks and did not enter a systematic study of how citizens’ reactions differ to various types of restrictions. This was natural, as the problem of restricting civil liberties broadly only came to the fore globally with COVID-19, with even established democracies contemplating whether restrictions on protests (to avoid contagion) and even on the media (to avoid panic) were necessary, making citizens’ reactions to emergency measures in a broad sense a salient topic (Alsan et al., 2020, Brouard et al., 2020). Also, the question of affectedness has rarely been scrutinized, with the exception of studies focusing on the attitude of minorities to enhanced measures of control and surveillance (Hetherington and Suhay, 2011; Valentino et al., 2021).

This study contributes to a better understanding of citizens’ attitudes to different types of restrictions and studies how affectedness influences citizens in accepting or resisting limits on civil liberties. The underlying assumption of our study is that citizens have different attitudes toward different measures. This has the important corollary that one should be careful in extrapolating results concerning citizens’ attitudes to surveillance to how citizens of the same society would react to other forms of restrictions. That is, we are interested in whether the introduction of general surveillance of the population vis-a-vis a ban on protests plays out differently in the citizens’ realm. While the former affects all citizens in the same way, banning protests disproportionately affects those citizens who wish to take part in protests. Those citizens who see the role of the media as extremely important in keeping authorities in check may be more strongly against any form of media control. Putting this latter point into context, we assert that whether someone regards media freedom as an absolute necessity or if one’s attitude to media freedom depends on whether one’s preferred party was in power—that is, affectedness influencing the opinion of the citizen—makes a critical difference for democratic resilience. In an ideal society, citizens should be equally concerned about restrictions on civil liberties and democratic principles regardless of whether they feel affected by these restrictions or not. That is, citizens should value civil liberties even if they see no immediate personal benefit in preserving them. For example, one may insist on the right to protest even when demonstrating does not have direct relevance at the given moment for the person in question, because one may be satisfied with the government’s new measures, or because they do not affect one’s personal life. The factor that we hypothesize to distort society’s response is polarization, which undermines intra-social solidarity and is also tied to excessive trust in one’s preferred politicians and government—which is one of the most pronounced characteristics of the polarized and illiberal Hungarian society.

We chose to study (restrictions on) media freedoms and protest activities because they are essential for keeping authorities in check and providing critical reflections and feedback on politics. At the same time, citizens’ perception of them differs considerably. Although the importance of media freedom is widely accepted in modern societies, citizens’ attitudes toward protests are more complex, with many citizens having misgivings about protests even in normal times (Jenkins et al., 2008, Park and Einwohner, 2019). Also, it is important to note that both issues came starkly to the fore during the pandemic. The restriction of protests was a measure many countries introduced at the beginning of the pandemic although protests were allowed later on in most democracies.⁶ This is the case in Austria, for example, where the government banned protests of over five participants during the first lock-down in Spring 2020. Similarly, media freedom also became a contentious topic when fake news and conspiracy theories increasingly gained ground (Bellucci, 2021; Lührmann et al., 2020), raising questions about the openness of information flows during emergencies.

Our study offers a comparative analysis of Austria and Hungary. Our findings reveal that in the case of surveillance—which is the most encompassing of restrictions—there is no difference between the two countries in how trust operates. Yet, in the case of less encompassing restrictions—that is to say restrictions that only effect a part of society—in Hungary trust is closely linked to the acceptance of restrictions, whereas in Austria the effect of trust is smaller and nonsignificant. Furthermore, our study shows that societies do not react the same way to different types of restrictions, which, even though this finding is not very surprising, is still an important addition to comprehending how attitudes to security and attachment to civil liberties operate in times of emergency.

Explaining support for political restrictions

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about an “unparalleled stress-test” for all political regimes, often resulting in executive aggrandizement (Guasti, 2020) and limitations on civil liberties. In understanding how societies deal with emergency situations it is essential to scrutinize what factors make citizens willing to accept such restrictions. In our study we focus on three factors: (1) political trust; (2) perceived threat; and (3) the role of political values.

Many of the studies conducted during the COVID crisis have drawn an analogy between the COVID pandemic and terror attacks in terms of encouraging citizens to accept restrictions on their civil liberties. These studies mostly focused on the acceptance of COVID tracking technologies (Alsan et al., 2020; Lewandowsky et al., 2021; Wnuk et al., 2020) or quarantine enforcement measures (Alsan et al., 2020). They have found that, similar to terrorist attacks, perceived threat (Alsan et al., 2020; Cilizoglu et al., 2021; Wnuk et al., 2020), political trust (Cilizoglu et al., 2021), and authoritarianism (Cilizoglu et al., 2021; Wnuk et al., 2020) predict the acceptance of restrictive measures. While highly informative, these studies did not explicitly differentiate between the acceptance of more and less extensive political restrictions, which is central to this study. Thus, while the first part of our study focuses on how factors such as trust, perceived threats, and political values influence the acceptance of (a) surveillance, (b) restrictions on protest activities, and (c) restrictions on the media (all crucial for democratic life), the second part of the study focuses on differences between these three types of restrictions, capturing differences in how extensive they are.

Democracy is a multidimensional concept (Diamond and Morlino, 2004), with various approaches emphasizing different aspects of it. The aspect we emphasize in our study is as follows: democracy cannot function properly without widespread control mechanisms in place over authorities and policy makers. This includes institutions such as the parliament or the judiciary but it also includes citizens, civil society, and the media, which all perform an important function in overseeing and controlling political power (Laebens and Lührmann, 2021). Media play a watchdog role and protests function as a crucial means to express dissatisfaction in modern democracies, while they also contribute to the deliberative process.

Given the crucial role of these elements in democratic life, citizens’ resistance to their curtailment is an indicator of how deeply rooted democratic values are in a society. Still, times of emergency may call for extraordinary measures and temporary restrictions on such democratic rights may become necessary. The question, though, is not simply whether these restrictions are accepted or not, but whether support for these restrictions reflects differences in a society, particularly how divided and polarized a society is. The problem our article highlights is that members of a more polarized society show less sensitivity for concerns not directly affecting them, leading to weaker democratic resilience and a greater propensity to democratic backsliding because democracies are much more prone to collapse if citizens only stand up for democratic norms and values when the violations of such directly affect them.

The role of political trust

Political trust is directly connected to (dis)satisfaction. Easton (1965) sees political trust as “diffuse support for the system” that encompasses the legitimacy of the political regime and acceptance of its constitutional foundations (Hooghe and Marien, 2013; Norris, 2017). Distrust in representative institutions, on the other hand, indicates dissatisfaction with the system in general and feeds political protest participation (Braun and Hutter 2016: 153; Quaranta, 2015: 53). Those who believe political institutions are more worthy of trust tend to be more satisfied with the workings of the government, more supportive of the government and more willing to follow the government’s decisions (Coleman, 1990; Hetherington, 2018; Levi and Stoker, 2000; Warren, 1999).⁷ In other words, trust means that “the legitimacy of the political regime is acknowledged and that there is a high degree of willingness to accept the decisions of politicians and government agencies” (Hooghe and Marien, 2013: 3). While trust is necessary and important for a political system to function, trust can be a double-edged sword: Excessive trust may have negative consequences.⁸ For a well-functioning political system, citizens need to trust their government, because trust is the basis for citizens’ acceptance of government decisions and compliance with its orders, such as paying taxes. As such, a lack of political trust can lead to a malfunctioning system and potentially invite authoritative measures by the government to make up for the citizens’ unwillingness to adhere to the rules. However, at the same time, excessive trust can also have negative consequences, like granting the government too much authority, as when citizens lose their critical attitude to power (Rivetti and Cavatorta, 2017). In other words, democracy requires vigilant citizens who oversee and monitor political authorities (Warren, 2018). In order to capture this dilemma of trust empirically this study asserts that too much trust can become a problem in a polarized society. Pernicious political polarization can turn political opponents into enemies and enhances democratic erosion (Somer et al., 2021), including the dismantling of solidarity and social empathy. In a more polarized society, non-affected citizens may more easily ignore the concerns of fellow citizens who feel that their liberties are under threat. Citizens with extremely high levels of political trust would ignore the idea that while they trust the government, others may regard the acts of the government with suspicion, with this suspicion being not inherently bad, but quite the contrary, essential for preserving democracy by preserving citizens’ control over authorities. Putting it differently, the more cohesive and less polarized a society, the more resilient its democracy (Merkel and Lührmann, 2021).

This is a core issue when illiberal tendencies come to the fore in a democracy. One of the main characteristics of an illiberal regime is that its understanding of democracy ignores the concerns of minorities, with the will of the majority justifying all decisions, trumping what may be essential for a minority (García-Holgado and Pérez-Liñán, 2021; Landau, 2021). This disregarding of minority concerns ultimately breaks down to the question of affectedness, that is, the majority’s lack of concern for issues (and opinions about such issues) not directly affecting them. It is upon these considerations that we selected Hungary, an illiberal regime, as one of the cases in our study, as we will explain below.

The role of perceived threat

The other factor that could explain the acceptance of restrictions is the fear that the price society would pay, were the restriction on particular liberty not introduced, would be higher than the damage done by suspending the liberty.

During the pandemic the context of democratic life changed dramatically. Mass gatherings were suspected to accelerate the spread of COVID-19 virus,⁹ and participation in demonstrations became riskier.¹⁰ Studies have found that threat perception positively correlates with support for protective government policies, which, at the same time, restrict civil liberties (Bozzoli and Müller, 2011; Carriere et al., 2022; Davis and Silver, 2004; Huddy et al., 2005; 2007). For example, fear of becoming infected with the COVID-19 virus during a demonstration could lead one to stay away from the protest, but also make the individual more supportive of restrictions of protests in general, seeing them as a hotbed for the spread of the virus. Huddy et al. (2002) have distinguished between personal and collective threats. While personal threats pose a danger to the individual, collective threat pose difficulties to the country, as a whole.¹¹ Their analysis found that both types of threats highly correlate with cautious personal behavior after the terrorist attack on the United States and thus could lead to greater willingness to support restrictions on civil liberties. In other words, fear seems to be one of the crucial factors changing the way the trade-off between liberty and security is perceived. Thus, it is important to study and understand support for restrictions, although whether this is really a trade-off is contestable in a properly working democracy.

The role of political values

Political values and ideology help people to orient their preferences and behavior. Ideological orientations express preferences for public goods and often define ways to realize such aims (Finkel and Opp, 1991). As such, when threat perceptions are high, such as during the pandemic, more authoritarian-leaning individuals with right-wing orientations prefer the values of moral order, conformity to group norms, or obedience to authority and are more likely to support restrictive measures (Brouard et al., 2018; Hetherington and Suhay, 2011). Recent studies also show that citizens leaning toward authoritarianism are more likely to regard protest behavior as questionable than other citizens (Barker et al., 2021) These findings suggest that it is necessary to include political values as one of the independent variables of our study.

Types of restrictions

Early studies put little effort into differentiating between various types of restrictions and thereby overlooked the fact that citizens’ responses vary across different types of restrictions (Alsan et al., 2020; Cilizoglu et al., 2021; Wnuk et al., 2020). Citizens may regard some restrictions as more dangerous to democracy and thereby be more reluctant to accept them—even in times of emergencies—than other restrictions. Also, differences in citizens’ responses may originate in the fact that not all restrictions affect citizens in an identical way. For instance, “racial profiling” or “warrantless searches on the suspicious” measures after the 9/11 terrorist attacks mainly affected Muslim citizens and immigrants. However, collecting information on citizens’ movements affects all people in a country regardless of their social background.

There are various approaches to differentiating between restrictions in terms of how encompassing they are. An important distinction refers to the extent of state surveillance measures: targeted measures “focus on a particular suspect individual or group,” while dragnet measures affect all members of the given society (Ziller and Helbling, 2021: 996). Carriere et al., 2022, however, distinguish between out-group–based (punitive approach) and in-group–based (preventive approach) restrictions. According to the punitive approach, measures restrict the civil rights of out-group members, while the preventive approach includes measures restricting the rights of the in-group or both the in-group and the out-group. Both approaches emphasize the distinction between restrictions that are uniformly felt by all citizens and restrictions that have a harsher effect only on certain segments of society.¹² To summarize, the degree to which a measure is encompassing is a critical feature of restrictive measures as it defines the share of affected citizens within a society. Researchers have found affectedness is directly linked to the acceptance of restrictions. A good example of this is minorities in the United States that are less supportive of anti-terrorist orders, such as wiretapping without a warrant (Hetherington and Suhay, 2011). This is because Latinos might be more affected by wiretapping, irrespective of alleged terrorist activity. At the same time, citizens are more willing to sacrifice the civil liberties of their countrymen for their own security, and this is especially the case when the affected group invites little sympathy (Valentino et al., 2021).

Restrictions on the media may be regarded as more problematic by those dissatisfied with the government, given their likely greater distrust of ruling politicians and their higher demand for the media to be allowed to exercise its role of checking otherwise unconstrained politicians.¹³ Similarly, although the right to protest is by now seen as an integral part of democratic life (although some have reservations), curtailing the right to protest can have a very different effect on supporters of the government compared to dissatisfied citizens. While the former may more easily forego their rights to protest, given that they generally agree with the policies of the regime, the latter may regard such restrictions as threatening, leaving them no room to express their discontent with governmental measures. In order to study this difference between restrictions we have selected three types of restrictions: (1) the introduction of extensive surveillance; (2) the restriction of media freedom; and (3) the restriction of protests. These three differ in the degree to which they are encompassing, with the first affecting all citizens, and the latter two directly affecting sub-groups.

Determinants of support for political restrictions

Governments introduced different restrictive measures to mitigate the harmful results of Covid pandemic. According to psychological theories, external threats motivate people to avoid negative consequences and make them more inclined to support protective government policies (Huddy et al., 2007). However, from a sociological point of view, social context plays a significant role. Trust in institutions and especially in the power holders (e.g. the government) is deemed a crucial driver of accepting the decisions (Hooghe and Marien, 2013). Moreover, values and ideologies shape individuals’ preferences in the very situation to resolve the difficult choice between security and civil liberty.

Beyond these factors in this study, we add to the model one more social dimension: affectedness, namely, the perceived impact of the restrictions on the individual’s personal life.

Hypotheses

We formulate three groups of hypotheses focusing on the predictors of accepting political restrictions, namely: attitudes, affectedness and cross-country differences.

Attitudes

First, we expect that (1) people who have higher trust in the government/the parliament, (2) people who perceive a higher level of health threat, and (3) people with more traditional-collectivist values are more likely to support the political restrictions we study.

H1.1: Political trust is positively related to the acceptance of restrictions.

H1.2: Perceived health threat is positively related to the acceptance of restrictions.

H1.3: Traditional-collectivist values are positively related to the acceptance of restrictions.

Affectedness

Second, based on the theories and empirical studies summarized above (Hetherington and Suhay, 2011, Ziller and Helbling, 2021, Carriere et al., 2022), we expect that affected groups are more willing to refuse a particular restriction. Thus, we hypothesize:

H2: Affected groups are less supportive of political restrictions than those people who are less affected or not affected by a given measure.

More specifically

H2.1: Potential protesters are less supportive of banning protests.

H2.2: Those who deem the media’s role of criticizing government decisions highly important are less supportive of controlling the media.

Country difference—polarization

Beyond the key predictors of political restrictions, we also hypothesize cross-country differences. The Simonovits et al. (2021) study shows citizens’ acceptance of restrictive policies depends on their support for the political formation in power. Moreover, as we presented earlier, the Hungarian society is significantly more polarized than the Austrian society. Thus, we expect that political trust has a different role in explaining the restrictions’ acceptance in Hungary than in Austria.

We contend thereby that:

H3: In Hungary, political trust will be more strongly correlated with the acceptance of restrictions than in Austria.

Data and methods

We conducted online surveys in June 2021 in both Austria and Hungary,¹⁴ which are in between the third and fourth waves of the Coronavirus pandemic. The quota samples (N = 1000 in each country) are representative of the 18- to 65-year-old Internet user population regarding the level of education, age, sex, and residence. All statistical analyses were performed using R (4.2.2) and R Studio (2022.07.2).¹⁵

Dependent variables

Citizen attitudes toward authority were operationalized as attitudes toward state restrictions in three dimensions of civil liberties. We focused on (1) media control, which concerns free speech; (2) protest bans, which restrain free assembly; and (3) acceptance of state surveillance, which may breach the rights of privacy. Each of these three dimensions restricts civil liberties in different ways, which may have implications for how citizens regard them.

We asked respondents about their support for restrictions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the introduction of controls over the media¹⁶, banning protests,¹⁷ and state surveillance¹⁸ on a four-point scale. Due to the skewed distribution of the variables, we dichotomized the responses: 1 denotes support and 0 refusal. Regarding state surveillance, we calculated the mean scores of three items: the support for (a) surveillance of people in public places with video cameras, (b) collection of information on people living in the country, without their awareness, and (c) location tracking of the mobile telephones of people living in [Austria/Hungary]. Answers were given on a four-point scale, ranging from 1 (the government should definitely have this right) to 4 (the government should by no means have this right). After the items were reverse-coded and the mean scores of the three items calculated, we dichotomized support for state surveillance. The dummy variable was set to 1 if the acceptance of state surveillance was higher than 2 and to 0 otherwise.

Apart from the theoretical rationale for analyzing the more and less extensive forms of political restrictions separately, there are also statistical reasons for this approach. The correlation between acceptance of media control and banning protest is negligible (r = .39), and the correlations between acceptance of state surveillance and media control or banning protest are even lower (r = .21 and r = .25, respectively). These low correlations suggest that the dimensions capture separate attitudinal foci and it is reasonable to differentiate between these types of political restrictions. These results also show that it is problematic to generalize from citizen attitudes to surveillance to the acceptance of media control or restrictions on protest activities. That is to say, citizens do not regard interventions of authorities in different aspects of their civil liberties in a uniform way.

Independent variables and controls

The main independent variables of the present study are political trust, perceived threat, political attitudes, values and affectedness.

Political trust

Trust in political institutions measures were adopted from the European Social Survey (ESS).¹⁹ Respondents were asked, “Regarding the coronavirus crisis, how much do you trust the following institutions?” and the government and the parliament were included in a list of institutions. The items were measured on an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 (I do not trust it at all) to 10 (I trust it very much). The two items correlate strongly (r = .85), so we averaged trust in parliament and trust in government to form a single political trust factor. Threat perception. We adopted these items from the Austrian Corona Panel Project²⁰ to measure perceived threats and negative health consequences related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus infection, which included two items: “In your opinion, to what degree are you/the population of [country] in general exposed to the health risks of the Coronavirus?” We used a five-point scale ranging from not at all to a significantly high degree. The two items correlate strongly (r = .69). Thus, we averaged the two forms of perceived threats. Traditional and modern values. For measuring value orientations, adopted a question from the European Values Survey project (EVS).²¹ We asked respondents to choose five important traits that parents try to instill in their children at home. We used the following value orientations: “good manners,” “independence,” “hard work,” “responsibility,” “creativity,” “tolerance,” “thrift,” “determination,” “religious faith,” “selflessness” and “obedience.” To identify distinctive types of values, we used Latent Class Analysis (LCA).²² The LCA model fit statistics and the conditional probabilities of the latent classes are shown in Appendix A.²³ Following the discussion on value clusters (Beugelsdijk and Welzel, 2018; Rabušicová and Rabušic, 2001; Yu, 2015), we described and labeled the two latent classes as traditional or collectivist and modern or individualist. In the traditional or collectivist class, which constitutes 55.2% of the full sample (with the Austrian and Hungarian responses taken together), the dominant values were “hard work,” “thrift,” “obedience” and “religious faith.” In the modern or individualist class, which accounts for the remaining 44.8% of the sample, we included traits like “independence,” “tolerance,” “creativity,” and “determination.” The value of “good manners,” however, was chosen with the same probability in both the traditional and in the modern classes with probabilities 58% and 61%, respectively.

Affected groups

People who are willing to protest and those who can potentially be mobilized to participate in demonstrations are more affected by restrictions on protests. We asked respondents about the degree to which they were willing to take part in a demonstration “against other government policies not related to the virus.” Responses were given on a four-point scale (“certainly not,” “I’d rather not,” “I would tend to,” and “definitely yes”). This variable was recoded to a 0–1 dummy, where 1 indicates higher protest willingness (“would tend to participate” or “definitely would participate”).

Regarding media control, we measured affectedness by the perception of the importance of the media’s critical role. Respondents were asked: “People can disagree about the job of journalists during the coronavirus crisis. To what degree do you feel it is important that journalists carry out the following tasks?” whereby the monitoring function (“publishing opinions critical of the government’s handling of the crisis”) was included, among other roles of the media, in the list of items.²⁴ We compared the aforementioned two affected groups to the most encompassing restriction, state surveillance since surveillance does not affect a specific group. We assume that in the case of surveillance, all citizens are equally affected and there is no social group that could avoid monitoring practices.²⁵ Continuous variables were centered and divided by 2 standard deviations in each country separately. These standardized predictors had a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 0.5 so that the regression coefficients could be interpreted on an approximately common scale (Gelman and Hill, 2006).

Control variables

We also included gender, age, level of education, residence (big city, city, and town or village), infection with the COVID-19 virus, and left-right orientation²⁶ as controls in our analysis. We asked whether respondents themselves had been identified as infected with the Coronavirus. 1 denoted identified infection and 0 otherwise.

Model

To test the associations between support for the three different types of restrictions (controlling the media, banning protests, and state surveillance), we estimated separate logit regression models for Austria and Hungary.²⁷ Then, we compare average marginal effects (AME) and their confidence intervals across these separate models. As Mood (2010: 80) shows, in the case of logistic regression models, AME is appropriate for studying cross-country and cross-group differences.

We tested multicollinearity by Variance Inflation Factor values (VIF). All VIF values were smaller than 2, which makes multicollinearity very unlikely (see Appendix D for details on multicollinearity statistics).

Results

The results of the final models are presented in Tables 7 to 9 in Appendix, which contain the logit regressions on acceptance of state surveillance (Table 7), banning protests (Table 8), and controlling media (Table 9).²⁸ The two models in each table describe the three dependent variables for the Austrian and Hungarian data. The first three hypotheses focus on the effect of the three most important factors explaining acceptance of the state’s restrictive measures, namely, the roles of political trust, perceived health threat, and political values.

The models show that in Hungary, political trust significantly and positively relates to the acceptance of all three types of restrictions, while in Austria, this variable predicts only the acceptance of state surveillance and there seems to be no significant association with the acceptance of the two less extensive measures (controlling the media and banning protests). Political trust thus operates differently in the two countries. While in Austria trust in the government does not significantly affect opinions on the more selective restrictions (controlling the media and banning protests), in Hungary, those who score high on political trust also are more likely to accept the political restrictions of controlling the media and banning protests. Figure 1 also reveals that in Hungary political trust has a significantly larger effect on accepting these two types of restrictions than in Austria. At the same time, this is not the case for accepting state surveillance; the difference between the two countries is not significant. Thus, we see a difference between the two countries in the working of trust, where affectedness also plays a significant role.

Figure 1.

Average marginal effects of the independent variables, grouped by countries.

A clear pattern can be observed for the effect of health threat and political values. In Austria, the coefficient estimates are in line with hypotheses H1.2 and H1.3. However, in Hungary, such associations are much weaker and some are even statistically insignificant.

Starting with the role of the perceived health threat posed by the pandemic, we find that, as anticipated in H1.2, the perceived threat is positively related to the acceptance of restrictions. In Austria, the pattern is clear: those who perceive a larger threat are also more inclined to accept state surveillance, controlling the media and banning protests (AME = 0.08, p < .01; AME = 0.06, p < .1; AME = 0.18, p < .001, respectively). In Hungary, however, we see much weaker associations, which are not statistically significant (AME = 0.05, p < .10; AME = 0.03, p = .385; AME = 0.05, p = .108 respectively).

The results suggest a very similar interpretation of political values. In Austria, traditional values are significantly and positively related to the acceptance of restrictions. Those who consider obedience, thrift, hard work, and religious faith important values are significantly more likely to accept political restrictions (AME = 0.10, p < 0.01; AME = 0.16, p < .001; AME = 0.15, p < .001 respectively). In Hungary, this is true only in the case of banning protests (AME = 0.08, p < .01), but the effect of this set of values is only marginally significant in the case of accepting restrictions on media (AME = 0.06, p < .1). To summarize, these results are in line with our hypotheses and support the view expressed in the literature discussed above: political trust, perceived threat, and traditional political values positively predict acceptance of political restrictions.

The second set of hypotheses focuses on the role of affectedness. We expected that those who potentially protest or are more willing to participate in government-critical demonstrations would be less supportive of banning protests (H2.1). Also, we expected that those who find the media’s monitoring role more important would be less supportive of media restrictions during the coronavirus crisis (H2.2). According to the results, affectedness has a negative effect on respondents’ support of the specific restrictions in both countries. Most notably, the importance of media’s critical role negatively correlates with support for controlling the media (Austria: AME =−0.13, p < 0.001; Hungary: AME = −0.12, p < .001) and protest willingness negatively correlates with the support for banning protests (Austria: AME = −.11, p < .01; Hungary: AME = −0.08, p < .01). These findings are in line with our expectations (H2.1 and H2.2).

Now we compare the effect sizes and explore whether the role of affectedness significantly differs between the three types of restrictions. Figure 2 presents the average marginal effects (AME)²⁹ of the key explanatory variables for all three types of restrictions calculated from the logit models. The Austrian AME values and their confidence intervals are depicted in the left panel while the right panel shows the same values in Hungary. In both Austria and Hungary, the marginal effect of media criticism is significantly different across the three models. As we see in Figure 1, those respondents who see the watchdog role of media as more important accept controlling the media with a significantly lower probability than they accept state surveillance. Thus, these results support hypotheses H2.1 and H2.2 because we find differences between more (surveillance) and less extensive restrictions (banning protests and controlling the media).

Figure 2.

Average marginal effects of the independent variables grouped by political restrictions.

These results demonstrate, first, that affectedness has a significant role in explaining support for specific restrictions. The AMEs are negative in both countries, indicating that affectedness has a negative effect on support of restrictions. Second, we found that this role of affectedness significantly varies across the three types of political restrictions.

Finally, we highlight some of the differences between the two countries. Figure 1 presents the average marginal effects calculated from the same models (estimates of Tables 7–9 in the Appendix). While in Figure 2 AMEs are grouped by the types of restrictions, in Figure 1 they are grouped by country. This figure shows that there are interesting differences between the two countries in the effects of political trust and political values on accepting restrictions. In Hungary, the most important factor is political trust, while in Austria political values seem to be the most important key factor. Comparing the AME of political trust, we can furthermore see that the marginal effect is significantly higher in Hungary than in Austria in the case of accepting protest bans and media restrictions, but the difference is not significant in the case of accepting state surveillance. Thus, when comparing Hungary to Austria, political trust has a significantly larger positive effect on accepting the two less extensive political restrictions (i.e. the ones where affectedness plays a significant role), namely, controlling the media and banning protests. The marginal effect of political trust on support for state surveillance is positive and significant both in Austria and Hungary, but the two AMEs are statistically not different in the two countries.³⁰ These results are in line with our third hypothesis (H3) which predicted significant differences between Austria and Hungary regarding the role of political trust in accepting political restrictions. However, these outcomes support our expectations only partially, as we did not find significant differences between the two countries in the case of state surveillance. We will explain these differences across the types of restrictions with their affectedness in the discussion section below.

We also find that while in Austria political trust is not a significant predictor of accepting the restrictions on protests and on the media, political values seem to be a more important factor. In Austria, the AME of traditional-collectivist values on the less extensive political restrictions is significantly higher than the AME of political trust. However, in the case of accepting extensive state surveillance, the marginal effect of political values is statistically not different from the AME of political trust. To summarize, this study scrutinized the three key factors by which the acceptance of less extensive political restrictions can be explained and found that political trust is a stronger predictor in Hungary than in Austria. In contrast, in Austria political values are a more important determinant of acceptance of restrictions on civil liberties.

As we can notice all our models are better at explaining the acceptance of political restrictions in Hungary than they are in Austria. This can be explained by the fact, that the government’s impact on public opinion is weaker in Austria than in Hungary; thus, the average marginal effects are stronger in Hungary than in Austria.

Discussion

The aim of this article was to contribute to our understanding of the acceptance of political restrictions by using data from two countries—Austria and Hungary—collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. We were interested in the role of affectedness and polarization. Based on the literature on state and public policy research (Hetherington and Globetti, 2002; Rudolph, 2017), we distinguished between restrictions that differ in how encompassing they were. Differences in the scope of a restriction offered us a way to capture affectedness.

The analysis revealed differences between Austria and Hungary, particularly in the way political trust influenced the acceptance of certain types of restrictions. In Hungary, citizens who had a higher level of trust in the government and the parliament tended to be more willing to accept the government’s restrictions on media freedom and protests, while they were also more supportive of state surveillance.³¹ This correlation may seem obvious, since, if someone places trust in representatives of the state, it is reasonable to assume that this person also believes that these actors would not abuse their power. Furthermore, as restrictions on protest and restrictions on the media tend to affect specific parts of the population more (typically those critical of the regime), others (typically supporters of the regime) need not worry much about such measures, because these would probably not affect them anyway. Restrictions would most likely be aimed at the critical and not the state-sponsored media; and restrictions imposed on demonstrations would most likely not affect state-sponsored demonstrations. These are worries only for critics.³² This explanation fits the Hungarian case nicely but does not hold for Austria. The data show something different. Austrians, even if they trust the government and the parliament, do not support restrictions on protests and restrictions on the media more than fellow Austrians with a lower level of political trust. What could explain this? We contend that this difference is the outcome of the Austrian society being less polarized than the Hungarian, where people express less concern for issues that do not affect them directly. While the higher role of trust in Hungary in accepting restrictions already illustrated the higher polarization of Hungarian society, our findings on the role of affectedness further strengthened this assertion.

During the last decade, tendencies for polarization resulted in a deepening cleavage between the supporters of the regime and its opponents in Hungary. Tentatively, we would argue that in an extremely polarized and illiberal regime, loyalty to the regime outweighs other considerations, while in a less polarized society, citizens’ support of the regime is conditional and depends not on loyalty but on judging the regime’s policies and behavior. This, in the concrete case, means that Austrians are probably reluctant to support restrictions on media and protests irrespective of their affectedness. Maybe they see these as inherently important for a democracy. In a less polarized society, where a political competitor is not seen as an enemy, freedom of demonstrations and freedom of the media could be highly valued by all citizens regardless of their political sympathies. They have intrinsic value that is not affected by one’s political sympathies, and, as such, a political opponent’s freedom to express their views should not be compromised.³³

Our study also revealed that in Austria traditional-collectivist political values are a more important determinant of acceptance of restrictions on civil liberties. This finding supports our argument holding that in a less polarized society, it is not political trust but instead values that are the most important drivers of accepting political restrictions.

Conclusion

We investigated the role of perceived health threats, political values, and affectedness and political trust in accepting political restrictions concerning state surveillance, controlling the media, and banning protests. Our results support our expectation that the level of affectedness influences the extent to which a particular restriction is supported. Most notably, we found that citizens do not perceive these three types of restrictions in the same way and that they are more dismissive of those that directly affect them (cf.: Ziller and Helbling, 2021, Carriere et al., 2022). In addition, our study also reveals substantial differences between Austria and Hungary in the way political trust affects the acceptance of restrictions, which we interpret as a more severe form of political polarization.

These results tell us something about the democratic resilience of these societies. In a society where trust in the regime is decisive in the support of restrictions and restrictions that affect “others,” a high degree of support reveals not only lower solidarity and greater polarization but probably also weakness in resisting authoritarian tendencies. Furthermore, these results also talk to recent discussions about the positive and negative consequences of political trust. Namely, while trust is a necessary glue that holds society together, trusting a government too much and not insisting on a mechanism of control over its actions may lead societies to the brink of authoritarianism (Norris, 2022). Pippa Norris distinguishes between credulous and skeptical citizens. The former tend to overestimate the government’s competencies and tend to believe their government blindly, while skeptical citizens tend to insist on greater oversight and control over the doings of authorities. We believe this dichotomy encompasses one of the main differences between Austria and Hungary that is captured in our study. While even Austrians who trust the government seem to be more skeptical of state restrictions, trusting Hungarians tend to have faith in authorities without doubts.

While these findings concerning affectedness and unaffectedness are crucial, the fact that we only studied two cases limits the generalizability of our argument and calls for further research in a wider range of political regimes.

Supplemental Material

sj-doc-1-cos-10.1177_00207152231187196 – Supplemental material for Acceptance of political restrictions and societal polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparative study of Austria and Hungary

Supplemental material, sj-doc-1-cos-10.1177_00207152231187196 for Acceptance of political restrictions and societal polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparative study of Austria and Hungary by Pal Susanszky, Bernhard Kittel and Akos Kopper in International Journal of Comparative Sociology

Footnotes

Author’s Note

Akos Kopper is also ffiliated to Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien, Berlin

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by The University of Vienna, by the Stiftung Aktion Österreich-Ungarn (aöu 106öu1) and by the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary (FK 135274). Akos Kopper’s participation in the research was supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, grant number: AZ03/KF/21.

ORCID iD

Pal Susanszky

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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