WP3. ​Role of Socioeconomic Transformations in Reshaping European Democracies

The aim of this WP is to examine the mid-term and appraise the long-term impacts of socioeconomic transformations caused by the corona-pandemic, migrants and refugee influx, and digitalization of work. The social phenomena to be examined are animated into contexts in which major social divisions (e.g. social class, gender, and ethnicity) remain active and traverse them. Accordingly, it proposed to take such social divisions on board in delineating the impact that the four phenomena exert on European democracies. All four social phenomena under scrutiny entail a path dependent dimension. They have/are occurring in conditions that in themselves, as they deviate from ordinary regularity, require government and state immediate and extraordinary intervention. This materializes without, usually, the extensive consultation and the bridging of different viewpoints that smooth out contention and are most important for the building of trust in the political sphere. As extraordinary the phenomena under discussion open the door to commandism in government/state action (Harding 1981), with democratic consultation thwarted. In this they tend to cultivate mistrust and to that extent weaken democracy. In this context earlier established patterns and rules of conduct, radius of operation and power of authority that are legally binding (or not), between aspects of state apparatuses and aspects of civil society, such as the various independent authorities that provide expertise, offer a key to the spread or containment of trust in extraordinary situations. This may be the case under the proviso that such independent authorities or more open modes of consultation and decision taking have been established and obtained a substantial measure of acceptance by the general population earlier, before the extraordinary conditions crop up. In this sense the social phenomena under discussion operate in arrangements already established, are path dependent. Accordingly, they may or may not relate and impact on the building of trust which affects European democracies.

Work Package Leader: Prof. Sokratis Koniordos, University of Peloponnese, Greece.

Task 3.1.1. Literature review: impact of Covid-19 pandemic on democratic attitudes and trust

The aim and purpose of this report is to examine, analyse and evaluate the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on democratic attitudes and trust in Europe. This specific pandemic surfaced by the end of 2019 in Wuhan in China. Thereafter it spread and was in full sway in Europe and the globe by early 2020. Governments and international/national medical authorities and agencies mobilized to control it, and this has meant the adoption of protective measures that have been variably imposed on subject populations. The protective measures taken included face coverings, hand washing, ventilation, social distancing, restrictions on mobility and face to face meetings, travel controls, quarantines, and lockdowns. Then, once vaccines became available, roughly a year after the pandemic’s outbreak, extensive and repeat vaccination programmes were enforced. A variability of versatile support measures was also taken to alleviate some of the complications of the restrictive measures.

In Europe, particularly in the under-EU jurisdiction countries, the measures adopted were to a significant extent coordinated by the EU apparatuses, with national governments having the responsibility for applying them while taking decisions at the country level. Given the utterly restrictive character of several of these measures there has been, from the pandemic’s start, uneasiness among national governments (and among the opposition too) in putting them into effect. While the expressed purpose for taking them has been the curbing of the ailment, the safeguarding of democracy, and its rights for the polity as well as for the citizenry had to be simultaneously taken up, and this has not always been the case. The latter, i.e., democracy and democratic rights, have been most important in the EU context as they affect the legitimizing root basis of the EU, and its constituent states. Unsurprisingly, the restrictive measures have generated opposition in varying degree and intensity from different quarters and under diverse rationales. In fact, discontent with the government during the pandemic was closely linked to discontent and /or malaise with democracy in EU countries, and the consortium countries for that matter. In other words, the alignment of anti-COVID-19 protective measures (with restrictions of free movements, etc.) with the preservation of democratic rights, has been quite a complex as well as a contested process. Given this context, of particular interest for present purposes is to ascertain what has been the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in shaping attitudes that affect perceptions about democracy as well as trust. Trust and trust levels and their fluctuations in relation to some basic government/state intuitions are also of concern as they provide inroads to people’s evaluations of the effectiveness and standing of authorities.

Given the broadness of the topic itself, even a cursory look at the relevant literature indicates that it is huge, versatile, and ever-expanding. Accordingly, we have had to be quite selective in how to proceed and what to include, in the understanding that we would end up having a proxime grasp of the material. To organize the task, we have had to divide it up into four concentric circles or four sections. Each of these provides an insight into a specific area of concern allowing for a systematic exploration. These are: (i) a selective literature review of the academic output in 13 European countries, (ii) an exploration of political trust/confidence in institutions in 30 European countries, (iii) a more focused appraisal of trust in government and the experiences of the coronavirus pandemic in 18 EU countries, and (iv) an examination of vaccination hesitancy, and protests against COVID-19 vaccinations.

In the first section an attempt is made to review the most relevant academic social-scientific literature in the TRUEDEM project participating countries. The literature relates to 12 European countries, all of which but two are EU member-states. The 10 EU countries form a contingent of about a third of all EU countries. Its related literature, drafted mostly in the respective national language, is looked into, and assessed. This, we reckon, allows the review of an indicative cross-section of the overall available literature in the EU on the topic. This undertaking is attempted on the basis of several small reports that our partners prepared. The selection in each report of the literature to review is made on the basis of an understanding about its relevance to the issue at hand. Subsequently, these reports are summarized, and common themes are identified. An extensive bibliography is also provided. The end result is, we hold, a substantial cross-section of EU countries’ literature, that allow an initial appraisal of the issues and direction of European research on the topic of COVID-19’s impact.

The second section investigates political trust/confidence in institutions comparatively. This is pursued by a descriptive study that is mapping the variation of the publics’ trust/confidence in five political institutions, namely the government/politicians, political parties, the national parliament, the courts/legal system, and the police. Several databases (ESS, WVS, EVS, Eurobarometer Edelman Trust Barometer, and others too) are scraped for data, covering set time points over the years 2008-2022. This undertaking provides information for 30 European countries. These are inclusive of the 27 EU countries, plus Switzerland, the Ukraine and the UK. The section provides a global picture of trends and cross-country variation in the publics’ trust/confidence in a set of political institutions allowing an appraisal of the COVID-19’s district impact on them.

The third section’s focus is on trust in government and the experiences of the coronavirus pandemic. Related evidence is drawn from the latest EES wave that included a battery of questions on COVID-19, which affects a substantial cross-section of 18 participating EU countries. On the one hand, societal and governmental responses to COVID-19 have been highly contingent upon trust so much so that countries exhibiting high-levels of trust more often than not have tended to implement less stringent lockdowns. These governments also relied largely on the voluntary compliance of citizens to governmental guidelines. The flip side of this is that high levels of social trust may prompt one to believe that others are closely observing stringency measures so that s/he is likely to follow a sort of free-rider effect concerning vaccination, and other protective measures. Moreover, high trust in the government and other authorities may facilitate underestimation of the risk of the pandemic and a perception that individual action is redundant. Thus, people may think that the government will do all necessary job with the pandemic.

On the other hand, in several countries, low trust in political authorities was related to high levels of discontent with government responses to COVID-19 and this in turn, resulted in discontent with democracy, i.e., low degree of satisfaction with the way democracy works during the pandemic. Integral to backlash and grievance politics, vaccine hesitation, conspiratorial thinking, anti-vaccine attitudes and mobilizations have been the expressions of dissatisfaction with democratic politics. It follows that more light need be shed on what views of democracy have been shaped during the pandemic in different EU countries (liberal, authoritarian, economic), and how they are related to political efficacy and political interest. These issues are explored across the implicated countries with the use of statistical analyses, in the realization that different dimensions of trust or mistrust can affect people’s assessment of risk, their behaviour, as well as the outcome of the pandemic in quite different ways at different phases of the pandemic.

The fourth section takes up the issue of vaccination hesitancy, looks at protests against COVID-19 vaccinations, and discusses the actuality of vaccinations. After the outbreak of the pandemic, most governments reduced fundamental rights in the name of protecting life and health. They relied on experts’ advice that generalized precautions should be taken because there was insufficient knowledge about the virus and, in many cases, the inadequacy of public health systems were known. This gave rise to variable opposition across European countries. The emphasis here in identifying its major determinants of vaccination hesitancy.

The focus then shifts to public protests against vaccination programs in EU countries, considered to be the high point of such hesitancy. Available data on such protests and some of their features is presented and discussed. To this end five more analytical, yet brief, country-wide reports on protests (from Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Ukraine) are looked over, as case studies, and commended upon. A final issue touched in this section relates to the observed divergence between, on the one hand, popular protests against COVID-19 vaccination and the pragmatism of undergoing such vaccination proper, on the other. Instead of an expected congruence between professed opposition and vaccination itself there appears instead a brake that requires interpretation. 

Task 3.1.2. Literature review: impact of migration on democratic attitudes and trust

The aim of this report is to examine the past literature and public opinion research data addressing the causal relations between political trust on one hand and the phenomenon of immigration on the other. The report shall contribute to the TRUEDEM project’s overall agenda on examining the trends, patterns and predictors of political trust in European democracies and shall inform the eventual policy recommendations on the relevant tools to mediate the potential negative implications of immigration for political trust and public support in Europe. The report is structured as follows. First, we describe firefly the recent immigration trends in European countries, including the number of migrants and the countries of the origin as well as the share of migrant population in every country. We then proceed to develop the theoretical framework of the study outlining the specific mechanisms through which the phenomenon immigration might affect political trust in the country. The then examine the available literature to document the state of the art of the studied issue. We turn to the findings of the latest ESS round on immigration and political trust to explore the correlations. Section four in the report discusses the EU policies aimed to tackle immigration. Finally, the last chapter of the report is dedicated to the national case-studied produced with the contribution of the TRUEDEM national teams. The overall goal of this report is to set up the theoretical and methodological framework for the consolidating reports in WP3 – D3.4. Democratic narrative around the socio-economic transformations and D3.5 Consolidated report on the implications of socioeconomic transformations for democratic attitudes, political participation and trust.

Tasks 3.2. Delineating transformative power of social phenomena.

In this task, we will address three major and transformative social phenomena: a) the COVID-19 pandemic; b) migration & refugee waves (from the Ukraine, Syria, and other points of origin); c) digitalization of work. These three phenomena act as case studies of recent/ongoing crises of global impact. Their study will begin with a dedicated review per phenomenon, by scoping the relevant literature in scientific peer- reviewed journals and official sources of information, e.g. Eurostat, OECD, ILO, IOM, WHO, ECDC. Following this, to map the different political positions on the three phenomena in TRUEDEM participating countries and get a sense of the scale and reasoning provided by opposing sides, each project partner will systematically examine the minutes of relevant parliamentary debates at the plenum of each partner county’s parliament, and report the main arguments used.

To shed light on the nuances of each of these three crises, but for heuristic purposes too so as to obtain a clearer picture, qualitative studies (WP8) will be performed, namely interviews with stakeholders that have been active in managing each crisis, and focus groups with representatives of social movements and interest groups, i.e. with civil society representatives at large, that have expressed oppositional views. Information gathered from recent literature and parliamentary debates per phenomenon and per country will be combined to identify whether and how the democratic narrative evolved with respect to the three phenomena (D3.4). Submission in: August 2024.

Altogether by studying specific country profiles with different outlooks (traditional, modern, and post-modern) (WP4), background and rising social inequalities (WP4), and attitudes in response to three major social phenomena, this WP will identify and reflect on the socioeconomic pathways to the shaping of democracy (D3.5).