Abstract
This chapter adopts a demand-side perspective and focuses on the role of right-wing populism in public attitudes toward the trade-off between public health and the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing from an original survey of nationally representative samples taken in June 2021 in the United States, Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland, the analysis confirms that the health–economy trade-off is driven in large part by party preferences. Irrespective of citizens’ views regarding government decision-making, of their perceived impact of welfare chauvinism, or their sociodemographic profile, we find that right-wing populist parties and their leaders attracted the most skeptical segment of the general public during the second phase of COVID-19 pandemic, at the time of vaccination campaigns and COVID-19 certificates.
The authors are grateful to Hande Eslen-Ziya and Alberta Giorgi for their valuable suggestions and comments on a previous version of this chapter.
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Appendix
Distribution of the health versus economy trade-off in France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the United States
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Mazzoleni, O., Ivaldi, G. (2022). Right-Wing Populism and the Trade-Off Between Health and the Economy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparison Between Western Europe and the United States. In: Eslen–Ziya, H., Giorgi, A. (eds) Populism and Science in Europe . Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97535-7_12
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