Populist government support and frontline workers' self-efficacy during crisis

Abstract

Frontline workers who are confronted with crises need enormous resilience and the ability to deal with stress from crisis-related increases in demands and risks. Simultaneously, populist governments with an illiberal agenda may undermine the work of street-level bureaucracies for political reasons. Little is known about how deconstruction of the administrative state by populist government—through lacking government support when it is needed the most—affects frontline work. Thus, this article asks: how does lacking support by a populist government affect frontline workers' self-efficacy when they face a crisis? Based on unique data from an online survey of 3229 Brazilian frontline workers during the early COVID-19 pandemic, when the Bolsonaro government denied the existence of the pandemic, we test the relationship between government support, demands, and resources on frontline workers' perceived self-efficacy. Results show that lacking government support from the federal and local government are negatively associated with frontline workers' self-efficacy. At the same time, resources and managerial support exhibit positive associations—but they cannot always compensate for a lack of government assistance.