Liberté

Abstract

During a global pandemic, individual views of government can be linked to citizens ’ trust and cooperation with government and their propensity to resist state policies or to take action that influences the course of a pandemic. This article explores citizens ’ assessments of government responses to COVID-19 as a function of policy substance (restrictions on civil liberties), information about performance, and socioeconomic inequity in outcomes. We conducted a survey experiment and analyzed data on over 7000 respondents from eight democratic countries. We find that across countries, citizens are less favorable toward COVID-19 policies that are more restrictive of civil liberties. Additionally, citizens ’ views of government performance are significantly influenced by objective performance information from reputable sources and information on the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on