Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany.
Department of Sociology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2022 Sep 9;17(9):e0274270. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274270. eCollection 2022.
In the name of health security, individual freedoms were constrained in an unprecedented way in many countries, democratic or authoritarian, all over the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the constraints have not been consistent across countries, which motivates this paper to examine the relevance of value preferences towards freedom or security in the society for COVID-19 policies. Based on data for 40 democratic and authoritarian countries, the analyses show that the variation in the stringency of COVID-19 policies can be explained by value preferences of the population only in autocracies. In democracies, however, we do not find such a relationship. Governments in democratic political systems, we argue, are responsive to their constitutions and face prosecution by the judiciary if they violate the law or provisions of the constitution, limiting their capacity to implement strong COVID-19 policies. Nevertheless, their COVID-19 policies restricted citizens' freedoms and liberties, which means that these policies were rather not responsive to citizens' preferences for freedom, democratic rights and liberties. By highlighting how autocracies respond to their citizens' value preferences for security, this paper contributes to a better understanding of how autocracies might gain legitimacy in times of crises.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，为了维护健康安全，全球许多国家（无论是民主国家还是威权国家）都以前所未有的方式限制了个人自由。然而，各国的限制措施并不一致，这促使本文探讨社会对自由或安全的价值偏好与 COVID-19 政策的相关性。基于对 40 个民主和威权国家的数据进行分析，结果表明，只有在威权国家中，人口的价值偏好才能解释 COVID-19 政策的严格程度的差异。然而，在民主国家中，我们没有发现这种关系。我们认为，民主政治制度下的政府对其宪法负责，如果违反法律或宪法规定，将面临司法起诉，限制了它们实施强有力的 COVID-19 政策的能力。尽管如此，它们的 COVID-19 政策限制了公民的自由和权利，这意味着这些政策并没有很好地回应公民对自由、民主权利和自由的偏好。本文通过强调威权国家如何回应其公民对安全的价值偏好，有助于更好地理解威权国家在危机时期如何获得合法性。
