Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/263917 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Citation: 
[Journal:] Frontiers in Political Science [ISSN:] 2673-3145 [Volume:] 4 [Article No.:] 929991 [Publisher:] Frontiers Media [Place:] Lausanne [Year:] 2022 [Pages:] --
Publisher: 
Frontiers Media, Lausanne
Abstract: 
Authoritarianism is widely conceived as destructive phenomenon that threatens liberal societies. However, some scholars suggest that authoritarianism is beneficial both for individuals' sense of control and goal attainment within groups. In line with this reasoning, collective problems, such as the COVID-19 crisis and climate change, may go hand in hand with increased levels of authoritarianism. While individuals may generally reject the abstract ideas of authoritarian rule and intolerance, societal threat may require individuals to weigh liberal values against needs for collective unity and action. Thus, individuals are expected to show less support for abstract authoritarian ideas compared to authoritarian ideas that are directed at dealing with a specific societal crisis (crisis-related authoritarianism). Following the notion that authoritarianism serves as an antiliberal means for achieving collective goals, relative increases in crisis-related authoritarianism hinge on the rejection of the means being outweighed by the perceived importance of the goal. While authoritarian disposition captures general tendencies to accept the means, trust in science serves as a proxy for the perceived importance of COVID-19 and climate change mitigation. The relative increase in crisis-related authoritarianism should be particularly pronounced among individuals who are not predisposed to authoritarianism and who trust in science. Findings from a cross-national survey experiment in Germany ( N = 1,480) and Spain ( N = 1,511) support this reasoning. Participants answered four items covering authoritarian submission and aggression either on an abstract level (control condition), or applied to the COVID-19 crisis or the climate change crisis. Participants were more supportive of authoritarian ideas targeted at a specific collective problem as compared to abstract authoritarian ideas. Furthermore, the differences in authoritarianism between the control condition and the two societal crisis conditions decreased with authoritarian disposition and increased with trust in science. Exploratory analyses suggest that the main differences across experimental conditions are driven by authoritarian submission while the interaction effects are rather driven by authoritarian aggression. The study underlines the role of authoritarian ideas for collective goal attainment that exists above and beyond stable personal dispositions. As such, it sheds light on the conditions under which citizens conceive authoritarianism as justifiable.
Subjects: 
authoritarianism
societal crises
climate change
COVID-19
trust in science
civil liberties
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Additional Information: 
Open-access publication of this article was funded by the Open Access Fund of the Leibniz Association and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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