Does the pandemic stop populists? The erosion of political support in Poland and Hungary

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged the foundations of everyday life, raising important questions of how lockdown regulations might affect public support for political actors everywhere. Our paper investigates how pandemic crisis management might affect democratic governance in the two most criticized members of the EU – Poland and Hungary. The first wave of the pandemic had bought quick lockdown on most of Europe – even in Central and Eastern European countries that were largely unaffected. Although lockdowns halted economies with disastrous effects, most of the governments saw their approval rates increase. ECE governments were even praised for being far more successful in managing the pandemic than their Western neighbors. This was also seen in Hungary’s and Poland’s ‘illiberal democracies’ – a somewhat surprising effect given the high polarization of politics in both countries that have long ago crystalized the front-lines of political support. Yet, we argue this initial reaction was only a ‘rally around the flag’ effect, which was followed by a sharp decline in endorsement once the pandemic returned causing great human loss in both countries. The pandemic is said to contribute to democratic decay (Guasti 2020, Levine 2020, Weiffen 2020, Changotra et al. 2020, Moravelli 2020), yet we argue slightly differently: (1) we claim the immediate effect of the pandemic is to “rally around flag” and while (2) populist illiberal governments adopt authoritarian measures, (3) the ongoing pandemic in fact may put Poland and Hungary back on democratic track because populists' failure/ineffective crisis management. We expect to find for government support erosion as citizens dissatisfied with the governing party’s performance should be willing to punish the “guilty” party with support withdrawal (Key 1966, Fiorina 1981, Achen, Bartels 2002, 2016). In the times of the Covid pandemic, the debate seems to go beyond ideological preferences and traditional issues (economy, welfare, cultural issues) and focus on pandemic related problems and how these affected people’s life. Relying on public attitude surveys in the two countries, we hypothesize a number of possible sources of dissatisfaction under the pandemic: Healthcare (Kavanagh 2020); Economy (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2000, van der Brug et al. 2007; Duch and Stevenson 2008; Palmer and Whitten 2011); Radical legal steps taken by authorities (Guasti 2020); and Distorted/One-sided communication/False infomation (Hart et al. 2020, Pennycoock et al. 2020). We note that people evaluate the economy more positively if the government is controlled by their party and more negatively when an opposing party holds office (Bartels 2000, 2002, 2006). We assume the same logic holds for all policy areas (healthcare, communication or legal developments), therefore partisanship should be the primary factor in explaining what people think of government response and assess whether crisis caused by the pandemic has contributed to withering of support for the incumbent populist governments that both have moved towards authoritarianism.