Public Support for Executive Power Grabs in Crisis Situations: a Vignette Experiment

In times of crisis, effective decision-making is often demanded, but at what cost? The abuse of executive power harms democracy, and often such power grabs are followed by other illiberal turns, such as the weakening of civil liberties. But under which circumstances do people accept non-democratic measures by their leaders? And does it matter who is in charge – the president or the prime minister? Despite the vast number of studies focusing on democratic backsliding, scholars have not paid enough attention to the justification of executive power grabs from the perspective of public opinion and in the context of the dual executive. Furthermore, the crisis perspective is important not only because political leaders might be tempted to take advantage of such situations to justify non-democratic policy measures, but also because of the boosting effects of crises on democratic backsliding. We examine this topical matter by using a vignette experiment that presents a hypothetical scenario of an undemocratic move by the president / prime minister under crisis and non-crisis conditions. The study is preregistered with respect to hypotheses, data collection and analyses. In the first stage of our study, we study this in Finland, where data will be collected during spring via an online citizen panel administered by the Finnish Research Infrastructure for Public Opinion (FIRIPO, Åbo Akademi).