Covid-19 : spur or restraint to citizen engagement?

Abstract

The multiple facets of the COVID-19 crisis create a unique context for studying the countervailing dynamics of civic mobilisation and demobilisation. My colleagues Endre Borbáth, Sophia Hunger and Swen Hutter (at the Free University Berlin and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center) and I set out to map and explore these push and pull dynamics in Western Europe. For this purpose, we use survey data from seven countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK), collected in the framework of the ERC Synergy Project SOLID. The questionnaire was administered following the first wave of COVID-19, between June 5 and June 22, 2020, with a total sample size of 7,579 respondents. Our detailed results were published in Swiss Political Science Review.