Authoritarian Opposition? Authoritarian Disposition and Resistance to Public Health Mitigation Strategies During COVID-19

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231204234
• Author: Mark D. Ramirez,Reed M. Wood
• Date: 01 March 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(1) 239–254

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129231204234

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Authoritarian Opposition? Authoritarian

Disposition and Resistance to Public Health

Mitigation Strategies During COVID-19

Mark D. Ramirez

1

and Reed M. Wood

2



Abstract

Government restrictions intended to mitigate the spread of COVID-19—such as “lockdowns,”mask mandate s, and

vaccine passports—produced intense resentment among some groups and led to resist ance, def‌iance, and social unrest

in many countries. To better understand the roots of this opposition, we examine the role of dispositional authori-

tarianism as a psychological motivator of participation in anti-restriction protests and support for the groups that

engaged in such actions. Because obedience to authority is commonly identif‌ied as a core feature of authoritarianism,

existing studies have suggested authoritarians should be more likely to endorse pandemic restrictions and oppose anti-

government dissent. However, we propose the alternative hypothesis: individuals with authoritarian dispositions are

more likely to oppose pandemic restrictions and more likely to express support for pandemic dissidents (e.g., anti-vax and

anti-lockdown groups). Data from three surveys deployed in the United States and United Kingdom support our

hypotheses, demonstrating a counterintuitive relationship between dispositional aut horitarianism and opposition to

public health authorities during the pandemic. We further f‌ind that dispositional authoritarianism produces an intriguing

misalignment between ideology and support for pandemic restrictions among those on the left, leading liberals who score

high in authoritarianism to mirror the attitudes and behaviors of their conservative counte rparts.

Keywords

public opinion, authoritarianism, COVID-19, ideology

Large-scale demonstrations against restrictive COVID-19

mitigation measures, some of which drew hundreds of

thousands of citizens, routinely erupted during the pan-

demic. The f‌irst wave of these protests began in early

Spring 2020 as COVID-19 spread rapidly across the globe

and countries hastily imposed national “lockdowns”and

implemented “stay-at-home”orders, compelling citizens

to remain indoors and leave their homes only for emer-

gencies or essentials. For example, in April 2020, armed

protesters gathered in multiple US states, including Ohio,

Michigan, and New York, to protest the imposition of

such restrictions (Bogel-Burroughs and Peters, 2020).

Such protests—which occasionally turned violent and

resulted in clashes with authorities—continued in many

countries throughout the latter half of 2020 and through-

out 2021, often emerging in response to the reintroduction

of restrictions or the imposition of new restrictions such as

vaccination requirements or “COVID passes.”In August

2021, for instance, as many as 160,000 French citizens

peacefully demonstrated against the government’s vaccine

health pass policy (France24, 2021). However, in June

2021, clashes between protesters and police in London

following the extension of COVID-19 restrictions resulted

in multiple injuries and arrests (BBC, 2021).

To better understand and explain the roots of oppo-

sition to health restrictions that were ostensibly im-

plemented to reduce health risks and save lives, we

explore the individual-level socio-psychological charac-

teristics associated with participation in these events and

School of Politics & Global Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ,

USA

2

Department of Government, University of Essex, UK

Corresponding Author:

Mark D. Ramirez, School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State

University, PO Box 873902, 6th Floor Coor Hall, Tempe, AZ 85287-

3902, USA.

Email: mark.ramirez@asu.edu

Data Availability Statement included at the end of the article

support for the groups that mobilized against restrictions.

In considering how such characteristics shape individual

attitudes toward pandemic restrictions and individuals’

willingness to resist them, we focus particular attention

on authoritarianism. While conceptualized and def‌ined

in different ways in the extensive literature on the topic

(e.g., Engelhardt, Feldman, and Hetherington, 2021),

authoritarianism is commonly associated with obedience

to authority, a deep-seated desire for continuity,stability,

and certainty,and a willingness to punish individuals that

transgress established norms and rules (Duckitt et al.,

2010;Feldman and Stenner, 1997;Greenstein 1965).

Given these characteristics, some recent studies have

proposed that authoritarians should be more likely to

obey governments and public health authorities by com-

plying with government-imposed restrictions and adopt-

ing behavioral modif‌ications intended to reduce the

spread of COVID-19 (e.g., Bochiccio et al., 2021;

Manson, 2020;Peng, 2021). Moreover, these features

of authoritarian disposition imply that authoritarians

would generally be less likely to engage in organized

dissident action against such policies even if they dis-

approved of them.

Despite the sound reasoning behind the proposition,

we contend that the presumed association between

dispositional authoritarianism and support for restrictive

pandemic mitigation policies deserves greater scrutiny.

In particular, we assert that existing studies largely

overlook two important factors relevant to authoritarian

responses to the pandemic. First, they neglect to consider

that for authoritarians, obedience to authority represents

a strategy for obtaining and maintaining order and sta-

bility rather than an objective in itself (Duckitt et al.,

2010). Second, and perhaps more important, by focusing

narrowly on the material threat posed by the pathogen,

existing arguments overlook the possibility that some

individuals perceived the imposition of restrictive pan-

demic mitigation policies by political and bureaucratic

authorities as a potential threat to security, social sta-

bility, and community cohesion. Addressing these fac-

tors leads us to question the presumption that

authoritarians were more likely to endorse pandemic

restrictions and points to the strong likelihood that they

would instead oppose restrictive policies due to their

perceiving a threat to existing social order and stability.

Wetherefore argue that authoritarian dispositions predict

a higher likelihood of pandemic dissent participation as

well as more favorable opinions towards pandemic

dissidents (e.g., anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine pro-

testers). Finally, because individuals’responses to

COVID-19 policies were heavily shaped by political

ideology (Gadarian, Goodman, and Pepinsky, 2022),

we also examine the moderating inf‌luence of right-

leaning and left-leaning ideologies. This permits us to

investigate whether right- and left-leaning authoritarians

responded differently to the cues issued by political elites

regarding the threat posed by COVID-19 and the neces-

sity of the restrictions imposed to mitigate it.

This study proceeds as follows: We f‌irst describe the

phenomena of anti-lockdown protests during the

COVID-19 pandemic and discuss the small body of

literature that has sought to explain patterns of

pandemic-related unrest. We then identify authoritar-

ian disposition as an individual-level characteristic that

potentially explains support for and/or participation in

such protests. We describe—but then challenge—

existing arguments that authoritarians are more likely

to support restrictive pandemic mitigation policies

through obedience to authority and preference for

punishment against non-conformists and rule breakers.

Weinstead clarify why authoritarians are more likely to

oppose such restrictions, more likely to participate in

protests against such restrictions, and more likely to

express favorable views of COVID-19 dissident groups.

In order to illuminate the theoretical u nderpinnings of

this prospective association, we focus on authoritarians’

perception of threat and how authoritarians came to view

restrictions—more so than the disease itself—as a threat

to the social order and to community cohesion, thereby

increasing their opposition to state lockdown rules. We

then describe our research design and survey instrument,

after which we present and discuss our results. We

conclude by summarizing and contextualizing our f‌ind-

ings as well as highlighting their importance in the

development of policy responses for the next pandemic.

COVID-19, Pandemic Mitigation

Strategies and Popular Unrest

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented up-

heaval and instability in global health, economic, social,

and political systems. In addition to the public healthcare

burdens and the enormous loss of life resulti ng from the

global spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus, the pandemic mit-

igation strategies adopted by many national and local

authorities—which often included strict controls on hu-

man social interactions—imposed substantial economic

costs on individuals, exacerbated political cleavages,

disrupted social relationships, and degraded community

cohesion (Borkowska and Lawrence, 2021;Osofsky,

Osofsky, and Mamon, 2020). As the pandemic intensi-

f‌ied and governments adopted increasingly restrictive

disease mitigation strategies, organized public opposi-

tion to social distancing rules, mask mandates, and strict

lockdowns policies became increasingly common in

many countries. Analyses of these events highlight the

correlation between the (re)imposition of restrictions and

the frequency of protests (see Kishi et al., 2021). In the

240 Political Research Quarterly 77(1)