TY  - JOUR
A1  - Heinzel, Mirko Noa
A1  - Liese, Andrea
T1  - Expert authority and support for COVID-19 measures in Germany and the UK
BT  - a survey experiment
JF  - West European politics
N2  - During COVID-19, various public institutions tried to shape citizens’ behaviour to slow the spread of the pandemic. How did their authority affect citizens’ support of public measures taken to combat the spread of COVID-19? The article makes two contributions. First, it presents a novel conceptualisation of authority as a source heuristic. Second, it analyses the authority of four types of public institutions (health ministries, universities, public health agencies, the WHO) in two countries (Germany and the UK), drawing on novel data from a survey experiment conducted in May 2020. On average, institutional endorsements seem to have mattered little. However, there is an observable polarisation effect where citizens who ascribe much expertise to public institutions support COVID-19 measures more than the control group. Furthermore, those who ascribe little expertise support them less than the control group. Finally, neither perception of biases nor exposure to institutions in public debates seems consistently to affect their authority.
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - expertise
KW  - authority
KW  - survey experiment
KW  - institutions
KW  - crises
KW  - governance
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1873630
SN  - 0140-2382
SN  - 1743-9655
SP  - 1258
EP  - 1282
PB  - Taylor & Francis
CY  - Abingdon
ER  -