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Why are Trump Supporters Demonstrating Against the Economic Lockdowns?

April 29, 2020 Kevin coronavirus, political trust, social trust, Trump 3 Comments

We are starting to see more polarization of opinion about the lockdowns, with Republicans returning to their original skepticism about the dangers of the virus. If a Democrat were President, this would be unsurprising. But Trump is in office, and people tend to approve and trust government more when their favored presidential candidate is in power. So what’s going on? Here are some hypotheses. I’m not satisfied with most of them.

1. Trump supporters trust the government and public health officials less than non-Trump supporters, and so are less likely to believe in official recommendations. Problem: there’s lots of skepticism about public health in minority communities, especially in the black community (and with good reason in some cases). But we don’t see protests there.

2. Trump supporters are disproportionately bearing the economic costs of the lockdowns, given that they tend to hold jobs that do not require college degrees. Problem: this is also a feature of many minority communities, and minority communities are getting harder hit by fatalities than rural whites.

3. Trump supporters sense Trump’s displeasure with the lockdowns, and hypothesize that he’s being misled by experts. This is where all the #fireFauci stuff is coming from. In general, Trump is sending mixed messages, at best, and people in his tribe are responding accordingly. Problem: I’d expect more ambivalence in their views if this were true.

4. Trump supporters are deeply anti-elitist in general, moreso than people on the left, and since elites are supporting lockdowns, Trump supporters are opposing them. Problem: there are anti-elitist leftists. Heard of Berniebros?

5. Trump supporters are seeing others members of the red tribe protesting, but the protests are being driven by political groups looking to expose weaknesses in Democratic state governors and create a groundswell of support for GOP candidates. Trump supporters then infer that their group is generally skeptical of the lockdowns and concerned with the economic costs and act accordingly. Problem: But why are people so eager to agree with the protestors in the first place? The resentment seems genuine, not like astroturf.

Hypotheses I’m more satisfied with:

6. Conservative and libertarian intellectual and policy elites chafe more at the greatly expanded power of government and the restrictiveness of the lockdowns, and have been challenging a lot of the flawed models and data shaping elite opinion. This is trickling down to grassroots people on the right through right-wing media.

And:

7. Distrust of Mass Media: Trump supporters disproportionately distrust mass media, which is to say they don’t really trust it at all. But non-Trump supporting anti-elitists, vaccine-skeptics, etc. tend to trust what the mass media tells them. Since mass media is largely conveying a pro-lockdown message, Trump supporters are inclined to disbelieve them or even believe the opposite.

Anything I’m missing?

April 29, 2020 Kevin coronavirus, political trust, social trust, Trump 3 Comments

Can Nationalism Promote Trust?

November 12, 2019 Kevin Liberalism, nationalism, political trust, social trust 0 Comments

I’m fond of the claim that liberal institutions can and do create social and political trust, but sometimes I wonder whether nationalism can too. Well, it turns out there’s now some evidence in favor of the latter claim, from a recent paper from Christian Bjørnskov, Martin Rode, and Miguel Ángel Borrella Mas. The process of nation-building surrounding secession in Catalonia probably increased social trust.

Here’s the abstract:

Consequences of social trust are comparatively well studied, while its societal determinants are often subject to debate. This paper studies both in the context of Catalan attempts to secede from Spain: First, we test if Catalonia enjoys higher levels of social capital that it is prevented from capitalizing on. Second, the paper examines whether secessionist movements create animosity and political divisions within society that undermine trust. Employing the eight available waves of the European Social Survey for Spain, we show that social trust levels are not higher in Catalonia than in the rest of the country. However, we find indications of a significant regional increase after secession became a real option in 2014. We argue that this finding is a likely result of the mental process of nation building, indicating that the formation of social trust may best be thought of as a stable punctuated equilibrium.

The authors argue that “Catalan social trust has not declined as a result of the secessionist conflict, as argued by the unionist side of the discussion, but has rather increased significantly after 2014,” a difference equivalent to the difference between trust in the Netherlands and Sweden. The authors, of course, don’t argue for nationalism or deliberate nation-building, but we do have at least a bit of evidence that when states and societies deliberately try to build new identities, or perhaps to rediscover old ones, that can increase social trust. This may also buttress the possibility that large-scale immigration will be trust-decreasing insofar as it undermines shared identity. I’m not happy about either of these results, as they make trouble for my thesis, but I’m obligated to report it.

November 12, 2019 Kevin Liberalism, nationalism, political trust, social trust 0 Comments

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