Civil liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic

Civil liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic: The COVID-19 pandemic offers an example of how two core government functions – the protection of civil liberties and the provision of public goods – can come into conflict. This column reports on a large-scale representative survey administered to more than 400,000 people in 15 countries which shows that a large fraction of people around the world are willing to sacrifice their own rights and freedoms in order to improve public health conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Citizens’ support, however, is likely to be heterogeneous and depends on their own exposure to COVID-19 health risk, as well as on how much they fear the erosion of their civil liberties.