Pivots, Populism, and Moral Panics:
Pivots, Populism, and Moral Panics:
Image JessicaGirvan (via Shutterstock)
CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024
Friday, February 9th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)
Pivots, Populism, and Moral Panics:
The Impact of Trump’s Position Reversal on Facemasks
Bartholomew Konechni
PhD Student, Sciences Po - CRIS
Populist leaders are often held responsible for their followers' poor compliance with public health recommendations. But what happens when populist leaders change position and endorse previously discouraged behaviours? This scenario is understudied in extant literature.
To fill this gap, the present work examines Trump’s pivot over masks on 1st July 2020, when he first encouraged their use.
Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) design, the paper finds that whilst Trump’s pivot lifted Republican’s propensity to wear facemasks, it didn’t change views about facemasks’ efficacy.
However, this study does find that Trump’s intervention was more impactful amongst Republicans living in parts of the country worst hit by the early-summer 2020 spike in COVID cases, suggesting that his capacity to shape behaviours lay not so much in persuading followers but in capitalising on a moment of moral panic when individuals were open to adopting new behaviours.
