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Danish satisfaction and Austrian discontent with their governments’ measures during the Covid-19 crisis: Explanations from a citizenship perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2021

Per H. Jensen  and
Bettina Leibetseder Open the ORCID record for Bettina Leibetseder [Opens in a new window]
Per H. Jensen
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Bettina Leibetseder*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Work, Landshut University of Applied Sciences, Landshut, Germany
*
Email: bettina.leibetseder@haw-landshut.de
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Abstract

The various interventions that governments took in the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak impacted people severely. Given the low satisfaction with the government performance in Austria compared to Denmark, though both governments set out with a suppression strategy early on and were able to lower infection rates, we analyse the changes in civil, political and social citizenship and the governmental communicative practices during the first Covid response phase from March to August 2020. Employing a case-oriented qualitative comparison, we find that a combination of factors explains the different degree of satisfaction. In Austria, there was a combination of politics of fear, extensive and authoritarian regulations of civil citizenship, political citizenship was challenged and social citizenship undermined. In Denmark, an engaging and caring communicative strategy was employed, political citizenship was maintained and civil citizenship was curtailed less obstructively and was less policed. Social citizenship also was upheld for larger groups.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 57 - 70
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Social Policy Association

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