Right-Wing Populism and the Trade-Off Between Health and the Economy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparison Between Western Europe and the United States

International audienceThis chapter adopts a demand-side perspective and focuses on the role of right-wing populism in public attitudes toward the trade-off between public health and the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing from an original survey of nationally representative samples taken in June 2021 in the United States, Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland, the analysis confirms that the health-economy trade-off is driven in large part by party preferences. Irrespective of citizens' views regarding government decision-making, of their perceived impact of welfare chauvinism, or their sociodemographic profile, we find that right-wing populist parties and their leaders attracted the most skeptical segment of the general public during the second phase of COVID-19 pandemic, at the time of vaccination campaigns and COVID-19 certificates