Civil liberties under pressure? The determinants of citizens’ attitudes towards civil liberties policies

Jäger, Felix

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URN:	urn:nbn:de:bsz:180-madoc-716303
Dokumenttyp:	Dissertation
Erscheinungsjahr:	2026
Ort der Veröffentlichung:	Mannheim
Hochschule:	Universität Mannheim
Gutachter:	Prof. Dr. Richard Traunmüller
Datum der mündl. Prüfung:	2025
Sprache der Veröffentlichung:	Englisch
Einrichtung:	Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften > Political Science, Empirical Democracy Research (Traunmüller 2017-)
Lizenz:	Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Fachgebiet:	320 Politik
Freie Schlagwörter (Englisch):	civil liberties , security , attitudes , survey experiment , affective polarization
Abstract:	Civil liberties are in danger in many Western democracies. This cumulative dissertation examines the determinants of citizens’ support for restrictive civil liberties policies in the face of political, societal, and emotional challenges. I argue that citizens' willingness to accept cuts in civil liberties is largely shaped by political actors. Across three original survey experiments conducted in Germany and nine European countries, the dissertation investigate how political alignment and affective polarization as well as threat perceptions and emotional reactions shape the trade-off between security and freedom. The first study analyzes responses to terrorism and counter-terrorism policies, showing that citizens’ willingness to accept restrictions of civil liberties is strongly influenced by partisan alignment with policymakers. The second study addresses how threat communication by politicians can influence preference for security over freedom, employing an innovative parallel encouragement design to causally test the mediating effect of emotions. Contrary to expectations, neither anxiety nor anger significantly mediates the effect of communicated threat on preferences for security over freedom. The third study examines the impact of affective polarization on support for civil liberties policies. It demonstrates that strong partisan animosity increases citizens’ willingness to abandon their preferred positions on civil liberties when those positions are endorsed by political out-groups. Together, these studies advance our understanding of how political context, partisan divides, perceived threats and emotional responses shape public attitudes toward civil liberties, highlighting both the resilience and fragility of these fundamental rights in contemporary democracies.