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Can extremism become contagious? Many papers have shown that social control of public actions can lead to sudden transitions from ‘extreme to mainstream’. What is not clear is whether social spillovers can also have first-order effects on private actions, like voting, where persuasion is key. We first build a measure of social interaction frequency using granular data from the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic in Hamburg and information on household characteristics.
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Current societal challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic or climate change highlight the tension between individual freedom and collective good provision. Striking the right balance is particularly delicate for democratic governments whose authority hinges on citizen acceptance and legitimation. When and why do citizens accept far-reaching limitations of their individual rights for a greater societal good?
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By Dorothea Kübler and Rustamdjan Hakimov