The COVID-19 pandemic and popular confidence in democracy: evidence from China, Japan, and South Korea

The past decade has witnessed worldwide backsliding on democracy, and the COVID-19 pandemic might have exacerbated this trend. This study examined popular confidence in democracy in China, Japan, and South Korea, which represented authoritarian and democratic contexts. The results show that Chinese citizens had a negative perception of the capacity of democracy to control the outbreak of COVID-19 and achieve economic growth, with an unfavourable evaluation of democracy as a better political system than alternatives. Although Japanese and South Korean citizens had more favourable evaluations of democracy than their Chinese counterparts, such positive evaluations were lukewarm in the former two countries. Confidence in the home political system in South Korea did not correlate with confidence in the capability of democracy to address economic challenges, as observed in Japan. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted ordinary people to seek a strong leader, reinforcing Chinese citizens' beliefs in the superiority of their authoritarian political system. Simultaneously, it weakened South Korean citizens' confidence in the effectiveness of their home political system. However, it had no discernible impact on Japanese citizens' belief in the superiority of their political system.