Crisis Governance and Protest During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Europe: A Conditional Grievance Theory

Abstract

Why do some crisis-response policies trigger more protests than others? What does this reveal about how governments should introduce restrictive–but necessary–measures during times of crisis? This paper revisits prevailing explanations for protests against Covid-19 policies by proposing a conditional grievance theory of protest. We argue that the protest-inducing effect of containment measures depends not only on their restrictiveness, but also on the timing, scale and persistence of accompanying economic support. When economic support is both substantial and synchronised with the imposition of restrictions, material grievances are dampened and mobilisation is less likely. We test this argument using the first full time-series cross-sectional dataset of the Covid-19 pandemic for 22 European countries measured at daily intervals. Our findings show that while more restrictive policies tend to increase protest activity, this effect is significantly mitigated in contexts where economic support is high and well-timed. These results highlight the importance of designing crisis governance strategies that align policy restrictiveness with timely and persistent economic relief.