RESUMO
Many democratically elected governments in states that are otherwise considered liberal have imposed strict policy measures, including policies allowing for coercion and/or punishment of transgressors to prevent the transmission of the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Previous studies have indicated that trust in government institutions engenders a positive public response during a crisis and that the implementation of strict policy measures in a crisis-measures otherwise considered authoritarian-can increase trust in government institutions, even in liberal democratic states. However, few studies have focused on the relationship between perceived compliance with government-issued recommendations and individual preferences with regard to authoritarian governmental crisis management. The objective of this study was to estimate the association between perceived compliance with government recommendations among citizens and support for strict policy measures in a pandemic setting. We draw on unique data from a cross-sectional survey conducted in the wake of the first COVID-19 wave in Norway (n = 935). Logistic regression analyses indicate a strong negative association between support for strict policy measures and the belief that others are following the government-issued recommendations. Our results suggest that participants would consider strict policy measures less essential if they believed that other citizens were complying with the rules.
Assuntos
COVID-19 , Humanos , SARS-CoV-2 , Estudos Transversais , Noruega , PolíticasRESUMO
The reorganisation efforts of the hospital sector in many Western countries in recent decades have challenged the role, identity and autonomy of medical professionals. This has led to increased focus on the role and impact of physicians who are also managers and on the unique discourse being formed through the integration of medical and managerial knowledge. Following the line of studies addressing the professional subcultures in medicine, we investigated whether assessments of health reform differ between medical doctors with managerial responsibilities and their colleagues at the clinical level as well as between those involved in direct patient care and those who are not. The analysis was performed within the context of the Norwegian hospital sector, where a major reform was implemented in 2002, and it was based on a survey of a representative sample of hospital physicians in 2006. The analysis focused on how the respondents viewed the overall effect of the reform and on the reform's effect on three central health policy goals: equity, quality and productivity. Combining data from the survey with organisational and financial data from the hospitals, we employed multilevel techniques to control for a number of individual and hospital-specific factors that could explain the physicians' views. As expected, respondents with managerial responsibilities were more positive in their evaluations of the reform, whereas respondents who spent time on direct patient-related work showed the opposite pattern. Of the hospital-specific factors of interest, the share of department managers with medical backgrounds and the economic situation positively affected the evaluations. Our findings support the view that, rather than managerialist values colonising the medical profession through a process of hybridisation, there is heterogeneity within the profession: some physician managers are adopting management values and tools, whereas others remain alienated from them.