Conditional support for civil liberties and preferences for domestic security policies among citizens in Germany

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Eva-Maria Trüdinger
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2014 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270157613

Civil rights and liberties constitute core elements of democratic systems, and the extent to which they are realized gives insights into the quality of democracy. However, the conditionality and situational nature of orientations towards civil liberties have rarely been examined. The project will describe and explain support for civil liberties among citizens in Germany and citizens' views on the relative importance of particular liberties. Investigating whether citizens accept restrictions of civil liberties through antiterrorism policies (e.g. collection of personal data), the project will substantiate the conflict between liberty and security in this domain. It deals with the question of how citizens cope with clashes of (valued) principles in specific situations - in the event of terror threat, for example. Using a sophisticated research design, the project aims at empirically investigating conditional support for civil liberties against a backdrop of different sources of threats to security, varying contexts of threat and conversational scenarios. In particular, the project will analyze the influence of attitudes expressing an individual's relationship with the political system on conditional support for civil liberties. It takes a closer look at ideological positions and expectations regarding the scope of government and on their interplay with psychological factors and other potential determinants of support for civil liberties. At the core of the research design is a representative telephone survey. This is an adequate method for collecting data to test different explanation models on support for civil liberties among adults in Germany. The role of threat conditions and of value conflict situations will be analyzed with the help of an online experiment based on a national sample. The triangulation of methods allows for a systematic variation of the situations mentioned above and for testing the robustness of causal links across changing conditions. Methodologically, the project will provide insights into the implications of using different survey modes, as well as into the use of counterarguments and vignette techniques in surveys.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants