Ideology, party institutionalization, and COVID-19 vaccine choice

Abstract Although vaccines are one of the most effective methods by which a government can manage a pandemic, as they significantly reduce the risk of serious illness or death from deadly diseases, for a variety of reasons, many people oppose vaccinations. In this article, I specifically examine the impact of ideology has on vaccine choice, conditional on party institutionalization in a country. Conservative ideology should have the strongest negative impact on vaccine choice in the countries with the most institutionalized parties, where links between parties and voters are strong. In contrast, conservative ideology should have a weaker negative impact on vaccine choice in countries with less institutionalized parties. Using data from the Eurobarometer dataset from 2021 and the Varieties of Democracy dataset, I demonstrate that in countries with the most institutionalized parties, conservative ideology has a negative impact on an individual’s willingness to get vaccinated. But in the countries with the least institutionalized parties, ideology has no clear statistical impact on vaccine choice.