Iakovos Makropoulos is a Lecturer in Political Behaviour at the University of Essex. His main research interests are comparative politics, political behaviour, and political methodology. He is the author of a book chapter on candidates’ personalised campaigning edited by Lieven De Winter, Rune Karlsen and Hermann Schmitt. His work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals such as the European Political Science Review and the Journal of Election, Public Opinion and Parties.
Iakovos has been involved in the Pandemic Politics project conducting public survey on Covid-19 in the UK, the Cultural Divides and Affective Polarisation project funded by the LSE Hellenic Observatory, while he has previously worked for several projects on national and local elections in the UK.
In his latest publication What drives support for social distancing? Pandemic politics, securitization, and crisis management in Britain shows that crisis framing dynamics have the greatest impact on driving public attitudes challenging socio-economic and health considerations.
PhD in Politics, 2022 (expected)
University of Strathclyde
Associate Fellow Status, The Higher Education Academy, 2020
Certificate of competence in university teaching
MSc in Political Analysis, 2017
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
BSc in Political Sciences, 2014
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Support for social distancing measures was, globally, high at the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic but increasingly came under pressure. Focusing on the UK, this article provides a rigorous exploration of the drivers of public support for social distancing at their formative stage, via mixed methods. Synthesizing insights from crisis management and securitization theory, thematic analysis is employed to map the main frames promoted by the government and other actors on the nature/severity, blame/responsibility, and appropriate response to the pandemic, which ‘follows the science’. The impact of these on public attitudes is examined via a series of regression analyses, drawing on a representative survey of the UK population (n = 2100). Findings challenge the prevailing understanding that support for measures is driven by personal health considerations, socio-economic circumstances, and political influences. Instead, crisis framing dynamics, which the government is well-positioned to dominate, have the greatest impact on driving public attitudes.