What can prompt a change in citizens’ support for the territorial formof government?
Individual territorial preferences are generally assumed to be stable over time
and mostly driven by identity or ideology. Yet this article argues that preferences
may change when citizens are exposed to an extraordinary shock and central and subcentral
governments fail to coordinate in response to it. We test this argument using a series of online
survey experiments in a comparative sample of 12 countries at different times of the COVID-19
pandemic. The analyses show that exposure to unsuccessful intergovernmental coordination
prompts a centralizing shift in individuals’ preferences for authority distribution. This effect
survives over time as long as the threat continues to be salient. A second analysis exhibits the
same results for Spain, a least case scenario due to its ongoing centrifugal pressures, where
respondents’ pre-treatment territorial preferences and partisan identification intervene as
significant moderators.