Crisis, Democracy, and Public Opinion: How the Judicial Overhaul and the October 7 War Shaped Public Support for Liberal Values

Asif Efrat, Reichman University

Amnon Cavari, Reichman University

Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler, Reichman University

Yair Amitai, Reichman University

Gilad Hirschberger, Reichman University

We examine how two major crises—the judicial overhaul and the war following the October 7 attack—shaped Israelis’ support for liberal democratic values. Using repeated cross-sectional surveys fielded before and after each event, we track eight outcomes spanning two pillars of liberalism: liberty and equality. Our framework draws on political psychology of threat: institutional/political threat (erosion of checks and balances) versus existential security threat can elicit distinct—and sometimes opposing—responses. Central findings indicate a pattern of parallelism rather than divergence: both right-wing and center\left-wing voters increase support for liberal values following the judicial overhaul, an event we term as a democratic spring, and both later exhibit a retrenchment after the war—but only on war-salient domains such as free speech and equality for Arab citizens. In contrast, attitudes less directly tied to the war (e.g., freedom from religion and equality for same-sex couples) remain largely stable. These results indicate that, alongside polarization, crisis-induced threat can synchronize public opinion across political camps and selectively recalibrate specific facets of civic liberalism

The data is collected with the assistance of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) as part of the Program on Democratic Resilience (PDRD) at the Lauder School of Government

For Registration https://www.eventer.co.il/research11112025