Abstract
Although civil liberties are considered to be one of the pillars of democracy, their support among people is far from unconditional. The aim of this article is to examine the predictors of people’s willingness to trade off their civil liberties for a more restrictive form of government. We hypothesize that civil liberties trade‐off is positively predicted by individuals’ authoritarianism and national identity and that the effects of both variables are mediated by perceived threat. Our sample came from the Czech Republic and consisted of 309 respondents who participated in an online survey. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Our results supported all of our hypotheses. Perceived threat had the strongest effect on civil liberties trade‐off. At the same time, perceived threat partially mediated the effect of authoritarianism and completely mediated the effect of national identity on civil liberties trade‐off.