The COVID-19 pandemic increased pressure on the relationship between governments andthe public, making cooperation between both actors more critical than ever. Surprisingly,there is significant variation in public compliance with health policies, especiallyregarding vaccine uptake across different countries. Based on this finding, we seek tounderstand why vaccination hesitancy varies between countries. Instead of focusing solelyon government trust and satisfaction, this research examines the impact of individuals’experiences having lived in autocratic countries on vaccine hesitancy. We derive a formalmodel of how autocratic experience and the subsequent distrust in health policies affectthe individual calculus on vaccine uptake, and test the propositions of our model in asample of 33 European countries on the micro-level. We find that autocratic experiencegravely impacts individual vaccine hesitancy. Our findings shed light on the prolongedimpact of autocratic rule on societal processes and on the roots of vaccine hesitancy, whichis not rooted in general distrust but rather a highly specific form of scepticism towardsgovernment action
