Trust in democratic institutions declining around the world

New research from the University of Southampton has found that trust in representative institutions, such as parliaments, governments and political parties, has been declining in democratic countries around the world.

The study, published in the British Journal of Political Science, presents the largest and most comprehensive analysis of trends in political trust worldwide to date. It brings together results from 3,377 surveys covering 143 countries between 1958 and 2019, representing over five million survey respondents.

Whereas trust in representative institutions is generally in decline, trust in non-representative institutions such as the police, civil service and the legal system has remained stable or rising, pointing to a particular crisis of confidence in countries’ elected representatives.

Researchers say the findings are a ‘warning sign’ that could pave the way for non-democratic political leaders to use the state in more autocratic ways.

“The decline of public trust in political authorities is central to the challenges facing democratic governments in many countries today,” says Dr. Viktor Valgarðsson, lead author of the study from the University of Southampton.

“Low political trust tends to be associated with support for populist parties and leaders who rail against the political establishment. It also makes it harder for governments to respond to crises such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In the United States, trust in federal government has been in sharp decline over the past couple of decades and it is no coincidence that we are now seeing a dramatic assault on democratic institutions there, led by a candidate who was elected after promising to do exactly that.

“While there is still evidence that citizens largely support the idea of democracy, large numbers of them have lost faith in the institutions that are needed for democratic governance, leading some of them to vote for candidates who appear intent on dismantling democracy as we know it.”

The study found:

• Overall, trust in parliament has declined by around nine percentage points from 1990 to 2019 across democracies globally, while trust in the police rose by around 13 points in the same period.
• Trust in parliament is declining in 36 democracies, including Argentina, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain, South Korea, Australia and the United States, and has only risen in six.
• In the UK, trust in parliament and government has been gradually declining in recent decades, although a small (seemingly temporary) recovery was apparent around the Brexit referendum. Trust in the legal system and the police appears to have declined until the 2008 financial crisis but has been rising gradually since then.
• Trust in parliament and government took a global nosedive following the 2008 financial crash, but there are some regional differences; in Latin America, political trust was rising until about 2014 but has been declining rapidly since then. Meanwhile, there was no apparent decline in Asia and the Pacific.
• Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Ecuador and New Zealand buck the global trend, with trust rising in representative institutions there.

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Professor Will Jennings, a co-author of the report from the University of Southampton, says, “Declining trust in democratic institutions isn’t inevitable. If it is something about the way democratic politics is practiced that citizens distrust, perhaps those politics need to change.

“Given citizens’ continually high support for democratic ideals, those changes may well be in the direction of more democratic governance, rather than less.”