There is a scene that has played out in various forms across every major democracy over the past two decades. A government announces a policy. Journalists investigate and find contradictions. Officials revise their position. Social media amplifies every contradiction and revision into evidence of deliberate deception. A significant portion of the population concludes that the institution cannot be trusted. The cycle repeats. The trust deficit widens. And gradually, the social infrastructure that makes collective action possible — the shared belief that institutions, however imperfect, are basically trying to serve the public good — erodes into something more brittle and dangerous.
The decline of institutional trust is one of the most consequential developments in contemporary democratic societies, and also one of the least well understood. It is tempting to explain it as a product of deliberate disinformation campaigns, or of social media algorithms, or of individual politicians who have cynically weaponised distrust for electoral advantage. All of these factors are real. But the deeper story is more structural: institutions have, in many cases, genuinely failed the people they were supposed to serve, and people have noticed. The question of how to rebuild trust cannot be separated from the question of how to rebuild institutional performance.
The Edelman Trust Barometer, the most comprehensive long-running measurement of institutional trust globally, has been documenting this erosion since 2000. The 2024 report found that only a minority of respondents in most developed democracies trusted their governments. More strikingly, the report found that 57 percent of people globally described their countries as more divided than united — a figure that would have seemed extraordinary to social scientists twenty years ago. Understanding where this distrust comes from, what sustains it, and what the evidence suggests about reversing it is urgent work for anyone who cares about the future of democratic governance.
"The arc of distrust bends not toward cynicism as a destination but toward disengagement — and disengagement is what authoritarians have always depended on." -- Francis Fukuyama, 'Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity' (1995)
| Institution | Trust Level (US, c.2023) | Change from 1970s | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Military | ~60% | Moderate decline | Gallup |
| Small business | ~65% | Stable | Gallup |
| Supreme Court | ~27% | Sharp decline | Gallup 2022 |
| Congress | ~8% | Severe decline | Gallup |
| Television news | ~14% | Severe decline | Gallup |
| Newspapers | ~18% | Sharp decline | Gallup |
| Big business | ~14% | Moderate decline | Gallup |
Key Definitions
Institutional trust: The generalised belief that an institution — government, media, judiciary, scientific body, religious organisation — acts with competence, benevolence, and integrity. Trust is distinct from agreement: a person can disagree with an institution's decisions while still trusting that those decisions were made honestly and competently.
The Edelman Trust Barometer: An annual survey of approximately 32,000 respondents across 28 countries, conducted by the public relations firm Edelman since 2000. The barometer measures trust in four pillars — government, business, media, and NGOs — and has become the most widely cited longitudinal dataset on institutional trust globally.
Trust gap: The divergence in institutional trust between high-income, high-education populations and lower-income, lower-education populations. Edelman data consistently shows a widening gap, with the informed elite trusting institutions significantly more than the mass population — a pattern associated with political volatility and populist movements.
Epistemic crisis: The broader phenomenon in which societies lose shared frameworks for establishing what is true. Declining trust in media and scientific institutions contributes to epistemic crisis by leaving people without reliable arbiters of factual disputes. Jonathan Rauch's 2021 book 'The Constitution of Knowledge' frames this as a fundamental threat to democratic self-governance.
Social capital: The networks of relationships, norms of reciprocity, and associated trust that enable people to cooperate effectively. Political scientist Robert Putnam's research documented declining social capital in the United States from the 1960s onward, arguing that reduced civic participation and community engagement both reflected and reinforced declining institutional trust.
The Edelman Data: What the Numbers Show
A Long Decline With Punctuations
The Edelman Trust Barometer's longitudinal data shows that the decline in trust is neither linear nor uniform. Certain events — the 2008 financial crisis, the exposure of government surveillance programmes by Edward Snowden in 2013, the COVID-19 pandemic — produced sharp downward inflections. Other periods showed partial recovery. But the overall trend across most Western democracies has been persistently downward, and recovery episodes have not restored previous baselines.
The 2022 report, published during the Omicron phase of the pandemic, found what Edelman called 'a collapse of trust' in government in many countries. The US government's trust score fell to 39 percent. France fell to 35 percent. The UK to 36 percent. These are not figures consistent with a functioning democratic relationship between citizens and their governments.
Business vs Government
One of the most striking patterns in the Edelman data is that trust in business has held up considerably better than trust in government and media. In many countries, more people trust 'my employer' to tell the truth than trust the government or press. This inversion has significant implications. It suggests that people have not become uniformly cynical — they are capable of extending trust when they perceive competence and relative honesty. It also raises concerning questions about what it means for democratic societies when commercial institutions are more trusted than governmental ones.
The Generational Dimension
Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk published a landmark analysis in the Journal of Democracy in 2016 titled 'The Danger of Deconsolidation,' which found that support for democratic institutions was significantly lower among younger cohorts in established democracies than among older ones. Only 30 percent of Americans born in the 1980s said it was 'essential' to live in a democracy, compared to 75 percent of those born in the 1930s. Subsequent research has debated the precise interpretation of these findings, but the generational gradient in institutional trust is real and documented across multiple datasets.
Why Institutions Lost Public Confidence
The 2008 Financial Crisis
No single event did more to undermine trust in Western institutions than the 2008 global financial crisis. The crisis demonstrated, in the most visceral possible way, that the institutions responsible for managing the economy — central banks, regulatory agencies, major financial corporations, and the governments that oversaw them — had either catastrophically failed or had been captured by the interests they were supposed to regulate. What made it worse was what came after: the banks were bailed out, their executives were largely not prosecuted, and many continued to receive large bonuses while millions of ordinary people lost homes and jobs. The asymmetry between institutional failure and institutional accountability was glaring and indelible.
Intelligence Failures and the Iraq War
The intelligence failures that preceded the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — and the subsequent revelation that officials in multiple governments had presented intelligence they knew to be unreliable as definitive — created lasting damage to trust in government truth-telling. The Chilcot Report in the UK, published in 2016 after a seven-year inquiry, concluded that the decision to invade Iraq was 'not a last resort' and that the intelligence had been presented with 'unwarranted certainty.' For people who had marched in protest against the war, the inquiry confirmed what they had suspected. For those who had trusted their governments, it was a significant blow.
COVID-19 and the Science Communication Collapse
The COVID-19 pandemic placed enormous strain on institutional trust in ways that varied significantly by country. In some nations, particularly those with high baseline trust and competent public health systems, institutions responded effectively and maintained public confidence. In others, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, confusing and sometimes contradictory guidance from health authorities — on mask wearing, school closures, the origins of the virus — was amplified by social media into something that looked, to many observers, like institutional dishonesty rather than genuine scientific uncertainty.
Nicholas Christakis at Yale documented extensively how the pandemic interacted with pre-existing trust deficits to produce divergent outcomes across societies. His 2020 book 'Apollo's Arrow' argued that trust in public health institutions was among the most important variables determining compliance with epidemic control measures — and that once eroded, it was extraordinarily difficult to restore during an active emergency.
Social Media Fragmentation
How Algorithms Shape Distrust
Platforms designed to maximise engagement have an inherent tendency to amplify institutional failures. A government policy working smoothly generates no shares. A government policy failing spectacularly generates enormous engagement. Over time, the information environment that social media creates is systematically skewed toward institutional dysfunction, giving users a distorted picture of how often institutions succeed or fail.
Eli Pariser introduced the concept of the 'filter bubble' in his 2011 book of that name, arguing that algorithmic personalisation was creating information cocoons that reinforced existing beliefs rather than exposing users to challenging evidence. More recent research has nuanced this picture — studies by Brendan Nyhan and colleagues suggest that filter bubbles are less hermetically sealed than Pariser suggested — but the basic dynamic of algorithmic amplification of outrage and distrust is well-documented.
The Speed Asymmetry
Institutions operate slowly. They gather evidence, consult stakeholders, revise positions based on new information, and communicate through official channels. Social media operates at the speed of a retweet. This creates a fundamental asymmetry: by the time an institution has a considered response to a crisis, the social media narrative has already hardened. The responsible behaviour of revising guidance as evidence changes — which science demands — looks, in a social media environment, like inconsistency or dishonesty. This dynamic contributed significantly to trust damage during COVID-19.
Political Polarization and Partisan Trust
Trust as Political Alignment
One of the most troubling developments in institutional trust research is the extent to which trust has become polarised along partisan lines. Research by political scientists Matthew Levendusky and Neil Malhotra found that trust in institutions now tracks partisan identity to a remarkable degree: Republicans trust institutions under Republican governments; Democrats trust them under Democratic ones. This suggests that what appears to be a generalised decline in institutional trust is partly a phenomenon of motivated reasoning — people distrust institutions controlled by political opponents and trust those aligned with their own side.
This pattern is dangerous for different reasons than generalised distrust. Generalised distrust, while corrosive, at least holds all institutions to some standard. Partisan trust means that institutional behaviour is evaluated not by performance but by political affiliation, which destroys the incentive for actual institutional improvement.
Populism as Trust Symptom
The rise of populist movements across Europe and North America in the 2010s — from Brexit to the Trump presidency to the gilets jaunes in France to the Five Star Movement in Italy — can be read partly as a symptom of institutional trust collapse. Populism, as theorised by Jan-Werner Muller in 'What Is Populism?' (2016), is specifically a politics that claims to represent 'the real people' against a corrupt elite that has captured institutions. It flourishes precisely where the gap between institutional claims and institutional performance is widest.
Generational Differences in Trust
Trust levels vary significantly by age cohort, but not always in the direction commonly assumed. Older citizens generally exhibit higher institutional trust, but research suggests this is partly a cohort effect — they grew up when institutional performance was stronger — and partly a life-cycle effect, as people tend to develop trust in institutions as they interact with them more (healthcare, courts, social security). Younger people, who have experienced institutions primarily during periods of significant failure, show lower baseline trust but are not necessarily more cynical in a generalised sense: they often show high trust in specific institutions or individuals they perceive as competent and honest.
Millennial and Gen Z distrust is also more targeted and episodic than the generalised distrust of older populist movements. Research by Ipsos MORI's Bobby Duffy, summarised in 'The Generation Myth' (2021), suggests that generational differences in values and attitudes are smaller than popular discourse suggests, and that younger people's lower institutional trust reflects their different life experiences rather than a fundamentally different political psychology.
What Actually Rebuilds Trust
Transparency and Accountability
The most robust evidence on trust recovery comes from organisational psychology and political science, and it consistently identifies transparency about failure as the most powerful trust-rebuilding behaviour. The counterintuitive finding is that admitting mistakes — rather than defending institutional credibility — is more effective at rebuilding trust. Tom Tyler's research on procedural justice found that people care less about outcomes than about whether processes are fair and whether they are treated with honesty and respect.
Competence and Follow-Through
Trust requires evidence of competence over time. Institutions that consistently deliver on commitments, that perform the basic functions they were established for, rebuild trust through accumulated evidence of reliability. The Scandinavian countries that maintain high institutional trust are not free of corruption or error — they are characterised by institutions that, on average, perform their core functions competently and where accountability mechanisms work.
Structural Conditions
Perhaps most importantly, institutional trust appears to be a byproduct of institutional performance in a broadly shared social context. Research by Robert Putnam, Jonas Pontusson, and others documents that trust is higher in societies with lower economic inequality, stronger safety nets, and more equitable distribution of institutional benefits. The implication is sobering: rebuilding trust may require not just better communication or leadership but structural changes to who benefits from institutional action — changes that are inherently political and contested.
Practical Takeaways
For citizens trying to navigate an environment of low institutional trust, the evidence suggests that blanket distrust is as epistemically irresponsible as blanket deference. Evaluating institutions by their track record, their transparency about uncertainty and error, and the quality of their accountability mechanisms is more reliable than trusting or distrusting based on political alignment.
For institutional leaders, the research is unambiguous: transparency, acknowledgement of failure, consistent follow-through, and genuine accountability are the only proven paths to trust recovery. Defensive communication that minimises institutional failures accelerates trust erosion rather than halting it.
For policymakers, the evidence points toward structural reform: reducing corruption, strengthening accountability mechanisms, and ensuring that institutional benefits are broadly and equitably distributed. Trust follows performance. It cannot be manufactured through communication strategies alone.
References
- Edelman. (2024). Edelman Trust Barometer 2024. Edelman Intelligence.
- Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. Free Press.
- Foa, R. S., & Mounk, Y. (2016). The danger of deconsolidation: The democratic disconnect. Journal of Democracy, 27(3), 5–17.
- Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster.
- Rauch, J. (2021). The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Brookings Institution Press.
- Pariser, E. (2011). The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. Penguin Press.
- Muller, J.-W. (2016). What Is Populism? University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Duffy, B. (2021). The Generation Myth: Why When You Are Born Matters Less Than You Think. Basic Books.
- Christakis, N. A. (2020). Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live. Little, Brown Spark.
- Tyler, T. R. (2006). Why People Obey the Law. Princeton University Press.
- Levendusky, M., & Malhotra, N. (2016). Does media coverage of partisan polarization affect political attitudes? Political Communication, 33(2), 283–301.
- Chilcot, J. (2016). The Iraq Inquiry: Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors. The Stationery Office.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Edelman Trust Barometer show?
The Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual global survey of trust in four institutions: government, business, media, and NGOs. Published since 2000, it has tracked a long-term decline in trust across most democracies. The 2024 report found that fewer than half of respondents in many countries trusted their government, and that 57 percent globally described their society as more divided than united. Notably, trust in business has held up better than trust in government and media, partly because people perceive businesses as more competent if not always ethical. The barometer also documents a growing 'trust gap' between the most and least educated populations.
Why are younger generations less trusting of institutions?
Younger generations came of age during a period of significant institutional failure: the 2008 financial crisis, which revealed deep dysfunction in financial and regulatory institutions; the Iraq War and subsequent evidence of intelligence manipulation; the 2008-2016 period of stagnant wages despite economic growth; and the COVID-19 pandemic, which produced inconsistent guidance from health authorities. Research by Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk at Harvard found that young adults in established democracies show historically low levels of commitment to democratic institutions and norms. Social media has also given younger people direct access to institutional contradictions and failures that previous generations could not easily observe.
Does social media cause distrust in institutions?
Social media is both a symptom and a cause of declining institutional trust. Platforms designed to maximise engagement reward outrage and novelty, which means institutional failures are amplified while institutional successes are ignored. Algorithmic feeds create filter bubbles that expose users primarily to information confirming existing distrust. The speed of social media also punishes institutions, which typically move slowly and carefully, by making them appear non-responsive. However, social media did not create the underlying institutional failures that eroded trust. It primarily accelerated and amplified distrust that had structural causes, including inequality, corruption, and genuine policy failures.
Is institutional trust declining everywhere or only in some countries?
Decline is widespread but not universal. The Edelman Trust Barometer consistently finds that trust is lowest in mature Western democracies, particularly the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Some countries — notably China, India, and Indonesia — show high and stable institutional trust, though critics note that authoritarian contexts and limited press freedom make trust surveys less meaningful in such settings. Within Europe, Scandinavian countries consistently show higher institutional trust, suggesting that trust correlates with perceived government competence, low corruption, strong social safety nets, and relatively equal societies. The pattern suggests institutional trust is not inevitably declining but is responsive to institutional performance.
What actually rebuilds trust in institutions?
Research on trust recovery identifies several consistent factors. Transparency about mistakes — acknowledging failures rather than denying them — is one of the most powerful trust-rebuilding behaviours. Competence and follow-through matter enormously: institutions that consistently deliver on commitments rebuild trust faster than those that communicate well but underperform. Reducing corruption and enforcing accountability within institutions signals that the institution is capable of self-correction. Broader structural factors also matter: in societies with lower economic inequality, institutional trust is consistently higher, suggesting that trust is partly a byproduct of people feeling that institutions serve them rather than a privileged minority.