Across much of the industrial world, trust in government is low and declining. Why is this happening, and why does it matter?
An unusually thorough new study finds answers that are somewhat unexpected and more disturbing than you might have guessed.
The diminished trust is hardly a revelation, least of all in countries like the U.S., where anti-establishment populists have turned politics upside down and elite expertise has become not just distrusted but disdained.
Last year a survey found that fewer than one in six Americans expect Washington to do the right thing “nearly always” (1%) or “most of the time” (15%). At the turn of the century, such measures for the U.S. were more than twice as high.
On its face, the collapse of trust seems like a phenomenon of social psychology — a confluence of cultural and technological factors. Social media, disinformation and misinformation, echo chambers, epistemic bubbles and whatnot are often taken to be responsible.