The deficit of trust is measured only in democracies

As you have seen, INSCOP has been publishing, as usual, the most recent data regarding trust in institutions. Since 2013, when we entered the survey market in Romania, we have regularly measured the scales of trust in institutions, making, at that time, even a small innovation – namely presenting these scales to respondents in three distinct lists, one for international institutions, another for internal political institutions (the ones most severely tested by public opinion, of course), and another for non-political internal institutions. It may not seem like much, but this way we ensured non-contamination, so to speak, from one category to another.

After years of measuring, writing, and talking about trust in institutions as a social indicator, one might think there is not much left to say, except to observe how the respective statistics move and correlate them with the immediate context because, as it is, public opinion has a short memory, is dominated by emotions, and forgets that it regularly goes through similar situations.

Much has been written in social sciences about the erosion of trust in advanced democracies and, just as much, about the same phenomenon reported in younger democracies, for example, those in Eastern Europe, post-communist. From the start, one problem is that the sociological tradition has been measuring for many years the deficit of trust in democratic institutions, in both frameworks mentioned above, but regarding a serious measure of trust in institutions in authoritarian states or worse, where the institution of public opinion does not function, we have nothing to discuss. So the term of comparison is missing. It is easy to erode trust in institutions in a democratic regime, where one can freely talk about such subjects. It is harder to reach such a theme in other types of political regimes.

Of course, in the Western world, we can make comparisons for trust indicators in different periods. But, although it is evident from a comparative point of view, this deficit of trust that we keep talking about must also be interpreted in the context we discussed above. Dissatisfaction, boredom, a nostalgic reference to the golden past and youth, increasing expectations, the discomfort of one’s own choices are free to manifest in democracies, harder to find publically outside their political framework. People constantly see how the world has changed. Do they see how the world has changed or do they simply see how hidden things and tragedies have become more visible?

The Cold War put the free world, as it was, face to face with the communist bloc. The paradox was that the struggle was won by the free world, more permeable, more transparent, and more adaptable, although less secure. The totalitarian world, obsessed with control and security, failed then. And its public, although exposed to total propaganda and mentally formed in a completely hostile environment to freedom, desired the Western model, even without fully understanding how it functioned. Then, 20-30 years of virtually unrestricted access to information and communication contexts either continued to erode trust in democratic institutions or, in post-Cold War Eastern Europe, failed to facilitate the maturation of this trust. The case of Romania, for example: as I have said so many times, it is not simply the fact that parliament and parties are the most poorly viewed institutions in public opinion that is the problem, but the fact that these two, the most strongly affected by distrust, are precisely the foundation of representative democracy. They are the basis of elections in a democratic system: not the Church, not the army, not the police, not the government (all having trust levels above parliament and parties in surveys).

We can continue to talk about the trust deficit, but when has this trust consistently had positive values? Do we need to rethink democracy? Maybe. Do we need to rethink our expectations regarding democracy? Certainly.