Trust in Crisis? How Trust, Mistrust and Distrust Shape Democratic Governance

As the future of liberal democracy hangs in the balance, citizens' lack of trust in political systems is increasingly blamed for democratic decline. Trust in Crisis? questions this claim, asking whether there is truly a global crisis of political trust and how important trust is when societies face disruption. Drawing on extensive cross-national quantitative and qualitative evidence, the authors examine how citizens form trust judgements and whether a lack of trust is synonymous with 'distrust', or can reflect a more constructive 'mistrust'. They reveal a long-term global decline in political trust, show how trust varies across groups of citizens and responds to shocks, and demonstrate that people in different cultural contexts evaluate trustworthiness in similar ways. Trust in Crisis? also explains why trust matters – especially during a global pandemic – and explores how political trust might be rebuilt when it matters most.