LSE Institute of Global Policy
The Trust Crisis
Yann Algan
Dean, School of Public Affairs, Sciences Po
Full Professor, Department of Economics
The rise of antisystem forces and populism testifies to a deep trust crisis of citizens, both towards their institutions and others, as we show in a new book “The origins of populism” (with D. Cohen, E. Beasley, M. Foucault).

The votes for antisystem parties is fueled first and foremost by a sharp deterioration of citizens’ trust in their institutions, experts and elites over the last three decades. According to the World Values Survey, the share of people who do not trust Parliament has increased from 47% to 77% in the United States, from 37% to 64% in France, and from 60% to 77% in Britain since the early 80s.

The erosion of trust in institutions seems closely linked to the deterioration of the living conditions of the middle and lower classes, hit by economic insecurity and rising inequalities, especially since the 2008 economic crisis. The financial crisis provoked an immense resentment towards the traditional parties, considered to be incapable of protecting the popular classes from the disturbances of contemporary capitalism. Beyond the financial crisis, the failure of governments and institutions to protect people from more structural risks such as the expansion of inequalities, globalization or the digital transition, has fueled distrust. As an illustration, in a series of articles analyzing the “China Shock”, David Autor, and his co-authors, highlight the effects of globalization on the destruction of employment in American industrial strongholds, leading to a strong resentment towards institutions and a political radicalization. The digital revolution and rising inequality have had the same effect in Europe and the United States.

Double exposure shaking hands over city
The votes for antisystem parties is fueled first and foremost by a sharp deterioration of citizens’ trust in their institutions, experts and elites over the last three decades. According to the World Values Survey, the share of people who do not trust Parliament has increased from 47% to 77% in the United States, from 37% to 64% in France, and from 60% to 77% in Britain since the early 80s.
But the rise of antisystem forces tells us something more about trust: it also refers to the feeling of loneliness of individuals and more generally to a degraded relationship to others. This is where another essential dimension of trust is at work: trust in others. This distrust crisis seems to be also linked to a civilizational crisis: the emergence of a society of isolated individuals in our post-industrial world. Industrial society and the Fordist model were based on enterprises organizing the socialization of workers within the enterprise, including the presence of powerful unions. The post-industrial society has exploded this structuring of common spaces: the development of services and new ways of working has been accompanied by greater social loneliness. The same loneliness is at work in our territories. Driven out from cities and large metropolises, the middle and lower classes are over-represented in mid-size units where local services, whether public services or bakeries, have collapsed. To paraphrase Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism, we have moved from a class society, not to a mass society, but to a society of individuals. In the post-industrial society, interpersonal trust is what remains for individuals to develop a common social project, which implies urgent policies to rebuild trust.
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