New research from the University of Southampton finds that trust in representative institutions—parliaments, governments, and political parties—is falling in democracies worldwide.

The study is the most comprehensive to date, analyzing 3,377 surveys from 143 countries between 1958 and 2019, with responses from over five million people. While trust in elected bodies is declining, confidence in non-representative institutions like the police, civil service, and legal system has remained stable or even grown. This suggests a crisis of confidence specifically in elected representatives.

A warning sign

Researchers call the findings a warning sign, cautioning that declining trust in democratic institutions could open the door for autocratic leaders to consolidate power.

“Public trust in political authorities is a key challenge for democratic governments today,” they explain. “Low trust fuels support for populist leaders who campaign against the establishment. It also weakens governments’ ability to handle crises like climate change and pandemics.”

In the U.S., trust in the federal government has plummeted over the past two decades. This loss of faith in democratic institutions has coincided with the rise of candidates openly promising to dismantle them.

While democracy itself still enjoys broad support, many citizens no longer trust the institutions that uphold it. Some have turned to candidates who seem determined to tear those institutions down.

Key findings:

• Trust in parliaments declined by nine percentage points from 1990 to 2019 across democracies, while trust in the police rose by 13 points.
• Trust in parliament is falling in 36 democracies, including Argentina, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain, South Korea, Australia, and the U.S., rising in only six.
• In the UK, trust in parliament and government has been declining for decades, with a brief recovery around the Brexit referendum. Trust in the legal system and police fell until the 2008 financial crisis but has risen since.
• The 2008 crash triggered a sharp global drop in political trust. In Latin America, trust was rising until 2014 but has since fallen fast. In contrast, Asia and the Pacific have seen no major decline.
• Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Ecuador, and New Zealand defy the trend, with rising trust in representative institutions.

“Declining trust in democratic institutions isn’t inevitable,” the researchers conclude. “If citizens distrust the way democratic politics is practiced, then perhaps those politics need to change. Given the continued strong support for democracy itself, those changes may need to make governance more democratic, not less.”