The latest survey of British Social Attitudes shows people’s levels of trust in government is at an all time low. But for all the talk of a crisis of trust, Ben Seyd argues, it doesn’t seem to have a significant impact on people’s belief in democracy or even their policy preferences. 

One of the main challenges facing any new government in this year of elections is dealing with low levels of trust among citizens. This is likely to be a particular challenge for Britain’s Labour Party if, as currently looks likely, it replaces the Conservatives in government in July. As reported in the latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, levels of trust in government among British citizens have fallen over the past thirty-five years, and now sit at rock-bottom levels. The latest BSA survey shows just 14 per cent of British people trust government “most of the time” or “always”, the lowest such figure since data started being collected in the mid-1980s. Not far short of half of all citizens (45 per cent) now say they “never” trust government, the highest rate recorded by the BSA.

If political trust is a key ingredient in citizens’ willingness to grant governments the leeway and funding to pursue costly and long-term policy programmes, low rates of trust might constrain what governments are able to do, hindering any reform initiatives of an incoming Labour administration. Even more seriously, low trust might also be thought to undermine people’s faith in the democratic system, potentially exacerbating the recent decline in democracy across the world.

Low trust in government is perhaps not as corrosive as we might fear.

Low levels of trust in politicians and governments might therefore be thought to be eating away at public support for active government as well as for democracy itself. But as I have shown recently,  the consequences of low trust may be less serious than analysts and commentators often suggest. Low trust in government is perhaps not as corrosive as we might fear.

When it comes to what people want government to do, data collected over the past four decades in Britain show that people with low levels of trust are not more suspicious of government activism than people with high trust. Instead, people with low trust in government  are just as likely as people with high trust to favour greater government spending on areas like health and education. Similarly, as the graph shows, low trust individuals are just as likely as high trust individuals to believe that governments should be responsible for public goods like the provision of quality healthcare. My analysis shows that support for active government in Britain people is more closely associated with people’s left-right ideological beliefs than with whether or not they trust the government. In this, Britain differs from the USA, where trust has been shown to have a strong influence on whether people favour an active government, perhaps reflecting Americans’ historical suspicion of centralised authority.

Notes: The data relate to survey questions asking for people’s preferences for governments … (a) “Increasing taxes and spending more on health, education and social benefits”, and (b) “Providing healthcare for the sick”. Source: British Social Attitudes.

The evidence also doesn’t provide much support for the concern that low trust will undermine people’s civic commitments or behaviours. Of course, we saw during the coronavirus pandemic the role played by trust in encouraging pro-social forms of behaviour like mask-wearing and social distancing. Trust therefore appears to be an important factor shaping whether people accept official or elite information and guidance.

There is little evidence that low and declining trust undermines people’s commitment to democracy itself.

But trust appears to play less of a role when it comes to more general forms of civic behaviour. For example, my analysis finds that, in Britain, people with low trust are only a few percentage points more likely than people with high trust to favour “non-civic” activities such as breaking the law and cheating on tax payments. When we look beyond Britain to other countries, where levels of trust have dropped to rock-bottom levels, there are similarly few signs of a collapse in civic norms. For example, in Greece, where people’s trust in government nosedived after the 2008 financial crash, I find few knock-on effects on civic behaviours such as paying taxes and vaccinating children.

Most important of all, there is little evidence that low and declining trust undermines people’s commitment to democracy itself. In Britain, I find that people with low levels of trust are little or no more likely than people with high levels of trust to favour non-democratic ways of running the country, for example through a “strong leader who does not bother with parliament and elections”. Moreover, even when individuals become less trusting in politicians over a period of time, there is only a marginal boost to their support for non-democratic strong leaders. Declining rates of trust do not appear to translate into weakening support for the democratic system.

The evidence from Britain and the US shows that low trust can work to the advantage of established parties and candidates, rather than driving support only for populist or system-challenging ones.

Low trust can, of course, contribute to electoral support for radical parties that challenge the political status quo. But in Britain at least, I find that low trust boosts support not only for protest parties like UKIP, but also for more mainstream parties. Looking at the US election in 2016, we find that people with low levels of trust were more likely to support Donald Trump’s populist presidential bid than Hilary Clinton’s more conventional pitch. But the association between trust and electoral support was even greater at the 2012 election, when low trust was strongly associated with the presidential bid of the mainstream Republican, Mitt Romney. The evidence from Britain and the US shows that low trust can work to the advantage of established parties and candidates, rather than driving support only for populist or system-challenging ones.

Countries like Britain and the US have seen sharp declines in political trust (although levels of trust in many other European countries have remained broadly stable). Yet the consequences of this decline often appear to have been fairly mild. Of more concern is which types of people express trust in their political rulers. Over the past three decades, levels of trust in Britain have declined particularly among people with low levels of education and from lower socio-economic groups. A “trust gap” between socially and economically advantaged and disadvantaged individuals has grown over time. This is true not only in Britain, but also in countries such as Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden. If there is a problem of trust facing policy-makers, it appears to consist as much in the beliefs among particular social groups that the political system does not meet their needs, as in the supposedly damaging outcomes arising from a less trusting population.

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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