Democracy and the Crisis of Trust

It’s a good time to be a bad democrat. Social media hyper-connectivity, the boundless public appetite for soundbites, and the ease of deploying disinformation campaigns make it relatively simple to exploit weaknesses or sources of discontent with democracy. In contrast, defenders of democracy – including policymakers, election officials, and the democracy, rule of law, and anti-corruption communities – have the much more difficult task of protecting the entire democratic process and convincing the public that the system works for them.

While this task does not start or end with the ballot box, democratic legitimacy is impossible without trust in elections. Generally, where democracy is stronger by objective measures – such as the composite index used by the Varieties of Democracy Project – and where surveys show that people prefer democracy to other types of government, trust in election results is also high. Today, however, we face a global democratic decline as well as attacks aimed squarely at election processes. Together, these two challenges pose an acute risk to trust in democracy and elections that is exacerbated over time. Closing the trust deficit requires coordinated, concrete action to bolster three types of trust: personal, procedural, and institutional.

At the individual level, there is evidence that a voter who has confidence in specific politicians or parties will be more likely to participate in elections and trust the results. Trust in the electoral process is thus in part a reflection of the level of personal trust felt by constituents towards their elected officials. Voters make character judgments about candidates and who to support based, sometimes, on the candidates’ actions – proven track records, whether political officials deliver on their promises, or how well they respond to crises. Character judgments are also affected by perceptions – well-founded or not – about officials as individuals. Voters also make more diffuse judgments about whether party platforms reflect their values and priorities, or if they trust politicians and government officials generally.

Personal trust in election and government officials is ebbing in many countries. A 2021 survey in 28 countries found that government officials and politicians are the two least trusted categories of people in the world. In Argentina, only 3% of respondents agreed that politicians are trustworthy, and 6% of government officials in general. Trust in politicians was similarly low in countries as diverse as Chile, Hungary, and South Korea. This global phenomenon presents a grave challenge for elections and democracy – a challenge that demands new efforts to effectively target and build trust in politicians and government officials.

A second type of trust is conditioned on the public believing that the process used to reach an election result was sound. This is known as procedural trust, based on the theory that participation in a credible election contributes to the acceptance of its outcome – even if the voter’s candidate of choice is not the winner. This kind of trust can be observed by turnout of first-time voters and by turnout consistency over time. Evidence shows that repeat participation is more likely if there are few irregularities in the election process, and that voters are more likely to trust elections if fraud is low. A key contributing factor for procedural trust is also that losing candidates and political parties readily accept the outcome. That acceptance becomes especially important when adaptations are introduced urgently, such as during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the adjudication of election disputes. To build or reinforce procedural trust, the practitioner community should prioritize increasing voter participation, especially among young voters; delivering transparent, verifiable election processes; and ensuring open and fair judicial review.

Finally, trust can be tied to institutions: how well they perform or appear to deliver for the people, and whether they function autonomously. This is true for government agencies that deliver everyday services as well as for election management bodies (EMBs) when delivering credible elections. Voters’ judgments about an election may also be impacted by how independent election officials are from other parts of government. According to scholarly research, the extent to which EMB autonomy matters to voters is dependent on the context – for example, EMB independence increases acceptance of election outcomes, but only if government corruption is low. Mexican elections offer a good illustration of this context dependency. Years of legal reforms and investments in election administration have led to competitive, credible, and sophisticated election administration, but long-standing mistrust in election institutions remains.

Each of these elements of trust impacts whether the public accepts an election outcome. Accordingly, there are multiple paths to increase trust in electoral results. In a country where personal trust in elected officials is low, for example, a credible election process stewarded by an autonomous EMB can bolster trust in election results. This scenario could play out in the upcoming presidential elections in Brazil, where the Superior Electoral Court has taken preemptive measures to bolster its support and credibility in the face of inflammatory attacks on the institution and the election process from the unpopular incumbent President. Alternatively, where election processes are marred with irregularities and procedural trust is therefore low, trust in individual elected officials can encourage acceptance of results. Likewise, a country with resilient institutions and a strong culture of respect for the election process can produce trusted electoral outcomes even if voters have low trust in a few specific individuals.

Democracy’s defenders have an important choice to make in the face of this daunting evidence. We can view the task of bolstering trust in elections and democracy as insurmountable, or we can marshal the imagination and confidence to take on the challenge. With a better understanding of trust’s drivers, policymakers, election officials, and practitioners will be able to identify where we can intervene to strengthen trust in democracy. We can use our collective, deep understanding of dynamic political environments to target specific sources of mistrust and stymie efforts to exploit them.

We must base these interventions on proven strategies with evidence of success. While new tools and technologies have great potential to revolutionize election processes and service delivery, it is important to resist the urge to deploy them until we know how to do so transparently and ethically, and whether they support the broader goal of effective democratic governance. Building and retaining trust in democratic forms of government and elections is a long term and complex task, but it is necessary to move from this moment of democratic crisis to democratic renewal.

Chad Vickery is Vice-President of Global Strategy and Technical Leadership, Erica Shein is Managing Director of the Center for Applied Research and Learning, and Dr. Cassandra Emmons is Democracy Data Analyst at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).