Trust is down, worldwide. In India, Iran, Indonesia and Nigeria, less than 15% say that ‘most people can be trusted’. What’s going on? This is a two-part essay, examining the causes and effects of falling trust. What’s causing the decline in trust? To answer this question, we need to understand both cross-cultural variation and long-run socio-economic trends. Through my global-historical comparative research, I suggest several likely mechanisms:
I would make one minor suggestion about the persistence of social trust in China. It seems to me it's not just a matter of surveillance and low crime rates; a more important factor might be centralized control of the media narrative.
Long before smartphones existed, when I was first learning to read Chinese by translating newspaper articles, it was clear how this worked. It wasn't simply that criticism of the state was suppressed; the papers avoided anything that might acknowledge social conflict or even stimulate strong negative emotions in their readers. (They weren't really commercialized at that point so there wasn't much of a countervailing market incentive.)
It might sound paradoxical but I think you saw this most clearly in the way China handled international news. Every official newspaper limited it to a single page and presented the politics of other countries in a simplistic way, highlighting their internal conflicts without fully explaining or contextualizing them. So the foreign coverage acted as a foil, reinforcing the idea that other places faced endless problems while China was stable and prosperous.
This was all a product of authoritarianism, but before the rise of the internet you often saw a parallel style in democratic states. I can't help thinking of the atmosphere of the American media in the 1950s and 1960s: a time when public trust, including trust in the government, was (unjustifiably) very high, and when the mainstream press routinely self-censored when it came to things like criticism of US foreign policy or the personal misconduct of politicians.
The strength of China's internet controls has made it one of the few places where those media norms are still mostly upheld. Surely that's a key factor in continuing high social trust?
"Nigeria is a prime case of ‘poor urbanisation'...The criminal justice system is stretched, and rife with impunity....Without rule of law, commerce then becomes risky."
In the case of Nigerian cities, as I understand it, the lack of policing seems to have led to the emergence of Area Boys. It may seem like a nitpick, but I would rather describe the consequences of lack of rule of law as: the economics of commerce become distorted, rather than merely risky.
That also seemed to be the case in El Salvador where local gangs produced all kinds of distortions. The risky part came from the inability of gangs to enforce their rules without resorting to violence. They had no way to impose and collect fines, and consequently no way to operate without at least breaking a few bones and shooting a few people here and there.
If law and order is such a salient issue in India why is that their police per capita is so low when police presence is one of the effective anti crime policies?
Do you think the rise of police bodycams and street level surveillance cameras will improve the governance of cities in developing countries? I know Malaysia already uses police bodycams and their per capita is income around 12,000 USD. One can expect the cost of this technologies come down dramatically in the next ten years.
Wouldn't second Axial Age been the rise of nationalism, liberalism, fascism, communism, socialist, islamism etc. especially after the industrial revolution?
This is fantastic!
I would make one minor suggestion about the persistence of social trust in China. It seems to me it's not just a matter of surveillance and low crime rates; a more important factor might be centralized control of the media narrative.
Long before smartphones existed, when I was first learning to read Chinese by translating newspaper articles, it was clear how this worked. It wasn't simply that criticism of the state was suppressed; the papers avoided anything that might acknowledge social conflict or even stimulate strong negative emotions in their readers. (They weren't really commercialized at that point so there wasn't much of a countervailing market incentive.)
It might sound paradoxical but I think you saw this most clearly in the way China handled international news. Every official newspaper limited it to a single page and presented the politics of other countries in a simplistic way, highlighting their internal conflicts without fully explaining or contextualizing them. So the foreign coverage acted as a foil, reinforcing the idea that other places faced endless problems while China was stable and prosperous.
This was all a product of authoritarianism, but before the rise of the internet you often saw a parallel style in democratic states. I can't help thinking of the atmosphere of the American media in the 1950s and 1960s: a time when public trust, including trust in the government, was (unjustifiably) very high, and when the mainstream press routinely self-censored when it came to things like criticism of US foreign policy or the personal misconduct of politicians.
The strength of China's internet controls has made it one of the few places where those media norms are still mostly upheld. Surely that's a key factor in continuing high social trust?
Strong family bonds effect on trust is mediated by low-trust vs high-trust environment, according to this paper:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01902725231162074
The quality of institutions is falling worldwide and this might be why generalised distrust is correlated with strong family bonds
Great post!
"Nigeria is a prime case of ‘poor urbanisation'...The criminal justice system is stretched, and rife with impunity....Without rule of law, commerce then becomes risky."
In the case of Nigerian cities, as I understand it, the lack of policing seems to have led to the emergence of Area Boys. It may seem like a nitpick, but I would rather describe the consequences of lack of rule of law as: the economics of commerce become distorted, rather than merely risky.
That also seemed to be the case in El Salvador where local gangs produced all kinds of distortions. The risky part came from the inability of gangs to enforce their rules without resorting to violence. They had no way to impose and collect fines, and consequently no way to operate without at least breaking a few bones and shooting a few people here and there.
If law and order is such a salient issue in India why is that their police per capita is so low when police presence is one of the effective anti crime policies?
Do you think the rise of police bodycams and street level surveillance cameras will improve the governance of cities in developing countries? I know Malaysia already uses police bodycams and their per capita is income around 12,000 USD. One can expect the cost of this technologies come down dramatically in the next ten years.
Wouldn't second Axial Age been the rise of nationalism, liberalism, fascism, communism, socialist, islamism etc. especially after the industrial revolution?