Democracies in Crisis: Why Trust, Not Competence, Will Decide Their Future

If you follow the news and sense that something deeper than political gridlock is breaking within our democracies, you’re far from alone. A recent Pew Research Center survey across 23 countries found that a median of 58 percent of adults are dissatisfied with how democracy functions. In the United States, that figure rises above 60 percent, while in Italy and France, nearly seven in ten citizens express similar frustration. Across continents, faith in democratic systems is eroding—and while most people still prefer democracy to authoritarianism, disillusionment and distrust have become defining features of modern politics, as CNN’s Fareed Zakaria observes.

Older generations recall a similar mood in the 1970s, when Western democracies appeared weary and disoriented. In the U.S., inflation, the Vietnam War, and Watergate had deeply eroded public confidence. Scholars like Samuel Huntington warned that democracy itself might be becoming ungovernable, while Daniel Bell argued that capitalism was corroding the very virtues that sustained it. Yet the 1980s brought a rebound: economic reforms, innovation, and renewed optimism revived faith in the system. Within a decade, communism collapsed and liberal democracy stood triumphant. The crisis of the 1970s, it turned out, was a prelude to renewal.

Today’s crisis, however, feels different—more fundamental and more corrosive. The challenges of the 1970s were managerial; governments struggled to perform, but citizens still believed in the system itself. Institutions like Congress, the Supreme Court, and the press were respected. People wanted the rules enforced. Now, many no longer believe in the rules at all. America’s central institutions—courts, media, universities, and even elections—are widely viewed as biased or rigged. Public trust in government has fallen to around 20 percent, congressional approval often sits in the teens, and less than one-third of Americans trust the media, compared to nearly three-quarters in the 1970s.

The issue is not competence but cohesion. Institutions once commanded respect because they seemed impartial and rule-bound. Today, they are seen as political actors. As author Michael Lewis noted in his podcast Against the Rules, sports fans now routinely shout “Ref, you suck!” even though officiating accuracy is higher than ever. The problem isn’t performance—it’s perception. Once people decide that the referee is biased, no amount of precision can restore trust.

This dynamic plays out in law, journalism, and politics alike. When referees are distrusted, the entire game feels illegitimate. Transparency alone doesn’t cure cynicism—sometimes it amplifies it by making bias more visible. That helps explain the enduring appeal of Donald Trump, who abandoned any pretense of neutrality during his presidency. To his supporters, his blunt partisanship feels authentic. If all institutions are biased, they reason, better an open partisan than a hypocrite claiming to be fair.

A 2023 study by Sung In Kim and Peter Hall supports this view. When citizens perceive the system as unfair, they prefer direct, personalized leadership over neutral process. Leaders who attack courts, the press, and bureaucracies gain credibility because they reject the system’s pretense of fairness. The study also highlights a key divide between left- and right-wing populism: people who see unfairness as personal—my job, my income, my future—tend toward the right, seeking protection and revenge. Those who view unfairness as social—others are treated unjustly—gravitate toward the left, seeking redistribution and solidarity.

Modern anxieties—automation, migration, deindustrialization, secularization—create feelings of personal, not social, injustice. Workers fear being replaced, not simply that others are poor. That fear drives anger, aligning naturally with right-wing narratives about borders, elites, and betrayal. In anxious societies, vengeance is an easier sell than solidarity.

The 1970s crisis ended when leaders proved democracy could deliver. People doubted government competence but not its legitimacy. Today’s challenge is moral, not managerial. Institutions still function, but they’ve lost their aura of fairness. When citizens no longer trust the referees, they stop obeying the rules, and every election begins to resemble a civil war fought by other means.

We have entered democracy’s “post-referee age”—an era where institutions are no longer seen as neutral arbiters but as participants in the fight. Impartiality itself has become a target of suspicion. Facts are filtered through ideology, expertise is dismissed as elitism, and truth is often replaced by tribal loyalty. Policy debates have given way to identity battles, where the goal is not persuasion but victory over the opposing camp. The collapse of trust has made governance feel like permanent warfare—every law, ruling, or election result is seen as illegitimate by someone. Democracies, once sustained by shared norms and a sense of fair play, now struggle to maintain even a basic consensus on reality.

The last great democratic revival occurred when citizens and leaders alike chose to rebuild faith in the system—when they believed democracy was worth repairing. The next one will not come from algorithms, artificial intelligence, or technocratic efficiency, but from a renewal of trust, the invisible bond that gives legitimacy to every rule and institution. Without it, even the most advanced systems will fail. Restoring trust means reclaiming the belief that fairness is possible, that institutions can still act in good faith, and that our opponents are not enemies but fellow players bound by the same rules. Until we believe once more that the referee—our courts, media, and democratic processes—is at least trying to be fair, we will keep shouting “Ref, you suck!” at our own democracy, and the game itself will continue to lose its meaning.

Sources: AirGuide Business airguide.info, bing.com, CNN.com, Fareed Zakaria GPS, washingtonpost.com/