The trend
A majority of citizens (still) say they don’t trust in their national political and economic systems, according to findings from a recent Ipsos study based on a sample of over 26,000 people in 28 countries
In these 28 countries, an average of 64% of respondents believe that their domestic economy is rigged to benefit the rich and powerful, while 63% think that the political class doesn’t care about ordinary people like them. The online survey shows that among all the countries in the sample, this anti-establishment attitude runs highest in Romania, Turkey, Thailand and South Africa, and lowest in Sweden and Germany,
That said, there seems to be a downturn with respect to 2021, when Ipsos ran a similar study in 24 countries. What emerges from comparing the two surveys is that anti-establishment attitudes dropped drastically in Chile, Colombia, South Korea, Italy, Brazil and Peru - all nations where elections lead to a change in government. The only countries where there was a sharp rise in anti-system sentiment were the UK and Turkey.
Key takeaways
To measure how widespread anti-establishment attitudes are, Ipsos developed a Broken-System Index. This is a composite, peer-reviewed metric based on respondents’ agreement with five statements.
Specifically, around six out of ten adults in 28 countries agree with the following: the economy is rigged in favor of the rich and powerful; traditional political parties don’t care about ordinary people; the country needs a strong leader; and experts don’t understand the lives of ordinary people and what they need. In addition, slightly less than half also think that their country needs a leader who is willing to break the rules to solve problems.
Of the 28 countries analyzed with the Broken-System Index, Romania and Turkey scored the highest (3 points), followed by Thailand (2.9), South Africa (2.85) and the UK (2.8). The lowest scores were recorded from Sweden (2.11), Germany (2.26) and the Netherlands (2.40). With 2.57 points, Italy comes in close to the overall average for all countries (2.65).
In the 24 countries considered in the 2021 study, the Broken-System Index decreased by 0.12 points on average. What’s more, in only four of these 24 countries did this index see an upturn: Belgium and the Netherlands had a negligible increase, while for Turkey and the UK the rise was more pronounced (+ 0.19 points). Interesting to note is that in 2021, no parliamentary or presidential elections were held in any of these four countries.
In the remaining 20 countries instead, broken-system sentiment abated, although in some cases only very slightly. Moreover, all except three had held elections in the 18 months prior to the study. More interesting still, in all six countries that recorded a drop in excess of 0.35 points (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, South Korea, Italy and Peru), a new leader was elected from a party different than the incumbent’s. By comparing the two surveys, what seems clear is that national elections can allow the electorate to vent their frustration and help build trust in the system.
We can gain further insight into this issue from Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI). In fact, what we see when we overlay the two indices suggests that in each of the 28 countries in the Ipsos survey, broken-system sentiment and the perception of widespread corruption are strongly correlated. In particular, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands score high on the CPI (which signifies a low level of perceived corruption) and low on the Ipsos Broken-System Index.
In contrast, the four countries that score highest on the Broken-System Index have relatively low scores on the CPI. This could suggest two hypotheses: on one hand the perception of widespread corruption could trigger an anti-establishment attitude; on the other, such an attitude might encourage corrupt practices, making them appear justified.
