An Old-Fashioned Cure for Fading Trust in Government

Across much of the industrial world, trust in government is low and declining. Why is this happening and why, exactly, does it matter? An unusually thorough new study looks at these questions and finds answers that are somewhat unexpected and, in one way, more disturbing than you might have guessed.

The fact of diminished trust is hardly a revelation, least of all in countries such as the US, where anti-establishment populists have turned politics upside down and elite expertise has become not just distrusted but disdained.