Mistrust Is Not Always Irrational

Over the past decade, liberals have developed strong defensive instincts. Courts are attacked; we defend judicial independence. Election officials are threatened; we defend procedural integrity. Public health agencies are politicized; we defend expertise. Universities are denounced; we defend academic freedom.

These reflexes are understandable. Illiberal movements across the world have made institutional erosion a central strategy. If liberal democracy rests on the rule of law, impartial administration, and constitutional constraint, then protecting those structures is not optional. It is foundational.

But there is a quiet danger in a politics organized primarily around defense. When liberalism becomes synonymous with protecting existing institutions from external attack, it risks overlooking a more subtle threat: the erosion of trust from within.

Institutions can survive legal challenges and partisan assaults and still lose the confidence of the public they are meant to serve. And once that relational foundation weakens, formal structures alone are not enough to sustain legitimacy.

Liberal democracy does not endure because courts exist or because agencies publish reports. It endures because people believe those institutions operate in good faith, respond to evidence, and remain open to correction. When that belief falters, liberal norms become procedural shells.

The crisis liberalism faces today is not only ideological. It is relational. And institutional responses have yet to fully reckon with that.

The evidence of experience

When confronted with declining trust in institutions, liberals often reach for explanations that center misinformation, polarization, or declining civic literacy. Those explanations are not wrong. Information ecosystems are fragmented. Social media amplifies falsehoods. Political entrepreneurs weaponize grievance.

But the temptation to attribute mistrust primarily to epistemic failure can obscure an uncomfortable truth: sometimes mistrust reflects experience.

Consider the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Regulatory bodies that were designed to oversee complex financial markets failed to prevent systemic collapse, as later detailed in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report (2011). Millions lost homes and jobs. While reforms followed, many of the individuals responsible for excessive risk-taking faced few personal consequences, a gap discussed in post-crisis analysis by the International Monetary Fund. For large segments of the public, this did not feel like a technocratic miscalculation. It felt like impunity.

Or consider housing in high-cost cities. For decades, local governments have maintained zoning rules that restrict supply and drive up prices, a dynamic documented in research from the National Bureau of Economic Research and policy analyses by the Brookings Institution, often in response to pressure from incumbent homeowners. The result has been rising rents, displacement, and growing homelessness. When renters express distrust in local governance, it is not because they misunderstand economics. It is because they experience policy outcomes directly.

Public health offers another example. During the COVID-19 pandemic, guidance evolved as scientific understanding improved. That evolution is intrinsic to science. But institutions frequently struggled to communicate uncertainty transparently. Recommendations shifted. Assurances were revised. For some communities, especially those with historical reasons to distrust medical authority, this did not look like responsible adaptation. It looked like inconsistency.

None of these cases invalidate liberal democracy. But they do complicate the narrative that mistrust is primarily the product of ignorance. In many instances, skepticism is a response to perceived institutional failure, opacity, or unaccountability.

When liberals treat all distrust as illegitimate, they collapse a distinction that is vital for liberal survival: the distinction between destructive cynicism and critical loyalty.

Critical loyalty demands reform. Destructive cynicism demands demolition. If liberalism cannot tell the difference, it will misdiagnose its own crisis.

The technocratic drift

There is a particular danger in how contemporary liberalism often responds to institutional skepticism. Faced with populist attacks, liberals can slide into technocratic defensiveness. Expertise becomes not only a tool of governance but the primary source of legitimacy. Institutional continuity becomes an end in itself.

Technocracy promises stability. But stability without responsiveness breeds alienation.

If citizens are told that decisions are too complex for their meaningful input, that dissent reflects confusion, and that institutional actors must be shielded from political pressure at all costs, liberal democracy begins to resemble something narrower: administration without participation.

This is not the same as authoritarianism. But it is not the vibrant, self-correcting liberalism many claim to defend.

Trust cannot be commanded through credentials. It is built through interaction.

Participation as proof

If mistrust is relational, rebuilding it requires institutions to change how they relate to the public. One promising avenue is participatory governance.

Participatory budgeting, first implemented in Porto Alegre in the late 1980s, offers a concrete example. Residents were invited to deliberate and vote on how portions of municipal budgets would be allocated. The model has since spread to cities across Latin America, Europe, and North America.

The evidence suggests that participatory budgeting can increase civic engagement, improve transparency, and in some contexts redirect spending toward underserved communities. More important than any single outcome, however, is the experience it creates. Citizens see that their preferences can shape decisions. The distance between “government” and “public” narrows, even if only slightly.

In New York City, participatory budgeting allowed residents in participating districts to propose and vote on local projects such as school improvements and street safety measures. The amounts were limited relative to the city’s total budget. But symbolic gestures matter in politics. They signal that input is not merely performative.

Participation, however, is not inherently democratic in outcome. In many cities, processes that are nominally open, such as public hearings on housing development, have been dominated by narrow, unrepresentative groups. Incumbent homeowners, with more time and resources, often exert disproportionate influence, using participatory mechanisms to block new housing and preserve exclusionary arrangements. In these cases, participation does not build trust broadly; it redistributes power upward while maintaining the appearance of inclusion.

This tension does not invalidate participatory governance, but it clarifies its conditions for success. Participation must be structured to be genuinely representative, not merely accessible in theory. That may require proactive outreach, randomized selection, or institutional safeguards against capture by organized minorities. The lesson is not that public input is flawed, but that its design determines whether it expands legitimacy or entrenches mistrust.

Trust grows when people experience agency.

Transparency and the digital state

Another pathway to rebuilding trust lies in radical transparency. Modern governance is often opaque. Bureaucratic procedures are complex. Decision-making processes are difficult to trace. This opacity can protect impartiality, but it can also obscure accountability.

Estonia’s digital governance reforms offer one instructive model. Over two decades, Estonia built a digital infrastructure that allows citizens to access services online and, crucially, to see who has accessed their personal data. That visibility reduces suspicion of unseen manipulation. It makes the state legible.

Taiwan’s vTaiwan process similarly integrates digital tools into policymaking. Citizens, experts, and officials deliberate on specific regulatory questions through structured platforms designed to surface consensus rather than amplify outrage. In several instances, including ride-sharing regulation, this process has facilitated compromise rather than polarization.

These examples do not suggest that technology is a panacea. Digital systems introduce their own vulnerabilities and inequalities. But they demonstrate that institutions can choose openness over defensiveness. Transparency need not undermine authority; it can reinforce it.

Yet transparency alone does not guarantee accountability. In some contexts, it can produce unintended consequences. Officials who know their deliberations will be publicly scrutinized in real time may become more risk-averse, avoiding necessary but unpopular decisions. In other cases, the sheer volume of available information overwhelms citizens, obscuring rather than clarifying responsibility. Transparency, without mechanisms for interpretation and consequence, can become a performance rather than a practice.

What distinguishes more successful examples, such as Estonia and Taiwan, is not openness in isolation but structured visibility paired with responsiveness. Citizens are not only able to see how decisions are made; they are given pathways to contest and influence them. This contrasts with more fragmented transparency efforts elsewhere, where information is disclosed without being meaningfully integrated into public decision-making. Trust grows not from exposure alone, but from the ability to act on what is revealed.

When institutions reveal how decisions are made and how errors are corrected, they communicate confidence rather than fragility.

Policing and conditional trust

Some domains test liberalism more severely than others. Policing in the United States is one such domain. Decades of unequal enforcement, excessive force, and limited accountability have generated deep mistrust in many communities.

Reform efforts—civilian oversight boards, body camera mandates, data transparency—have produced mixed results. Where oversight bodies lack independence or enforcement power, they function symbolically. Where they possess genuine authority, they can modestly improve confidence and reduce misconduct.

The unevenness of these reforms reveals a broader truth: trust responds to power. When institutions demonstrate that they are willing to constrain themselves, skepticism can soften. When reform appears cosmetic, mistrust deepens.

Community-based policing offers a different approach, one that aligns more closely with the relational conception of trust this essay has emphasized. Rather than treating policing primarily as enforcement, it prioritizes sustained engagement between officers and the communities they serve: regular meetings, local partnerships, and non-adversarial presence. The premise is not that proximity alone resolves structural injustice, but that institutions cannot earn trust while remaining socially distant from those they govern.

Yet even here, the limits are instructive. Community policing is difficult to standardize, resistant to simple metrics, and vulnerable to becoming symbolic if not paired with real accountability. In some cities, it has improved perceptions without significantly altering outcomes. In others, it has faltered due to lack of resources or institutional buy-in. These inconsistencies reinforce a broader point: trust cannot be engineered through a single reform model. It emerges when institutions demonstrate, over time, that relationships matter as much as rules.

You cannot rebuild confidence in an institution while insulating it entirely from consequence.

Listening downward

What successful trust-building efforts share is not ideological uniformity but responsiveness. They treat public skepticism as information.

Too often, liberal rhetoric frames criticism of institutions as inherently dangerous. There is reason for caution: illiberal movements weaponize distrust to justify dismantling constraints. But a defensive posture that equates critique with sabotage undermines liberalism’s own foundations.

A healthy liberal order depends on the ability to criticize, reform, and improve institutions without threatening their existence. Courts can be defended against partisan capture while still being evaluated for bias or inefficiency. Public health agencies can be shielded from political interference while reassessing communication failures. Universities can protect academic freedom while addressing internal governance concerns.

Listening downward, toward those most affected by policy decisions, does not weaken liberalism. It grounds it.

Reform is not surrender

Some will argue that emphasizing mistrust risks validating populist narratives. But refusing to acknowledge legitimate grievances does not neutralize populism; it fuels it.

The distinction between liberal reform and illiberal populism lies in institutional direction. Populism seeks to concentrate power in a leader who claims to represent a unified “people.” Liberal reform seeks to distribute power, enhance accountability, and preserve pluralism.

Rebuilding trust does not mean subordinating expertise to opinion polls. It means integrating expertise into systems that remain answerable to those they govern.

Trust is not blind faith. It is a provisional judgment that institutions deserve continued authority because they demonstrate integrity and responsiveness.

A relationship worth repairing

At its core, liberal democracy is not only a system of rules. It is a relationship. Citizens consent to be governed not because institutions are flawless, but because they believe those institutions can learn, adapt, and correct themselves.

When that belief weakens, liberal norms become fragile. Elections feel hollow. Expertise feels aloof. Procedural victories ring empty.

Defending liberal democracy in an age of populism requires more than warning that alternatives are worse. It requires demonstrating that liberal institutions can renew themselves.

Mistrust should not be dismissed reflexively as ignorance. It should be interrogated. Sometimes it will be baseless. Sometimes it will be manipulated. But sometimes it will reveal where liberal governance has drifted toward complacency.

A liberalism confident in its principles should not fear that revelation.

Institutions deserve defense when they are attacked unjustly. But they deserve trust only when they earn it—through transparency, participation, accountability, and reform.

Liberal democracy cannot survive indefinitely on procedural legitimacy alone. It depends on a public that believes its institutions are not merely stable, but worthy.

Rebuilding that belief is not a concession to populism. It is the precondition for liberalism’s endurance.

Featured image is Georgia's Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, by kmoney56