GROWING TRUST IN GOVERNMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
The mounting impact of inflation, immigration and inequality helps explain why only about 20 per cent of Americans express trust in government, down from a peak above 70 per cent in the 1960s.
In developing nations, trust is ticking up on average, lifted in the past decade by huge gains in nations where incumbents won last year. Nearly 50 per cent of Mexicans and over 70 per cent of Indians and Indonesians now express trust in their government.
One reason trust is rising is the rapid digitisation of government, which improves delivery of public services by cutting out corrupt middlemen. By 2022, led by gains in India, governments of developing countries had overtaken their developed peers on the World Bank’s index of “government technological maturity”.
In the developing world, election battles are more idiosyncratic and local. In Mexico, the incumbent party won last year for reasons that include its record fighting poverty, and in Indonesia due to the popularity of the outgoing president Joko Widodo despite charges that he was setting up his son as a successor.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi suffered a loss of his legislative majority, but still won a third term, with a boost from the more efficient delivery of welfare benefits. Across India, incumbent parties have fared well in recent state elections as well.
These mood shifts appear likely to continue. In 2025, polls show incumbents set to lose all three national elections in the developed world – in Germany, Australia and Canada.
There will be fewer major national elections in the developing world and in emerging markets, but polls point to more mixed results. Incumbents are heading for defeat in national elections in Poland and Romania, victory in Ecuador and in big legislative elections in Argentina and the Philippines.
For now, much of the developing world sees no urgent reason to throw the bums out.
