This article is part of our special series on Authority

How is a lack of trust challenging the authority of democratic institutions?

ReD partners Millie Arora and Morgan Ramsey-Elliot in conversation with Ali Noorani, program director of U.S. democracy at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Millie Arora Let’s start with the 1,000-foot view: what do you believe gives democracy today authority and legitimacy?

Ali Noorani We tend to think about democracy in a very procedural or transactional way. It's a set of rules and regulations. It's a clearly defined way for us as a nation to negotiate our differences. But what's interesting about this question about authority and democracy is that so much is based on our trust in each other. And only if that trust holds do the rules hold. What we are seeing right now is that the lack of trust is challenging democracy, and that makes it much harder to negotiate in good faith. It makes it much harder to have a shared understanding of a national identity, much less an allegiance to a national identity. All these things are happening in a changing world that is changing much more quickly than we realise.

Millie What in particular is changing?

Ali Many things. When you look around, you see demographic changes. It feels like the 1965 Immigration Nationality Act contributed to a completely different country that did not previously exist. As a beneficiary of that law, I think that's a great thing. But those demographic and, hence, cultural changes really challenge folks who are experiencing those changes over the course of their lifetime as opposed to younger generations who grew up with them. I think economic changes are happening around the world regarding technological shifts in manufacturing. I think that’s calling into question how we value work and how people find purpose in work. And I think that how we value each other's work is a much bigger question in people's minds than we realise. Then you've got the world changing in terms of climate which is impacting the way that we relate to government and each other. 

What we are seeing right now is that the lack of trust is challenging democracy, and that makes it much harder to negotiate in good faith.

Millie How does trust in institutions support our belief in democracy?

Ali Over the last ten years, people have wrestled with the question of trust in institutions and trust in people running institutions. I was just looking at this data, and people's trust in governing institutions and the federal government shifts according to who is in office. If a voter’s candidate wins, they trust it. If not, they don’t. That makes sense, right? So, in one way, this is very promising in that if your person is in charge, you will trust the institution they are running. Now, the question is, can the institution itself become durable enough and trusted enough that regardless of who's in charge, people see it as serving a purpose that is important beyond meeting their self-interest? 

Morgan Ramsey-Elliot To build on that point, liberal democracy and the demographic shifts should theoretically be consistent, right? But what I hear you saying is that most of the demographic shifts that we're seeing are actually eroding some of our trust and core belief in democracy. Can you explain where that breakdown is happening?

Ali I think a breakdown is happening in a few different places. I'm not sure we truly understand the problem. I think part of this is that institutions are slow to understand how people are experiencing the shifting world. We are using a neo-liberal playbook where markets define how the world works in a world where cultural, economic, and demographic changes are creating challenges the market doesn't have good solutions for. You have one part of society that is saying in the face of these changes, we're going to retrench, and we are going to protect what is ours. And that message clearly resonates across political, racial, ethnic, and gender lines. You have another part of society who is saying that in the face of these changes, we will try to figure out how our institutions can serve more people. In either case, if that's not your belief, then you have a deep level of mistrust of both the elected leadership and the institutions they run. 

Morgan One of the things we've been seeing in our work is that this erosion of trust is going hand in hand with retrenchment and tribalism. One of the things we've been thinking about is how this crisis of belonging is tied into that. Do we first need to solve the crisis of belonging to create the conditions for people to trust each other so that we can then build the kind of democracy that we want?

Ali When I think about belonging, I wonder if we can help people find and be a part of an in-group in a way that the outgroup is not an existential threat to their identity. To do this, we need a better understanding of how people relate to groups, how they organise around their religion, jobs, neighbourhoods, so that people don’t interpret the out-group as a bad thing.  

Morgan Where do you see new sources of authority coming from in the U.S., for better or worse?

Ali I have long believed politics is downstream from culture. So authority comes more and more from cultural figures. They are the ones who are not only authorities but also the validation of authorities. And that happens across the political spectrum. So, these days, the source of authority comes from culture more than we probably want to acknowledge. Then you start breaking it down into different tribes, and you know, one tribe will trust scientists, and another won't. Tribalism is not a new thing, but tribalism also exists in terms of authority figures. 

I have long believed politics is downstream from culture.

Morgan What gives you hope today? What do you see as the creative potential coming out of all of this change?

Ali What gives me hope is that institutions, organisations, and leaders realise that to preserve and really strengthen our democracy, we need to think about political coalitions differently. We must challenge our assumptions about somebody who may be an opponent on one issue but is a potentially very important ally on other issues. If there's one thing that gives me hope, it is just the simple fact that we're asking ourselves, "How do we do this differently?" 

 This interview is part of our special series on Authority