Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them

“Organized lying,” as Arendt termed it in her 1971 essay about The Pentagon Papers,60 can have a specific goal in politics: it removes the stable ground from under people’s feet, leading the public to be cynical about any news they encounter:

In other words, citizens care less about civic duty—the obligation to engage in political life in a particular, prescribed way—than about efficacy, their ability to make meaningful changes on issues they care about.

Mounk and Foa found less support for democratic institutions from younger people than from older ones. While nearly 60 percent of Europeans born in the 1950s told pollsters that it was essential to live in a democracy, less than 45 percent of those born in the 1980s felt the same way. And while 5 percent or fewer Europeans over thirty-five told pol

They see problems that can be best addressed not through politics as usual, but through organizing, direct action, and even humor.

By contrast, voice-based activism has as its primary goal the raising of other voices, rather than achieving an instrumental goal.

“The boiling water of our social and political attitudes, it seems, can be turned up or down by changing how physically safe we feel.”

these tweaks took a thin form of participation and made it more personal and meaningful.

Efficacy is always a problem of perception. People will undertake actions, even deeply demanding actions, if they are persuaded their participation can make a difference. The challenge for organizers of social movements is to create a range of actions, from thin to thick, that let participants feel they’re making effective change.

The mistrust many feel for democratic institutions can be seen as greater “social attentiveness,” fuel for engagement in efforts to hold elected and bureaucratic powers responsible. This “ethos of democratic oversight”