Falling trust in government is a global phenomenon, pollster Robert Griffin said Monday in an interview on Hill.TV.
“What’s important to recognize is the case that trust in government has fallen worldwide,” Griffin, research director at the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons on “What America’s Thinking.”
“You take a look at a lot of western democracies…we’ve seen that trust go down over time,” he said.
A Gallup survey released last week found that Americans’ trust in the federal government to handle both domestic and international is at its lowest point in more than two decades.
Thirty-five percent of respondents said they trusted the government to handle domestic problems, while 41 percent said the same about international problems.
The survey was released after the conclusion of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
Various western democracies have also seen a lack of trust in their government institutions,
A Pew Research Center survey released last year found that only 16 percent of British populists on the ideological left and 27 percent of Danish populists on the ideological right said they trusted their government’s institutions.
— Julia Manchester
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