Trust, the Pandemic, and Public Policies

What is the role of trust in designing public policies, especially during the current pandemic? In this paper, I examine recent research that demonstrates the crucial effects of trust. This research suggests, I believe, two main conclusions. First, there is much emerging evidence that trust — and especially trust in government — is a major factor in shaping the effectiveness of public policies. In particular, when trust in government is weak, many government policies do not achieve their goals because people simply do not follow the government’s laws, regulations, and directives. Second, there is also much emerging evidence that trust is not fixed and given and immutable, mainly determined by a country’s history and culture and institutions, as was once believed. Instead, recent evidence indicates that trust can vary significantly, even over short periods of time. Indeed, there is growing research that trust in government can be affected in systematic ways by systematic policy interventions. These conclusions suggest that there are ways out of our current wilderness, even if these strategies will be neither easy nor quick.