61% of humanity judges its institutions unjust and questions the democratic order
Sixty-one percent of the global population develops a moderate to high sense of injustice toward its public and private institutions according to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2025. This distrust affects both consolidated democracies and authoritarian regimes, revealing a legitimacy crisis that transcends traditional political divisions.
The measurement covers four key institutions: governments, businesses, media, and NGOs. For the first time since the survey launched in 2001, an absolute majority of the planet believes that the institutional system no longer serves its interests. This erosion of confidence is accelerating in developed countries where it reaches record levels, transforming liberal democracy into a laboratory of an unprecedented representation crisis.
The essentials
- 61% of the global population feels moderate to high institutional injustice, compared to 54% in 2022
- Rich democracies suffer the steepest erosion: United States (68%), Germany (71%), France (74%)
- 73% of respondents believe economic elites manipulate the system for their profit
- Trust in governments is declining significantly according to the latest measures
- Only NGOs retain majority trust with 56% approval
Rich democracies suffer the steepest erosion of trust
The United States shows 68% institutional injustice sentiment, Germany 71%, and France 74%. These figures place Western democracies at the top of the world’s most defeatist societies, ahead of Russia (65%) or Iran (62%). This inversion of traditional confidence relationships marks a historic shift.
The erosion particularly strikes educated middle classes. In the United States, 76% of university graduates believe the system works against them, compared to 41% in 2010. In Europe, this proportion reaches 83% among urban 25-40 year-olds, a rise of 34 points in fifteen years.
The main cause? The accumulation of unresolved crises. Wealth inequality deepens despite economic growth, the climate crisis accelerates without adequate responses, and corruption scandals multiply. The growing gap between electoral promises and concrete achievements feeds the conviction that democratic institutions have become theaters of illusions.
Elite capture of gains fuels distrust
Seventy-three percent of respondents believe economic elites manipulate the political system for their profit. This perception is grounded in factual data: the richest have captured a disproportionate share of global growth in recent years, while real wages stagnate in most developed countries.
In the United States, the 400 largest fortunes own as much as the poorest 64% of the population. In Europe, the European Tax Observatory mentions 500 billion USD for individual tax evasion and 600 billion for corporations globally. These asymmetries fuel the conviction that the democratic game is rigged.
The digitalization of the economy amplifies the phenomenon. Technological platforms concentrate unprecedented market powers while optimizing their taxation. When three percent of paying users support a trillion dollars in spending, this asymmetry reveals how a minority of economic actors shapes global digital infrastructure without effective democratic control.
Institutions lose their monopoly on truth
Trust in traditional media is eroding significantly at the global level. This decline accompanies the fragmentation of information space. Social networks become the primary information source for 67% of those under 35, creating sealed information bubbles.
This atomization of collective truth undermines democratic deliberation. When citizens no longer share the same basic facts, they can no longer debate the same issues. Generative artificial intelligence accelerates this trend by enabling industrial production of personalized and potentially manipulative content.
Governments simultaneously lose their capacity for direct communication with their populations. Trust in official information is declining sharply, forcing policymakers to navigate an environment where their messages are systematically filtered, distorted, or drowned out in digital noise.
The geography of inequality reveals democratic faults
Institutional injustice varies greatly depending on territories and social classes. In France, peri-urban and rural areas show 83% institutional injustice sentiment, compared to 61% in urban centers. This geography overlaps with that of protest voting and social mobilization.
Differentiated access to public services explains part of these gaps. Low-emission zones reveal the hidden geography of urban inequality by concentrating environmental benefits in affluent neighborhoods while penalizing modest-income populations.
This territorialization of institutional distrust challenges republican universality. When a public service functions differently depending on postal code, citizen equality becomes fiction. The welfare state transforms into an archipelago state, generating as many exclusions as inclusions.
China and Singapore resist general erosion
A notable counter-trend: China displays only 34% institutional injustice sentiment, Singapore 28%, and the United Arab Emirates 31%. These authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes maintain trust levels superior to Western democracies.
Three factors explain this resistance. First, sustained economic growth: China has quadrupled median income in twenty years, creating a middle class of 400 million people. Next, management efficiency: Singapore combines administrative transparency and concrete results. Finally, information control: these regimes limit exposure to critical discourse.
This performance questions the Western democratic model. Liberal democracy presupposes that freedom of expression and contestation strengthen legitimacy. But when this freedom amplifies dysfunctions without correcting them, it can paradoxically weaken institutional trust.
Democratic innovation emerges facing the crisis
Facing this erosion, democratic experiments are emerging. Ireland resolved its social deadlocks on abortion and same-sex marriage through randomly selected citizens’ assemblies. France is experimenting with citizens’ conventions on complex subjects like climate and end-of-life care.
These innovations seek to restore the link between collective deliberation and political decision-making. Randomly selected citizens represent the population without the biases of electoral representation. They have the time and resources to deepen issues, producing more nuanced recommendations than instant polls.
Technology can serve this renaissance. Estonia digitalizes all its public services, allowing citizens to create a company in eighteen minutes or vote from their phone. Taiwan experiments with vTaiwan, a digital deliberation platform that transforms controversies into consensus through collective intelligence.
The institutional trust crisis does not constitute a fatality but an alarm signal. It reveals the urgency of rethinking democracy as infrastructure for collective correction rather than simple aggregation of individual preferences. Societies that can renew their institutions will retain their competitive advantage. Others risk political implosion.