In recent years, the global political landscape has witnessed a notable trend of declining political trust in public institutions. This has happened because of the rise of populist political leaders who reach the corridors of power by bypassing the masses and traditional political institutions. The rise of this trend has profound implications for public trust in political institutions, particularly the parliament. It produces authoritarian regimes combined with an arbitrary culture of governance that undermines the legitimacy of democratic institutions. That is to say, in many cases, the concentration of power in a few hands leads to the erosion of democratic governance. Around the globe, countries that once enjoyed robust public trust in their political institutions have seen their political landscapes shift dramatically.
A critical and comparative study from the University of Southampton on Global Trends in Institutional Trust, published in the British Journal of Political Science, has found that trust in representative institutions such as parliaments, governments, and political parties has been declining in democratic countries around the world. It says that this decline is a “warning sign” that has not only become a central challenge to democracy but could also pave the way for non-democratic political leaders to use the state in more autocratic ways. This study reveals that trust in parliaments is declining in 36 democracies, including Argentina, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain, South Korea, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, as well as in Latin America.
In Pakistan, this low political trust in political institutions appears to be associated with the rise of populist parties and the government’s inability to respond timely and effective manner to citizens’ socio-economic demands arising out of natural disasters such as recent floods and social security needs.
Yet, there is still evidence that citizens largely support the idea of democracy, but they have lost faith in the political institutions that are necessary for democratic governance.
If the exercise of periodic general elections is a test of measuring the health of democracy, then the democratic institutions of Pakistan, in the last couple of years, can claim to be in good health. Of course, frequent elections unaccompanied by accountable and stable governments indicate some underlying widespread malaise and increased scepticism and public trust deficit in democratic institutions.
The health of democracy is linked to the state of democracy within political parties
With declining political trust, we assume that we are experiencing a “crisis of democracy” around the globe and, at least, “trendless fluctuations” in Pakistan. In Pakistan, we argue that the decline in political trust is not discontent with democracy as a political system but discontent with governance. Evidence in this case is provided by the Free and Fair Election Network’s report on voter turnout in the 2024 general elections. Despite all means of undemocratic actions, such as fears of political violence, terrorism, and uncertainty about the conduct of elections, about 60.6 million voters exercised their right to vote in the February 2024 general elections. This means that nearly 5.8 million more people voted in the 2024 elections compared to the 2018 general elections, when 54.8 million people cast their votes.
This indicates that declining trust in democratic institutions is not inevitable in the Pakistani case. If it is something about the policies of democratic institutions that citizens distrust, then probably those policies need to change. This change may well be in the direction of more democracy within political parties, which serve as agents between citizens and democratic institutions. A well-trodden debate in political science about the linkage between the state of democracy within parties and the health of democracy as an idea is well addressed by political scientists. Drawing on the literature on electoral democracy, we propose that parties are in trouble and, thus, so is democracy, at least in the Pakistani case. In other words, the health of democracy is linked to the state of democracy within political parties.
While parties are centred on the agency of political trust of people in parliament, it is suggested that, at the heart of reforms to protect the integrity of the electoral process, there is a dire need to introduce platforms for citizens’ petitions, freedom of information legislation, the open government agenda, and participatory budgeting. Additionally, the same applies to our final party arena parties as organisations, although in this instance, the reforms relate to the parties themselves. When it comes to organisational change within parties, there is a need for a set of reforms that include giving party members more say in key decisions over areas such as candidate selection or the election of party leaders. Such reforms, at least ostensibly, can help regain public trust in government institutions and re-engage party activists.
A potential step in this regard could be digital parties that provide more promising evidence of the use of deliberative processes by parties. In Pakistan, parties get a bad rap. For some, they are the source of many contemporary problems of governance, whereas for others, parties are seen as a shadow of decline in democracies. In the final analysis, parties are facing serious challenges in contemporary Pakistan, but they can still have a future if their leadership starts thinking beyond electoral democracy and power politics and brings democratic innovations within, to make fundamental contributions to democracy and political trust-building in democratic governance in Pakistan.
In democratic cultures, change in political trust can reflect a shifting gap between the expectations of citizens and what institutions deliver. Since there is no single silver bullet for reviving public trust, improvements can be made through political stability, rule of law, citizen-centric public policy, which is a constitutional imperative, and the promotion of an inclusive, accountable, pluralistic, and democratic parliament.