I did a little more look at that fascinating trust index (how much different nations trust their leaders) and tried to come up with a common denominator for what helps determine the level of trust. It's not democracy versus autocracy, or free press versus locked down press.
My initial hunch was level of immigration. The thinking being, if a government can't be trusted to limit foreign immigration then it likely can't be trusted period. But the fit was imperfect. The curves not fully inverse. I looked then at the possibility of "globalism", seeing how that creates a lot of discontents. But it's hard to quantify: is the globalism economic, political or social? All three? And how do you define the level of globalism in a place like the Netherlands, where they are globalists generally (in terms of the climate change scam) but not in terms of immigration.
If we look at the big picture: that we are in period of time, after the fall of the Soviet Union, in which the sole superpower is the USA.
How much discontent is driven simply by a country's leadership kowtowing to foreign interest (the US) rather than putting their country first?
It turns out it's surprisingly clear inverse relationship. The less you are entwined with the United States, the more your people seem to trust you.
Here's the chart. The values range from 1 (i.e like Russia) to 10 (US obviously is the biggest ally/influence on US is the US). European countries generally range from UK being the high, to Germany/France being 6-7 on the scale. The green line shows the level of US influence on a country, the blue line the level of trust its citizens have in their government. (Click to enlarge.)
https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2024-01/2024 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report_0.pdf |
Obviously the caveat is it's not an exact science in determining the degree of US influence. I used mostly a survey of countries linked above by the perceived influence, both by foreigners and Americans.
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