Over the past decade, a decline of democratic legitimacy has been observed in many countries across different world regions. The decline has many facets and borderlines due to international crises, the rise of populism, social polarization and institutional weaknesses. Against this background, the paper focusses on aspects of social and institutional trust as it relates to these developments on a worldwide basis. The analyses rely on the comprehensive database provided by seven waves of the World Values Surveys (WVS), an approach that makes it possible to offer a differentiated picture both by world regions and various political system types (Inglehart et al. 2015). The final section assesses the current situation in the context of an increased system competition between liberal democracies and autocratic regimes.
D. Berg-Schlosser (2026) studied this question.