by Anna Lúcia Nagy, University of Tartu
Resilience both on the community level and on a national level requires a high degree of trust in political leaders. In case of a crisis, it is the state which is primarily responsible for organizing crisis management. Therefore, trust from the overwhelming majority of society in the political leaders of a state is an essential prerequisite for societal resilience, and consequently, the resilience of the state itself.
People switch to alternative sources of information if they do not find the official narrative about the crisis convincing.
Recent crises have clearly shown the importance of trust in state authorities. It greatly affected the willingness of the population to cooperate with the authorities during the Covid-19 pandemic regarding observation of safety rules during lockdowns and the rate of vaccination in any given society. This correlation was quite visible, for example, in the case of the Russian-speaking minority in Estonia, where there was a significantly higher willingness to get vaccinated. Those Russians whose overall confidence in Estonian state institutions tends to be high were more willing to receive a vaccination. Particularly, confidence in state authorities has been a crucial factor in coping with disinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic and in the context of the war in Ukraine. People switch to alternative sources of information if they do not find the official narrative about the crisis convincing. All in all, following overwhelmingly the official media channels or, on the contrary, alternative sources of information is also about having or not having confidence in state authorities who convey the official narrative. Therefore, the degree of trust in state officials also affects the success of fighting disinformation. As the war in Ukraine has shown, in case of a crisis, it is crucial that political leaders provide a satisfactory evaluation of the situation and strategies on how to deal with it. The degree of trust in the political leadership also affects how successfully the latter can manage crises. If the official narrative of the events becomes the dominant one, it means that society can respond to the crisis in accordance with the goals set by the state.
One can say that populist leaders, or even authoritarian regimes, sometimes receive a very high degree of trust from society. No doubt, in this case, these states with populist or authoritarian leadership are indeed very resilient – at least against external challenges, if this trust lasts. On the other hand, well-functioning democracies with a low degree of trust in political leaders might be much less resilient. This implies that democratic states with deep cleavages are at a disadvantage compared to non-democratic states with more united societies, at least regarding resilience. Divided societies are less resilient since they are not able to have a unified response to crises, and as a result of a shock, are more likely to collapse. A well-functioning state can enable the society to overcome ideological or ethnic cleavages and unite it for collective interests.
Therefore, mutual trust between state authorities and the population is a precondition for successful cooperation, which, in turn, enables both the state and the society itself to become more resilient.
- This blog is a part of a blog series written by the BAMSE Riga intensive course students. The blog series analyses the concept of resilience from five different viewpoints: democracy in crises, regional responses, social consequences, relevance of history politics and cultural approaches. This blog belongs to the democracy in crises part of the blog series. Read more about the blog series on Bamse News & Events website.