No More Heroes

Individuals may form communities, Benjamin Disraeli said, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation. Our courts, parliaments and associations set the collective rules of engagement that provide for the smooth and fair functioning of government, commerce and society. As the world becomes smaller, international bodies such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization are playing similar roles on a global stage. Yet despite this growing clout (or perhaps because of it) the public's faith in institutions appears to be waning. On the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, we look at the reasons for this credibility crisis—and, in a series of profiles, get the bottom-up view from people whose stories of disaffection and alienation may contain clues for rebuilding the trust that binds nations and communities together

For a world leader, it must have set some sort of miserable record: in a poll last December, just 1% of French voters said they wanted President Jacques Chirac to stand for reelection in 2007. For Chirac, that capped a terrible year of economic torpor, electoral setback and, in November, a fiery eruption of social unrest in the suburbs of Paris and elsewhere. Trying to restore his authority, the French President gave a televised New Year address to the nation. "We must believe in France," he told his compatriots, in a pathos-filled speech quickly lampooned by the nation's cartoonists and columnists.

Some of Chirac's peers may be smirking at his plight, but perhaps they should take note. For the French President's rock-bottom ratings are an extreme example of a corrosive trend in public opinion that poses just as much of a threat to U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and leaders of dozens of other countries, as well as to the heads of global institutions and corporations from IBM to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As political and business leaders ready themselves for their trek to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, they do so at a time when the mistrust of authority—and an increasingly vocal disrespect for it—has gone global. Deference is dead, replaced by sniping, cynicism and an outpouring of open protest. Thanks to the Internet, every individual's gripe can now be amplified and diffused to a mass audience, whether the gripers are retired Americans whose pension benefits have been slashed or Chinese peasants who have lost their farmland to the nation's torrid industrialization. A recent WEF poll of more than 20,000 people in 20 countries revealed that public trust in national governments, the U.N. and multinational companies dropped significantly over the past two years and is now close to the lows recorded after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A separate worldwide poll, conducted this month by Gallup International for the WEF, found that six out of 10 people think politicians are dishonest. In Africa, the ratio was eight out of 10. Business leaders fared only slightly better: 40% of those surveyed said they considered top executives dishonest, while 46% said they had too much power.

To some extent, this public hostility is well deserved. The bankruptcies of Enron in the U.S. and Parmalat in Italy—and last week, the gyrations of Japan's stock market following news of alleged financial wrongdoing by Internet company Livedoor—have focused attention on corporate misdeeds on three continents. Revelations about how the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff allegedly bought influence in the U.S. Congress have made a mockery of claims for clean government. The U.N. is struggling to recover from its own high-level corruption scandal relating to the oil-for-food program in prewar Iraq. And, at a time when stock markets are booming, the global economy is growing at its fastest clip in three decades and chief executives are cutting themselves huge paychecks, ordinary people the world over have cause to complain about being locked out of the party. "The top of the house shouldn't continue to award itself when the folks on the lower end of the ladder suffer," says C. William Jones, a retired telephone-company worker in Easton, Maryland, who was so incensed about his pension and health-care benefits being cut that he helped start a protest group called BellTel Retirees. It now has more than 100,000 members and mainly communicates online.

Yet however easy it may be to understand, the global culture of distrust and disdain has disturbing implications. In Western Europe, for example, naysayers impede needed economic reforms. Government officials know they must implement sweeping policy changes to make their economies more competitive, but leaders who want to effect change must be concerned with the social consequences and their own reelection prospects. "We have to make strategic choices in the context of a strong questioning of our institutions and traditional systems of representation," says Sophie Boissard, a senior French civil servant who is establishing a policy-strategy unit for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Along with November's social unrest, she points to falling voter participation and declining labor-union membership as evidence of growing public cynicism. In Britain, the government is trying to stop the rot with a campaign against antisocial behavior, especially among young people. Launching his "respect" initiative, Prime Minister Blair personally traveled to the town of Swindon earlier this month and used a high-pressure hose to remove graffiti from the wall of a housing project.

Taken to an extreme, distrust gnaws away at some of the fundamentals of modern society. Why vote if all politicians are charlatans? Why work if all companies are crooked? Today, "Anyone with a beef can start a conspiracy theory," says Frank Furedi, a controversial sociology professor at Britain's University of Kent, who argues that deference to traditional authorities is being replaced by reverence for new ones. "We don't trust politicians but we have faith in the pronouncements of celebrities. We are suspicious of medical doctors but we feel comfortable with healers who mumble on about being 'holistic' and 'natural.' We certainly don't trust scientists working for the pharmaceutical industry but we are happy to listen to the disinterested opinion of a herbalist."

Trust matters. If the world habitually second-guesses authorities who are accountable, however inadequately, we may find ourselves ill-prepared to meet the huge challenges posed by globalization. "In periods of great economic and technological change, trust can reduce the political, social, economic and emotional friction that often locks systems and organizations solid," says John Elkington, founder of a nongovernmental organization called SustainAbility that focuses on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. Even NGOs are affected, Elkington notes. Groups such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International have led the attack against companies and governments, and a WEF poll shows that NGOs today are the organizations most trusted by the public. But even for NGOs distrust is growing, particularly in countries such as India, Brazil and South Korea. "People will ask: who are these people, and to whom are they accountable?" Elkington says. "You don't need many NGO Enrons to undermine people's trust."