1. Trust and public governance in Brazil
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of country-specific features that may affect public trust in Brazil. It delves into factors such as levels of inequality, interpersonal trust, as well as years of democratic experience, while examining the government’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on trust. Moreover, it emphasises the importance of establishing trust as a deliberate policy objective and introduces the analytical framework that underpins this study.
People’s trust in public institutions and the ability of these institutions to deliver according to their mandate can reinforce each other. Public institutions and social norms that encourage collective behaviours and create a stable and predictable environment may be a prerequisite for trust. In turn, trust improves compliance with public policies, reduces transaction costs, nurtures political participation, generates legitimacy and strengthens social cohesion (Putnam, 1993[1]; Rothstein, 2000[2]; Bergman, 2009[3]; Güemes, 2016[4]; Brezzi et al., 2021[5]).
However, this does not mean that trust is an intrinsic or effortless outcome for modern democracies, and a certain amount of healthy scepticism can even lead to better policies if people’s feedback is acknowledged and there are a range of mechanisms to keep the government accountable.
Public governance in Brazil has had a contrasting record over the past three decades. In the first decade of the 21st century, Brazil succeeded in pulling millions out of poverty thanks to robust economic growth, stabilisation of the country’s finances, effective social programmes and growing demand for Brazilian commodities. Extreme poverty fell from roughly 15% in 2001 to a historic low of less than 4% in 2014 (Ferreira De Souza, 2022[6]) and more than 30 million Brazilians rose from low-income to middle-income groups (Fausto and Fausto, 2014[7]). These successes have to be set against insufficient service quality, recurring fiscal challenges and a tremendously fragmented political apparatus (World Bank, 2018[8]; OECD, 2022[9]). Despite championing a number of innovative approaches to meeting public governance challenges, Brazil still has to overcome gaps in their implementation. With a looming decline in the share of Brazilians of working-age, and a growing ageing population the country urgently needs to build on its earlier momentum to generate greater and more inclusive growth and to invest in its institutional capacities.
Making public trust an explicit policy objective could be crucial to navigating these challenges while preserving Brazil’s hard-fought gains. As the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, trust can help countries successfully handle complex crises where compliance with government public policies is key. In November 2022, OECD countries formally acknowledged the importance of “placing public trust at the centre of policies to deliver better for people and reinforce democracy” (OECD, 2022[10]).
Yet, in line with trends across Latin American countries, public trust consistently declined during the last decades in Brazil (see Figure 2.2 in Chapter 2). As in many other countries, the COVID-19 crisis has only exacerbated this trend. This report discusses the reasons for this decline and the potential remedies, highlighting the main factors that affect trust in government in Brazil and identifying how policy and public governance mechanisms could reinforce them.
The analysis in this study relies mainly on the data collected through the OECD Trust Survey, carried out online in Brazil in April 2022. At the time of the survey, the country was still grappling with both the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising inflation, a highly polarised political environment during the presidential campaign for national elections and increased tensions between branches of government. The political and economic context when the data were collected has undoubtedly had an influence on the trust levels. Indeed, historical data indicate that the share of the public expressing trust in the government in Brazil and in Latin American countries has fluctuated significantly over the past 30 years, although remaining, on average, at around 30%. Major peaks in public trust are observed after national elections and the beginning of economic cycles (see Chapter 2), underscoring the importance of the wider context to people’s perceptions and attitudes.
Trust in government depends on many factors, at both the individual and societal levels. The OECD Framework on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions together with the OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions (OECD, 2017[11]; Brezzi et al., 2021[5]) focus predominantly on governments’ competence and values as the determinants of trust in public institutions, but also consider cultural and political drivers, and governments’ capacity to meet global and intergenerational challenges. Both the framework and the survey provide innovative analytical and measurement tools to enable governments to better serve their citizens and allow a thorough assessment of people’s perceptions and evaluations of public institutions, as well as the relationship between these variables and levels of trust.
Brazil is the fifth country to undertake an in-depth study on the drivers of trust in public institutions, after Korea (2018), Finland (2021), Norway (2022) and New Zealand (2023), and the first Latin American and non-OECD country to do so. Brazil is therefore taking a pioneering role, becoming the first country in the region to reflect in an in-depth analysis based on evidence and citizen feedback, about how to set trust as a policy objective and place it on the agenda for public sector improvement.1 A government that sets trust as a policy objective clearly acknowledges that trust can affect policy outcomes (Box 1.1). It also considers how different initiatives might affect trust and help build trustworthy relationships between people and institutions. As the framework and the survey were originally developed for an OECD context, to ensure they reflected the country’s priorities and were fit for purpose for the specific national and regional context, these two tools have undergone a comprehensive and collective review process. This study also paves the way for future analysis in other Latin American countries, as it already benefits from comparative evidence collected via the inaugural 2021 OECD Trust Survey (OECD, 2022[12]), including two Latin American OECD countries, Colombia and Mexico.
Public trust has been heralded as crucial for public governance. It has a positive impact and supports interactions between individuals, organisations and institutions. For instance, research has found it increases the acceptability of reforms and their likelihood of success (Heinemann and Tanz, 2008[13]).
The COVID-19 pandemic provides one of the most recent and compelling examples of the effects of trust on public governance and policy results. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and policy stringency from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, Bargain and Aminjonov found that the efficiency of mobility reduction policies significantly increased with trust. People in high-trust regions reduced their mobility related to non-necessary activities significantly more than low-trust regions, showing better compliance with national health policies which in turn a slowed the growth of the epidemic (Bargain and Aminjonov, 2020[14]). Regression models’ predictions calculate that an increase in trust to levels close to the 75th percentile might have reduced global infections by 12.9%, and research in 177 countries shows that higher levels of trust in government were associated with higher vaccine coverage (Bollyky et al., 2022[15]).
A trust-based model of public sector management in the civil service places the emphasis on autonomy and mission-related tasks, rather than on reporting and performance measurement. For instance, in Norway, trust is a key element of the political-administrative culture and citizens have faith in the capacity of their civil servants to use public resources and implement qualitative policies (Haugsgjerd and Segaard, 2020[16]). In 2022, Norway put in place its Trust Reform, an initiative to adjust public sector management practices and strengthen collaboration among stakeholders, placing greater emphasis on the knowledge, experience and capacity of civil servants.
In turn, governments’ confidence in their citizens’ knowledge and experience begets willingness to consent and reciprocity (Cook, Hardin and Levi, 2007[17]). Understanding trust as a two-way street has the potential to turn a vicious cycle of scepticism and dishonesty into a virtuous cycle of cooperation and participation (OECD, 2021[18]). As such, government reforms and improvements in policies and services can have a large impact on rebuilding trust in government.
Source: (Bargain and Aminjonov, 2020[14]; Bollyky et al., 2022[15]; Haugsgjerd and Segaard, 2020[16]; Cook, Hardin and Levi, 2007[17]; OECD, 2021[18])
This report examines the complex relationship between public trust and democratic governance in Brazil. Carrying out the OECD Trust Survey in Brazil has provided new comparative evidence on how citizens experience and evaluate their government and public institutions in terms of their responsiveness, reliability, integrity, openness and fairness. These data are complemented by evidence on relevant Brazilian initiatives and policies gathered through in-depth interviews with key national stakeholders held between March and June 2022 and a focus group with minority leaders from the Amazon region in July 2022, so as to provide a full picture of key public governance areas where the government can act in order to regain public trust and improve people’s lives.
The report is organised as follows: this first chapter presents an overview of country-specific features that may affect public trust in Brazil aside from the competences and values of government institutions, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It discusses the relevance of making trust an explicit policy objective and introduces the analytical framework constituting the basis of the study. Chapter 2 shows the results and main trends regarding levels of trust in public institutions in Brazil, as well as findings on the most statistically significant drivers of trust in federal and local governments, and the civil service, based on the results of the OECD Trust Survey. Chapters 3 and 4 dive into the survey results on the drivers of trust in public institutions, against the background of Brazil’s relevant policies and initiatives, with Chapter 3 concentrating on competence and Chapter 4 on values. These chapters compare Brazil’s results and policies to other countries’ experiences and identify its public governance strengths and specific challenges. They identify the opportunities for improvement and provide the basis for a whole-of-government and whole-of-society reflection on how to strengthen trust and democratic governance.
Brazil has emerged as a strategic leader for sound public governance at the regional and global level. The country boasts the largest economy in the region and the eight largest in the world, with a GDP per capita of USD 8 860 (IMF, 2023[19]). Part of the BRICS group of countries and the G20, it has played a leading role in regional and international organisations and has become the OECD’s most engaged key partner over the last two decades (OECD, 2021[20]). As the Latin American country with the largest population (215 million) and territory, it has a unique set of public governance challenges and regularly provides valuable policy experiences and insights on innovative approaches to address economic and governance challenges (Box 1.2). Brazil has made particular strides in the areas of civil service reform and open and digital government.
Brazilian bureaucracy is a top performer in terms of quality and efficiency in Latin America (Evans and Rauch, 1999[21]; Güemes, 2019[22]). According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Civil Service Development Index, Brazil’s federal civil service has one of the highest scores in the region (65 out of 100 points, compared to the regional average of 38). The civil service is undergoing an ongoing process of professionalisation, based on merit criteria, there are many safeguards against nepotism; and civil servants’ technical skills have continuously improved (Cortázar Velarde, Lafuente and Sanginés, 2014[23]; Souza, 2017[24]). Indeed, 59% of Brazil’s public sector workers have a tertiary education, compared to the global average of 47% (World Bank, 2023[25]). Brazil was also one of the first countries to establish a national public sector innovation award (OECD, 2019[26]) and encourages regular mobility schemes for civil servants in subnational units to promote the exchange of knowledge and build capacity across the public administration.
In addition, Brazil is one of the founding countries of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which demonstrates its leadership and long-standing commitment to building open government, lasting for over a decade. Many Brazilian open government initiatives, such as the 2004 creation of the Transparency Portal, the more recent ParticipaMaisBrasil and Fala.BR platforms, as well as municipal participatory budgets first implemented in 1989, have inspired other countries and made Brazil a leader in this area (OECD, 2022[27]). Furthermore, since 2015 the federal government has been moving towards a digital public sector and governance. It has done so by setting policy priorities and advancing initiatives to enhance connectivity, interoperability, open government data and citizen-driven service delivery (OECD, 2018[28]). According to the 2019 Open Useful Re-usable Data (OURdata) Index, Brazil is a top-performer in making data available and ensuring its usability, scoring substantially above the Latin American average and slightly above the OECD one. By 2018, access to the Internet had been extended to 72% of its population, compared to 50% in 2013 (OECD, 2020[29]).
The 1988 Constitution, also known as the “Citizens Constitution”, is exceptionally progressive in the social area. It comprises a broad set of obligations towards citizens, such as the provision of free education and healthcare for everyone.
In 2003, Brazil put in place the Bolsa Família, a conditional cash transfer programme aiming to support families living in poverty or extreme poverty and expanding access to education and health service. As the largest programme of its kind in the world, it became a model for several countries.
In 2007, Brazil established the Ethics Management System of the Federal Executive Branch (Sistema de Gestão da Ética do Poder Executivo Federal- SGEP), and in 2021, it established the Public Integrity System of the Federal Executive Branch (Sistema de Integridade Pública do Poder Executivo Federal- SIPEF). Both initiatives are key to strengthening integrity policies and ensuring their mainstreaming in the Federal Executive.
In 2011 Brazil adopted its Law 12.527/2011 on Access to Information. The legal framework has a very broad scope: everyone can access information, and it covers all material held by or on behalf of public authorities.
In 2017, Law 13.460/2017 established specific rights and mechanisms for users to participate in the delivery and evaluation of public services, as well as the creation of councils of users as formal and permanent mechanisms for citizen participation.
In 2019, Brazil revamped its better regulation efforts with the introduction of the Law of Regulatory Agencies (Law 13.848/2019) and the Economic Freedom Act (Law 13.874/2019). These legal documents set the foundations for the adoption of tools such as the regulatory impact analysis (RIA) and define the obligation for public consultation of regulatory proposals in the regulatory agencies.
In 2021, following Law 14.133/2021 it a unified registration system was created, available on the National Portal for Public Procurement (Portal Nacional de Contratações Públicas- PNCP). It allows unified registration of bidders but also facilitates public access to the register.
Source: (Fausto and Fausto, 2014[7]; OECD, 2021[30]; OECD, 2022[27]; Centre for Public Impact, 2019[31]), in-depth interviews carried out in occasion of this study during June 2022.
Despite this broad range of sound governance initiatives, Brazil has historically been a country with low-to-moderate and declining levels of trust, similar to trends in other countries of the region (Figure 1.1 and Figure 2.2). Trust tends to be a volatile measure and people regularly change their beliefs and perceptions, so trust in government and other public institutions has naturally varied over time, mainly following economic and electoral cycles. For instance, following the commodities boom in the early 2000s, Brazil experienced a peak in levels of trust, with 51% of the population reporting having confidence in the national government. Conversely, following the impeachment and Dilma Rousseff’s removal from office, trust in government dropped quickly, reaching an all-time low of 17% in 2017. According to the Gallup World Poll, in 2022, 39% of people in Brazil reported having confidence in the national government. This share was similar to the Latin American and the Caribbean average and still below the levels of trust reported prior to the 2008 global financial crisis (OECD, 2020[32]).
Note: Data refer to the percentage of people who answered “yes” to the question “Do you have confidence in your national Government?”. The percentage points change since 2011 is shown with yellow dots.
Source: Gallup World Poll, 2023.
1.1.1. Levels of interpersonal trust are low in Brazil, fuelling general scepticism
The academic literature suggests that there is a strong reciprocal link between interpersonal and institutional trust. Although there are still no conclusive results about the causal direction between these two types of trust (Denters, Gabriel and Torcal, 2007[33]), socially trusting individuals tend to be politically trusting (Zmerli and Newton, 2008[34]). For instance, a study in Australia concluded that if people trust their family and friends, they would have higher trust in their local and national representatives and government (Job, 2005[35]), and another study using data from the European Social Survey in Finland found that interpersonal trust had also a strong impact on all levels of political trust (Bäck and Kestilä, 2009[36]). At the same time, other research postulates that there is a reciprocal relationship between interpersonal trust and institutional trust (Rothstein and Uslaner, 2005[37]). The mechanisms through which the two types of trust influence each other appear intuitive: interpersonal trust may be high in places where people can be confident that institutions will function impartially and effectively in the event of a conflict. In turn, trust among people promotes co-operative behaviour and curbs opportunistic exchanges, reducing incentives for free riding, and thus having a positive impact on the provision of public goods.
Brazilian people, as with most Latin Americans (OECD et al., 2021[38]), are not only sceptical about public institutions, but also report strikingly low levels of trust for each other (Figure 1.2). According to data from the Latinobarometer, in 2020, only 4.7% of people in Brazil declared they could trust most people, the lowest share in Latin America. This is in line with previous studies (Power, 2009[39]). In a recent report by the IDB, the especially high correlation between interpersonal and public mistrust in Latin America is also explained by the high levels of inequalities and low levels of social cohesion in the region (Scartascini, 2022[40]).
Note: Figure shows the share responding ‘’One can trust most people’’ to the question: “Generally speaking, would you say that you can trust most people, or that you can never be too careful in dealing with others?’’.
Source: Latinobarometer, 2020.
1.1.2. High levels of inequality in the region may be driving low levels of trust
Low levels of trust could be linked to persistent inequalities in Brazil, and more generally in Latin America (Figure 1.3). Brazil is marked by a high degree of income inequality (48.9 on the Gini Index), above the average in Latin America (45.3) (OECD et al., 2022[41]) and around 70 million Brazilians still have family incomes below twice the minimum salary (Fausto and Fausto, 2014[7]). The richest 10% of Brazilian people have an average income per capita over 50 times that of the poorest 10% (World Bank, 2022[42]), and there is a widespread perception that these deep inequalities need to be remedied (Reis, 2015[43]). After significant declines in income inequality following the commodity boom, poverty reduction has decelerated in Brazil in recent years –as it has in other Latin American countries. The country, together with the region, remain among the most unequal in the world (OECD et al., 2021[38]).
High levels of inequality create sharp divisions in society and fuel social discontent, which structurally undermines social capital and public trust (Rothstein and Uslaner, 2005[37]; Alesina and La Ferrara, 2002[44]). Indeed, the academic literature has long argued that economic equality is the strongest determinant of interpersonal trust and when “inequality increases, the belief that we have a shared fate—we are part of the same moral community—becomes untenable” (Uslaner, 2004[45]). Furthermore, in highly unequal societies, individuals become more concerned about their economic status, which encourages competition and reduces incentives for cooperation. A study using data from the General Social Survey found that in years in which income inequality was particularly high, people in the United States displayed lower levels of trust (Oishi, Kesebir and Diener, 2011[46]). The dynamics between inequality and trust go both ways. For instance, low levels of interpersonal trust were found to affect inequality by undermining support for redistributive policies (Bergh and Bjørnskov, 2014[47]). These elements suggest that trust is crucially affected not only by individual but also by collective experiences.
Note: This scatterplot presents the Gini coefficient for 2021 or the latest available year on the X-axis. The Gini coefficient is a standard measure of inequality representing the income distribution of the population within a given country. It takes the value of 0 when all households have identical income and 100 when one household has all the income. The Y-axis presents the share of respondents who responded “yes” to the question “Do you have confidence in other people?”.
Source: Gallup World Poll (interpersonal trust) and OECD Income Distribution Database and World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (Gini coefficient).
1.1.3. Public governance and institutional settings in Brazil have a significant impact on trust
Policy settings, institutional arrangements and public governance processes can contribute to raising levels of trust. Long-standing academic research has found the performance and reputation of institutions to be important factors contributing to trust (Bouckaert, 2012[48]; Van de Walle and Migchelbrink, 2020[49]).
Brazil’s levels of trust and its failures to capitalise on its sound public governance initiatives may be explained by the limitations of its existing initiatives and institutional features. For instance, in-depth studies on several public governance aspects have found substantial room for improvement, in particular in implementation, and that the territorial and administrative organisation of the government is a cross-cutting challenge (OECD, 2018[28]; OECD, 2020[50]; OECD, 2022[51]; OECD, 2022[27]). As a federal country, the federal government, states, and municipalities in Brazil share responsibilities, competences and resources, which make policy and service design, delivery and evaluation more complex, especially when coupled with persistent and large regional disparities (OECD, 2013[52]).
Indeed, federalism combined with other features of the Brazilian politico-institutional environment, such as a highly fragmented multiparty system and coalitional presidentialism,2 have tended to generate centrifugal effects and fragmentation of power (Galvacante and Gomide, 2016[53]; Samuels, 2008[54]). While checks and balances were explicitly designed to limit abuses of power, promote consensual decision-making through power-sharing and enhance horizontal accountability, they carry a number of risks. In particular, these characteristics could generate challenges to governability, most importantly because they multiply veto powers. Such veto powers can be an obstacle to consensus-building and increase opportunities for corruption (Tavits, 2007[55]). One result may be incremental and slower policy changes. These veto powers can also make it is more difficult for voters to attribute clear responsibility for government performance to a given party, hindering their ability to hold governments (and parties) accountable (Angelova, König and Proksch, 2016[56]).
Chapters 3 and 4 of this report, address specific public governance aspects related to the government’s competences (Chapter 3) and values (Chapter 4), investigating their role as key drivers of public trust. Before diving into those, it is worth also considering that Brazil is a relatively “young” democracy (Center for Systemic Peace, 2021[57]), which can affect people’s political attitudes (Box 1.3) and make it difficult to establish the rule of law throughout the territory (Fausto and Fausto, 2014[7]).
According to the academic literature, in long-standing democracies, the prolonged experience with democratic institutions, the existence of stable values and norms of interaction between citizens, and the existence of spaces for political participation are conducive to the development of institutional trust (LETKI and EVANS, 2005[58]; Letki, 2018[59]). In these political systems, trust in institutions overall and support for democracy are more likely to be internalised and somewhat detached from the performance of a given government or institution. In other words, citizens are more likely to separate their evaluation of specific governments from their attitudes towards the political system, the regime and institutions. In more recent democracies, where citizens have limited experience of democratic institutions, the performance of institutions and governments matters a great deal (Letki, 2018[59]; Catterberg, 2006[60]). Indeed, the data show a correlation between age of democracy and trust (Figure 1.4).
Note: This scatterplot presents the number of years a country has been democratised against the share of respondents who reported high or moderately high trust in the national government (“On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is not at all and 10 is completely, how much do you trust the national government?”). “High or moderately high trust“ corresponds to responses of 6-10.
Source: OECD Trust Survey (http://oe.cd/trust) and Polity Project (https://www.systemicpeace.org/polityproject.html)
Most countries in Latin America have only had a few decades of undisturbed democratic rule (Hagopian and Mainwaring, 2001[61]), and commitment to democracy is only loosely established among their populations (Cohen, Lupu and Zechmeister, 2017[62]). In Brazil, military intervention in politics was a key component of political behaviour during the 1950s and early 1960s (Carvalho, 2019[63]), and though the most recent re-democratisation effort formally ended in 1988-89, this former authoritarian rule can still influence political attitudes and values. During interviews carried out for this study, researchers emphasised that Brazilians’ attitudes, such as strong support for statism, are linked to long periods of authoritarianism, and that is also why Brazilians generally associate the figure of the president with the state.
According to Carvalho, the development of citizenship in Brazil was the inverse of the historical process in Western democracies as social rights preceded all other rights (Carvalho, 2002[64]). They were first implemented during Vargas’ government (1930-1945), during a period of suppression of political rights and limitations on civil rights. Civil rights only became effective during the most recent transition to democracy, along with the renascence of political rights. Citizenship rights were handed out by political elites and government authorities, rather than being demanded by people, which has affected the efficiency and representativeness of the political system (Fausto and Fausto, 2014[7]). This unique sequence is thought to affect the nature of citizenship in Brazil, in particular the way Brazilian people relate to their government and institutions.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected countries throughout the world and required direct government intervention to control the disease and its socio-economic impacts. Government responses have varied significantly in both scale and effectiveness. Their success in limiting the public health and economic consequences of COVID-19 have partially hinged on their ability to leverage public trust to increase the effectiveness of public health interventions. Many of the key policies and interventions deployed to curb the effects of the pandemic, such as lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccination campaigns, required a high degree of compliance, which is likely to increase where there is confidence in the public authorities’ advice. Countries with higher levels of trust in government had lower infection rates, even when adjusted for other factors (Bollyky et al., 2022[65]). At the same time, more effective public responses to the pandemic might be expected to result in higher levels of trust in government.
1.2.1. The COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil was marked by low levels of trust
In 2020, Latin America became the epicentre of the pandemic mainly due to its rapid spread in Brazil, which was ranking second in deaths worldwide at the time (Castro et al., 2021[66]). This happened despite Brazil’s reasonably well-structured universal healthcare system m (Barberia and Gómez, 2020[67]; Algan et al., 2021[68]). The Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), established in 1988, is the largest publicly funded healthcare system in the world, reaching more than 150 million people. Together with other initiatives, such as the Estrategia de Saúde da Familia for primary healthcare, it has proved quite effective. For instance, over the past two decades, infant mortality rates have decreased by 60% and life expectancy increased from 70.2 years in 2000 to 75.9 years in 2019 (OECD, 2021[69]).
Despite its robust public healthcare and their positive perceptions prior to the pandemic, experts have evaluated the Brazilian government’s reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak quite negatively. A study analysing how fast countries adopted strict social isolation measures shows that Brazil delayed the longest in the region (Rebouças Batista, Domingos and Lins, 2020[70]). This is backed up by another study based on data from state health offices carried out between February and October 2020, which concluded that the country’s response to the virus was too slow, highly uncoordinated and reproduced existent inequalities (Castro et al., 2021[66]).
The political crisis concerning the management of the pandemic contributed to conflicts between subnational and federal executive governments3 and was fed by widespread mis- and disinformation campaigns with anti-science narratives. Brazil is one of the countries where trust in scientists has decreased the most during the pandemic – falling even further than trust in government (Algan et al., 2021[68]). The pandemic appears to also have entrenched polarisation, with ideological preferences becoming predictors of trust. For instance, data from a national survey carried out by the Instituto da Democracia show that respondents who supported the president tended to believe more false statements, such as that the pandemic could be fought by chloroquine or that the virus was created by a foreign government.4 Another study in the country found that although scientists were the most trusted source of COVID-19 information amongst Brazilian people, trust in official sources varied widely according to political ideology. Individuals towards the right of the political spectrum on average placed more trust in the federal government, while those with left-leaning tendencies tended to distrust the federal government in favour of the World Health Organization and news media (Meneguello and Porto, 2021[71]). Further, while only one-third of respondents correctly identified misinformation about COVID-19, those on the political right were significantly more likely to hold misinformed beliefs (Rossini and Kalogeropoulos, 2021[72]). In this regard, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, levels of trust might have become more dependent on ideology and political alignment.
In contrast to many countries, where there was a surge of trust in government during the first months of the COVID-19 outbreak (Brezzi et al., 2021[5]), governance of the pandemic negatively and sharply affected Brazilians’ levels of trust in the government (Meneguello and Porto, 2021[71]). The president’s approval ratings dropped by nine percentage points5 and Brazilian people’s confidence in their public health system was also negatively affected. A study based on data from a cross-sectional online survey implemented in 2020 showed that in Brazil, two-thirds of participants (66.3%) trusted the health system, but confidence was significantly higher among those with private health insurance (Giordani et al., 2021[73]). Moreover, these effects could be long-lasting. The OECD Trust Survey found that only 23.1% of respondents in Brazil believed the government would be prepared to handle a future pandemic, and findings across OECD countries show that positive perceptions about government preparedness are positively correlated with trust (Figure 1.5).
Note: Trust in the national government corresponds to responses of 6-10 to the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is not at all and 10 is completely, how much do you trust your national government?”. For Mexico and New Zealand, trust in civil servants is used in lieu of trust in the national government as respondents were not asked about trust in the national government. Confidence in the government’s pandemic preparedness corresponds to responses of 6-10 on a scale of 0-10 to the question “If a new serious contagious disease spreads, how likely or unlikely do you think is it that government institutions will be prepared to protect people’s lives?”. OECD presents the unweighted average of responses across countries.
Source: OECD Trust Survey (http://oe.cd/trust).
1.2.2. The pandemic nevertheless highlighted some strengths which Brazil can build on to foster more trust
Despite this somewhat gloomy picture, the pandemic also brought to the fore some of the factors underpinning the resilience at the core of Brazilian public governance and democracy. First, Brazil was quite successful in terms of vaccination rates, despite the polarisation generated by the unique political and global context. Although starting after the United States and countries in the European Union, Brazil’s vaccination rates overtook those of the United States in November 2021, capitalising on Brazil’s long history of successful vaccination campaigns (de Souza e Silva and Araujo, 2022[74]). A study analysing the effect of trust in the government on social distancing measures in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic found that trust in government positively affected and explains people’s adoption of such measures, suggesting that the bond between government and society, developed through citizens’ trust in government, contributed to more effective combatting of COVID-19 (da Silva et al., 2021[75]).
Moreover, people’s trust in each other was markedly higher during the pandemic than in the pre-2020 period. According to Gallup World Poll, in 2020, 14% of Brazilian respondents reported trusting people in their neighbourhood (and Figure 1.2). If sustained, this may imply a positive legacy. In addition, a study carried out by São Paulo University and qualitative research found that in the initial stages of the outbreak support for others and solidarity rose among Brazilian people (Petra et al., 2022[76]).
In addition to this resurgence of interpersonal trust, the courts played a crucial role in the effective management of the pandemic. The Federal Supreme Court was able to strike down provisions that restricted the publication of COVID-19 governmental data, based on the constitutional right of Access to Information (Meyer and Bustamante, 2021[77]). The court demanded that public servants follow scientific and technical criteria when designing and implementing policies. It allowed the states and municipalities to base their health measures on technical and scientific data collected by them, and not just those collected by the federal government. The same principle allowed states and municipalities to restrict the circulation of people to avoid the spread of the virus.
Furthermore, Brazil has seen a decline in support for military intervention in politics between 2018-2020, and an improvement in the evaluation of public institutions. For instance, according to data from the Instituto da Democracia, levels of mistrust in the Congress fell by around ten percentage points.6 The fact that the judiciary and legislative branches exercised checks and balances on the executive during the pandemic, may have reinvigorated positive perceptions of horizontal accountability and avoided deepening a democratic crisis among the Brazilian public (Avritzer and Rennó, 2021[78]).
In acknowledgement of the importance of trust for public governance, the OECD has worked to support countries in enhancing trust in public institutions for over a decade. After the 2008 global financial crisis eroded trust in governments, with profound implications for countries’ democratic foundations, countries at the 2013 OECD Ministerial Council Meeting called for “strengthen[ed] efforts to understand trust in public institutions and its influence on economic performance and well-being”. Following this call, the OECD built a conceptual framework – the OECD Framework on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions – and statistical guidelines for measuring the drivers of trust in public institutions.
The OECD defines trust as “a person’s belief that another person or institution will act consistently with their expectations of positive behaviour”. This implies that trust offers a key shorthand for information used in social interactions and implies that others, individuals or institutions, will as act as expected, either in a particular action or in a set of actions (OECD, 2017[79]). Trust in government, therefore, would imply that citizens expect their governments to fulfil their mandate, with integrity and competence, acting in pursuit of the broader public interest.
The analytical framework was proposed after a thorough review of the literature to operationalise alternative measures of trust in public institutions and to link the policy discussion on trust more closely to an actionable reform agenda. People’s attitudes have been weak predictors of their actual behaviour, so, the framework assesses the “trustworthiness” of institutions rather than trust in institutions per se. While trust has been commonly captured by measuring attitudes, trustworthiness is traditionally associated with expectations about future behaviour. Building “trustworthy” institutions is something that governments and policies can affect.
Trust is an intangible but key societal asset, so essential it can only be ignored when it is widespread. Yet, trust is also fragile: while it takes time to establish, it can be lost quickly. It may be based on experience, and as such is often subjective, based as much on interpretation or perception as on facts (OECD, 2017[79]).
Following long-standing academic research (Bouckaert, 2012[48]; Van de Walle and Migchelbrink, 2020[49]), the OECD framework mainly focuses on two broad components of governance to guide public efforts to recover trust in government institutions:
competence, which seeks to capture the degree to which institutions are responsive and reliable in delivering policies and services;
values, which include the degree to which institutions operate with openness, integrity and fairness.
In addition to the country-specific impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global health and socio-economic crisis also led to a reflection on the analytical framework on the drivers of trust in public institutions. The pandemic took place amidst ongoing concerns about the ability of democratic governments to address globalisation and digitalisation, steer the needed green transformation of societies, and maintain social cohesion in the face of growing political polarisation. The framework has therefore been reviewed with the aim of addressing and guiding public efforts to recover trust in government during and after the crisis. The review used a consultative process7 to unpack the links between public trust and democratic governance, to help countries identify effective responses to shocks and strengthen their democratic governance models to tackle major challenges. As a result, the OECD Framework on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions (Table 1.1) also focuses on building back more inclusively – e.g. by taking into account socio-economic, political and cultural differences, and generating buy-in to address challenging, long-term, intergenerational issues, like climate change (Brezzi et al., 2021[5]).
Finally, the experience of the pandemic and the tangible effects trust had on governance outcomes highlight the need to better understand the different roles of mistrust and distrust to inform and strengthen governments’ trust-building strategies. Mistrust implies that vigilant and well-informed people base their evaluations on what public institutions deliver (Devine et al., 2020[80]). In fact, mistrust and critical citizens are key for the functioning of democracies. Critical citizens are more likely to engage in political activities and make public representatives and officials accountable for their work.
Conversely, distrust is associated with a heuristic response based on intrinsic beliefs or biases, which do not reflect actual performance but instead endemic cynicism and expectations of betrayal (Thomson and Heinz, 2019[81]). Distrust reflects suspicious attitudes towards others, and the belief that the other is untrustworthy. It is often driven by moral and normative behaviours that may be affected by misinformation and not solely by government actions (Devine et al., 2020[80]). Cynicism and distrust may fuel disengagement and nurture populist responses that can, in turn, undermine democracies.
The OECD framework and the survey derived from it provide guidance on measuring trust, and how to monitor it over time and analyse the factors that may drive it in the future. As such, it could prove instrumental in making governments more accountable to their citizens.
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Notes
← 1. Colombia and Mexico participated in the inaugural OECD Trust Survey, implemented in 22 OECD countries in 2021-2022. Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico, the four Latin American OECD countries, will also participate in the 2023 OECD Trust Survey. In addition, Chile is carrying out a similar in-depth study on drivers of trust in public institutions in 2024.
← 2. According to the Electoral Index dataset, Brazil has one of the largest number of political parties in the world (Gallagher, 2023[82]). During interviews carried out as part of this study, experts pointed that a large number of parties, which is partially a consequence of flexible electoral rules, makes governability possible but very “costly”: coalitions are heterogenous, negotiations and bargaining frequent and this could have negative impacts on trust.
← 3. On one side, the federal government favoured a more centralised kind of federalism in terms of decision-making and decreased federal funding; on the other hand, in face of federal inaction, governors and mayors acted with more autonomy in fighting the disease (Rebouças Batista, Domingos and Lins, 2020[70]) (Abrucio et al., 2020[83]).
← 4. https://noticias.uol.com.br/colunas/a-cara-da-democracia/2021/05/25/dados-mostram-a-relacao-entre-o-bolsonarismo-e-a-desinformacao-na-pandemia.htm
← 5. Covid-19 has given most world leaders a temporary rise in popularity | The Economist https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/09/covid-19-has-given-most-world-leaders-a-temporary-rise-in-popularity.
← 6. https://www.institutodademocracia.org/blog/categories/a-cara-da-democracia-no-brasil.
← 7. The consultative process was entitled “Building a New Paradigm for Public Trust”, and engaged over 800 policy makers, civil servants, researchers, data providers and representatives from the private and non-profit sectors across six webinars between 2020 and 2021 (www.oecd.org/fr/gov/webinar-series-building-a-new-paradigm-for-public-trust.htm).