The 21st century trust and leadership problem: Quoi faire?

Much of the democratic world is in crisis. While each country faces its own unique combination of challenges, the most common problems are: fraying trust in institutions, democratic backsliding, increasing inequality, persistent patterns of social exclusion, self-serving elites, lower social mobility, political polarization and rising authoritarian tendencies (Edelman 2021; OECD 2018; Boxell et al. 2021) While many of these predated the COVID-19 pandemic, some have gained added momentum in the last year. Experts fear that current developments could permanently endanger democratic norms, tearing the social fabric of societies apart, and threaten the liberal order around the world (Przeworski 2019; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2019; Fukuyama 2019; Applebaum 2020).