Trust is down. Institutions worry about confidence. A campaign promises openness, publishes a dashboard and asks the public to believe again.
Onora O’Neill proposed a better objective: do not try to manufacture more trust. Build trustworthiness and support intelligent judgement.
The distinction is severe. Trust is something another person gives. Trustworthiness is a quality an actor must demonstrate. One can be requested with messaging. The other requires changing conduct, incentives and exposure to consequence.
Transparency can increase fog
Institutions often respond by publishing more. Large disclosures can be technically transparent and practically illegible. The people with time, lawyers and analysts gain understanding; everyone else receives a wall of documents and a claim that nothing was hidden.
Accountability needs narrower connections:
- Who made the decision?
- What evidence supported it?
- Which interests were disclosed?
- Who bears the cost if it fails?
- How can an affected person challenge it?
These questions make trustworthiness assessable. They do not demand a positive answer.
Distrust can be intelligent
Some distrust is prejudice, manipulation or trauma. Some is an accurate response to repeated experience. Treating all scepticism as a social pathology protects powerful actors from feedback.
A trustworthy system allows cautious participation. It limits the damage of betrayal, provides evidence, admits uncertainty and makes exit or appeal possible. It does not require warmth toward the institution.
The success metric is not how many people say they trust. It is whether people can make a competent decision about where reliance is warranted.