Since the Civic Culture, political trust has long been regarded as vital for the stability of liberal democracies. This quality is believed to drive civic engagement, to boost voting turnout, and to encourage law-abiding behavior.  Any erosion of trust generates widespread concern about risks of political instability.

But the time is long overdue to rethink conventional assumptions underpinning many of these popular claims. Regime legitimacy relies on the consent of the governed. But such compliance should be earned, not blindly given. Citizens should trust authorities which have proved competent, honest and impartial in the past and thus are likely to be trustworthy in future. By contrast, credulous faith in ineffectual, mendacious, or corrupt authorities can undermine liberal democracy and the public good. 

This understanding raises many challenging questions which need to be investigated. On complex issues, can ordinary people make informed judgments about the performance of government? What is the role of direct experience of public services and information (or misinformation) from civic intermediaries in this process, including media communications, NGOs, and monitoring watchdogs? What societal conditions, state policies, and individual characteristics enable --or prevent -- accurate and reliable evaluations by citizens of agency performance? What government policies and strategies promote or hinder skeptical judgments?

TRUEDEM is a 3-year multinational research project funded by the Horizon program of the European Commission with several core objectives. 

1. To collect comprehensive longitudinal and cross-national benchmark survey evidence about public trust in a wide range of countries and regimes. 

2. To compare how far citizens attitudes reflect objective performance indicators measuring the quality of governance processes and policy outcomes. 

3. To understand the underlying societal, state, and individual conditions strengthening reliable and accurate public evaluations of government performance.

4. To analyze the consequences of both cynical mistrust and credulous trust for civic engagement, elections, and political behavior.

5. To develop a comprehensive policy toolbox of short  and long-term interventions for enhancing both informed public trust and the trustworthiness of political institutions.

TRUEDEM is coordinated in Austria with partners in Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Ukraine. 

The three-year program runs from January 2023 to December 2025.