Poles have the second lowest level of trust in their own government among the 38 countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), according to polling data published by the intergovernmental body.
Just 27.3% of respondents in Poland had confidence in their national government, found the survey, higher only than in Chile (17.1%). At the other end of the scale, the Swiss (84.6%) and Norwegians (82.9%) had the highest levels of trust.
Source: OECD (2021), Trust in government (indicator). doi: 10.1787/1de9675e-en (accessed on 16 June 2021)
Poland’s latest trust rating is the lowest it has been in five years. Confidence in the government had initially risen after the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in 2015 (when it stood at 21.1%), reaching over 50% in 2017.
However, it dropped sharply in 2020, a year marked by struggles with the coronavirus pandemic (with Poland having Europe’s highest excess death rate) and the largest protests in the country’s post-communist history.
Source: OECD (2021), Trust in government (indicator). doi: 10.1787/1de9675e-en (Accessed on 16 June 2021)
A survey published by IBRiS last year similarly found that less than one third (30.5%) of Poles trust their government, putting it at the bottom of the ranking of Polish institutions.
Over two thirds of the public (68%) expressed trust in the European Union, more than any other institution in Poland and an 11 percentage point rise since 2017. The Catholic church recorded the biggest drop in trust over that period, falling 13 percentage points to 39.5%.
According to the OECD, trust in government is deteriorating across its 38 members. The organisation notes that the best predictors of trust are “government’s values”, such as high levels of integrity, fairness and openness of institutions, as well as responsiveness and reliability in delivering public services.
In general, citizens tend to trust various public services more than the government itself, according to the latest data from 2019. Across the OECD, only 45% had confidence in the central authorities, lower than for the judicial system (56%), healthcare (66%), the education system (67%) and local police (77%).
Main image credit: Krystian Maj/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
