Creating High-Trust Institutions

In 1958, 73 percent of Americans trusted the government in Washington to do what is right. Today the figure is 17 percent. This article reads the seven-decade polling arc as what it is, the public grading institutional behavior, and asks why the same public gives majority confidence to the military and small business inside the same polarized media environment. The answer is behavioral: high-trust institutions perform visibly and answer visibly for failure. Trust behaves like a balance, earned in small deposits and spent in large withdrawals, and it can be rebuilt only through performance, transparency, and accountability. An institution that wants to be trusted has one path: become trustworthy, and be seen becoming it.