Can a state be effectively built and defended when people do not trust its institutions? What are the risks of excessive trust in “our own,” and what shapes the very feeling of trust itself? In her essay, Maryna Starodubska – a cross-cultural interaction consultant, Adjunct Professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, and author of the books How to Understand Ukrainians: A Cross-Cultural Perspective and Ukraine Layer By Layer: Freedom & Friction In a Frontier Society – reflects on these questions. Among other things, she explains why “we trust least the institutions that, in fact, make a country a state.”
Maryna Starodubska, cross-cultural interaction consultant, Adjunct Professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, and author
“If it has to be explained, then it does not need to be explained” – one of the most popular expressions defining the boundary between “our own” and “outsiders” in our society. Immediate affinity and a minimum of radical otherness are critical prerequisites for productive interaction.
This is because 65% of Ukrainians need a great deal of evidence to convince another person of something they themselves believe in, 52% prefer not to trust anyone because it is safer that way, 55% believe that “strong leaders can do more for the country than all laws and discussions,” for 40% relations with the state amount to a situation in which “everyone looks after their own interests,” and 13% avoid interacting with the state whenever possible.
At first glance, trust is a private feeling, but its systemic shortage is a social problem. The overwhelming majority of our society’s developmental challenges – from attracting investors to miltech startups to effective supervisory boards of state-owned companies, meaningful reforms of state institutions, or conscientious tax payment – are rooted precisely in deep distrust of people outside one’s close circle.
So how can we stop fearing “outsiders” and “those who are different” and learn to build trust based on professional competence rather than the strength of personal connections? This is one of Ukraine’s strategic questions.
Trust Is Not So Much Low as Its Radius Is Narrow
Deep-rooted social distrust is not an exclusively Ukrainian phenomenon. In the United States, for example, citizens’ trust in government has not exceeded 30% since 2007; in the Czech Republic, this figure is approximately 71% of the population, in Slovenia – 58%, in the United Kingdom – 57%, in Latvia – 54%, and in Chile – 54%. Forty-eight percent of people in Costa Rica trust other people, compared with 50% in the Czech Republic and 55% in Korea and Mexico. Clearly, these countries differ substantially in their political, economic, and social trends, so low trust in fellow citizens and the state is an insufficient indicator for understanding public behavior.
The key to “unpacking” these patterns is the radius of trust. This is the size of the circle of people whom that part of the population which believes that others can be trusted is actually prepared to trust. We unconditionally trust our closest blood relatives within the family – 96% – deeply trust more distant relatives – 68% – and friends – 60%. But when it comes to “outsiders” and “those who are different,” this figure falls sharply. Thirty-seven percent of Ukrainians trust people in general, 24% trust people of another nationality, 13% trust strangers, and 11% trust those with different political views, according to the Rating Group research agency. Thus, trust in Ukraine is not so much low as it is “short” – it does not scale beyond the close circle.
There is an explanation for such behavior: throughout most of Ukrainians’ history – whether with a state of their own or without one – in difficult circumstances it was possible to rely only on “our own people.” Even today, many people find it more convenient to borrow money from a godparent than from a bank, while a problem with a product or service is often resolved through useful contacts and the power of Facebook. Institutions and systems, by contrast – including imperial ones – were mostly alien, often hostile and punitive, and a significant proportion of them remain ineffective to this day. At least in the opinion of citizens, because only 15% trust civil servants, approximately 16% trust courts and political parties, approximately 14% trust the anti-corruption system, and 22% trust the government.
So for us, the circle of “our own” provides hope and support, while “outsiders” are a source of anxiety and uncertainty. Recall how, with the beginning of the full-scale invasion, relatives, friends, neighbors, and informal connections in general became the foundation of volunteer networks that continue to operate today – 48% of Ukrainians formed such connections during the war.
However, a narrow radius of trust comes at a cost, because outside the circle of “our own” the principle of “better safe than sorry” applies. This complicates professional, financial, and partnership cooperation, which by default is based on respect for expertise. Moreover, when making decisions, we tend to substitute informal arrangements for institutional mechanisms of interaction. We trust only our own experience and the opinions of acquaintances, bypass formal procedures whenever possible and convenient, and apply different rules and requirements to “our own,” finding an “individual approach” and “exceptions to the rules,” while demanding that “outsiders” act “strictly in accordance with procedure.” Hence 56.3% of Ukrainians believe that justice is not ensured in our society.
This structure of trust is both a resource and a threat, because outside high-risk situations, where the principle of “one of our own helping one of our own” can be life-saving, a worldview gulf emerges between different social bubbles that find it difficult to reach agreement with one another. Moreover, bonding social capital is formed, while bridging social capital does not emerge.
In other words, within a community or local group, social capital is high, and informal agreements and recommendations are sufficient for productive cooperation. But when a bridge has to be built between different bubbles, social capital is lacking, while we do not trust dry procedures and instead look for a trap in them or for an interested party for whom they were written. Thus, when we speak about whom Ukrainians generally trust, we are not talking about trust granted in advance to strangers, but about particularized trust in three groups, declining from the first to the third: (1) family, (2) friends and/or acquaintances, (3) strangers and “those who are different.”
Therefore, when implementing changes and reforms, there is no need to try to create trust from scratch – we already have an abundance of it when it comes to “our own.” What we urgently need are institutional conditions that allow deep trust to extend beyond close relationships. These are conditions in which discretion 1 in important decision-making is minimal, rules are transparent, consequences for violating them are inevitable, and social status and connections do not provide the privilege of escaping those consequences. Then we will not be so afraid to trust because we will feel less vulnerable. Even our desire for a strong leader is not about dictatorship, but about a trusted person who will bring order to disorder and personify responsibility if something suddenly goes wrong.
Conditional Cooperation Instead of Chaotic Distrust
It is logical that when between half and two-thirds of the population distrust the state and their fellow citizens, trusting behavior becomes a sign of weakness and is not socially approved. Opportunism, by contrast – “hacking the system,” “seizing the moment,” “getting what you can here and now” – becomes entirely justified and is often perceived as resourcefulness and entrepreneurship. At the same time, the same person may calibrate their behavior from trusting to transactional depending on the circumstances in which they make a decision and their perception of their own agency within those circumstances.
A telling example is citizens’ disproportionate negativity toward civil servants, one of the groups least trusted by Ukrainian society, because 79% of Ukrainians are convinced that they are guided in their work purely by considerations of personal gain. And 77% are confident that the integrity of public institutions would improve if employees who take bribes were punished severely. Yet only 19% agree that citizens who give those bribes should be punished proportionately, because the former are perceived as occupying a position of power, while the latter are seen as victims. Thus, within an opportunistic logic, giving a bribe “because there is no other way” is acceptable, while taking one from a position of authority is not.
For the same reason, 86% of Ukrainians admit that they do not want to pay taxes because they are convinced that the money will be stolen or wasted, while more than 70% regularly donate to the military – often on the basis of trust and without requiring formal reporting from those they support. This is because confidence that the military will use the funds for their intended purpose is not questioned, given the obvious benefit and the extremely high personal price that service members pay by being in the military.
Total distrust of tax authorities, by contrast, and their perception as punitive institutions – because of the presumption of taxpayer guilt – inclines citizens to avoid dealing with them.
The calibration of social behavior also depends on the circle of interaction and the degree of cohesion within it. At the “citizen – state” level, meaning vertical cohesion, Ukrainians rate the state’s accountability – 2.7 out of 10 – and care for citizens – 2.6 out of 10 – lowest, while at the same time identifying with Ukraine at 5.6 out of 10.
This produces a paradox of self-identification: “we are Ukrainians,” but “the state is them.” Thus, we have not yet come to regard state institutions as something created and governed by citizens themselves.
At the “citizen – citizen” level, meaning horizontal cohesion, what is most difficult for us is cooperation within communities – 5.1 out of 10 – and tolerance of otherness – 5.6 out of 10. Recall the cases in which residents of apartment buildings were unable to agree on jointly purchasing generators during winter blackouts – not because they lacked money, but because they feared being deceived by “who knows whom.” It appears that we are more inclined to trust and cooperate under conditions of affinity and shared interest, but will “seize the moment” and use connections to obtain desired results where we feel there is a lack of unity, transparency, and accountability.
The more striking a person’s differences are from what we are accustomed to, the more difficult it is for us to interact with them. There is no need to look far for examples: consider the sharpest lines of social tension at present. According to specialized research, the principal targets of social hatred are Ukrainians who left Ukraine and the authorities as a meta-institution onto which criticism and dissatisfaction with any behavior by state agencies and officials are projected.
Trust also varies depending on nationality – recall the emotionally charged battles on social media, fueled by negative information campaigns, over the supposed “influx of Indians and Bangladeshis” or the Menorah 2 on Maidan, which bothers someone every year, against the backdrop of many years of peaceful coexistence with communities from East and Central Asia, as well as the Caucasus, particularly in large cities. We share common spaces with them, use the same services, and buy goods from them. Thus, we do not reject otherness as such – we more readily accept the kind that is familiar, understandable, and predictable in how it manifests itself.
Given these characteristics, particular attention should be paid to getting acquainted, learning to work together, and involving all participants in projects, communities, and localities. In addition, sufficient time should be allocated to developing and explaining decisions and changes that will affect specific groups of citizens. Separate work is needed with those who “disagree,” “feel unheard,” or “are dissatisfied,” whose social capital within the relevant communities will be low, which in turn will generate conflicts and undermine cooperation.
Pragmatic Democracy and Trust “by Merit”
Despite deeply rooted distrust of institutions, 61% of Ukrainians believe that democracy is the best political system. And our expectations of democratic institutional behavior are among the highest in the sample from the latest wave of the European Social Survey. In particular, we rate the importance of fairness in the courts at 9.6 out of 10, while rating the quality of their actual performance at 2.3 out of 10 – almost the largest gap between expectations and reality among the countries participating in the survey.
But there is a notable difference between Ukraine and, in particular, Northern and Western Europe in the mechanisms used to ensure the quality of institutional decisions. In the latter, most such mechanisms are depersonalized and formalized, with an emphasis on accountability.
In Ukraine, by contrast, confidence in the quality of decisions revolves more around trust in charismatic leaders than in systems.
Thus, for example, in the recent contentious interview between Vitalii Portnikov and Yurii Fedorenko, the substantive discussion of the parties’ arguments about the quality of public administration was drowned out by their emotional disputes over the personalities of defense ministers from different periods, as well as by their search for flaws in each other’s character.
Perhaps the most tangible effect of the gap between expectations and the realities of institutional functioning is the hierarchy of trust according to the type of institution – specifically, according to how visible and instrumentally useful those institutions are perceived to be “here and now.”
An analysis of several dozen waves of sociological research over the past 30 years reveals three groups of institutions in Ukraine according to Ukrainians’ level of trust: protective, local, and infrastructural.
Predictably, the highest level of trust is enjoyed by protective institutions: the military, rescue services, and volunteers, with a figure of approximately 80%. As long as the result is visible and useful, questions about the quality of procedures arise only when a problem or scandal occurs. One example is the contrasting attitudes toward defenders on the front line and Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers, which structurally represent the same institution, but whose behavior is perceived in diametrically opposite ways. Another example is the issue of reporting by the Hospitallers, interest in which subsided without external “firefighting” because the core of their donors trusts them for reasons other than formal reporting.
Local institutions enjoy a medium level of trust at best – around 50% – in communities where the authorities’ actions are perceived as useful, and lower levels where the perception is the opposite. It is worth noting that heads of local authorities – mayors and village heads – are trusted approximately 5–10% more than the institutions they lead – personalization of decisions and responsibility for them matters that much to us.
Notably, increased trust in local government does not transfer to other institutions. In communities that had successfully decentralized before the full-scale invasion, where people came to feel that they were in the same boat as local authorities, trust in those authorities increased by 17%, while trust in the central government did not change.
It appears that when we can influence decisions, our radius of trust gradually expands, but that expansion has limits.
And we trust least precisely those institutions that make a country a state – infrastructural institutions: the government, the Verkhovna Rada, courts, prosecutors, and the anti-corruption system. The proportion of Ukrainians who trust them does not even reach 30%, and this remains stable under different economic and security conditions. The more procedural an institution’s work is, and the less visible it is in the everyday lives of most citizens, the lower the level of trust in it.
Distrust is often shaped by those who, in reality, do not interact very frequently with a particular institution or its practices. For example, approximately 90% of Ukrainians are convinced that corruption is very widespread in our country, and 72% consider it a serious problem. Yet over the past year, only approximately 15% personally encountered corruption, while another approximately 17% said their relatives had experienced it. In other words, perceptions of the scale of corruption and actual experience differ by almost six times. In addition to distrust, the way the fight against corruption is covered also plays an important role here, because current coverage is tilted toward exposing problems rather than demonstrating the system’s successes, even isolated ones.
Ukrainians cannot be persuaded to trust institutions – trust can only be earned through mechanisms that are compatible with our mentality.
Every institutional design decision is simultaneously a question of trust: whether the actual process and/or implementation timeline correspond to what was promised; whether the declared result is achieved and through what efforts; whether mistakes and system failures cause citizens inconvenience or harm; whether the point of contact with citizens creates trust or distrust toward the institution.
For example, three well-functioning features in a government application or platform are more effective than ten poorly functioning ones, while the startup approach of launching unfinished products does not damage institutional trust only when failures and bugs can be corrected quickly, taking into account user experience and feedback. Otherwise, an ostensibly modern digital solution will deepen distrust rather than reduce it.
Thus, Ukrainian society is not simply “distrustful.” Our distrust is not so much a deficit as a narrow radius: trust toward “our own” is high to the point of excess, but it does not extend beyond the close circle. This is not chaos but conditional cooperation: the same person can act responsibly or opportunistically depending on whom they are dealing with. Where transparency and accountability are lacking, opportunism looks more like resourcefulness than a flaw. And this is not a betrayal of democracy, but pragmatism: we want democratic institutions, but trust them “by merit” – for visible usefulness “here and now,” rather than for promises and bureaucratic procedures.
Ukrainians are therefore not ready to extend trust in advance – it will have to be earned through mechanisms compatible with the mentality of this particular society. The challenge, then, is not to create trust from scratch, but to reduce the feeling of vulnerability: minimal discretion, transparent rules that apply equally to everyone, and inevitable consequences for violating them – with no possibility of avoiding those consequences through status or connections. Every institutional decision – from a reform to a government application – either strengthens or undermines trust.
As long as institutions fail to operate according to the principles of visibility, accessibility, being “in the same boat,” and personal responsibility, and instead rely on a rigid “strictly in accordance with procedure” approach, distrust will remain the default.
But it does not have to remain so – if the architecture and operating mechanisms of institutions focus on building trust as a step toward Ukrainians taking ownership of the state, and therefore assuming responsibility for it.
Source: Ukraїner
