Faith in political parties, the media, and many state institutions at rock-bottom in Germany, with many saying they feel they could make better decisions than elected politicians and judges, research finds.
Most institutions are no longer trusted, a “bad sign for democracy”, interpretation of research in Germany states to have found.
Just 17 per cent of Germans trust political parties, and 22 per cent the media, research by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research finds. Of all the public institutions polled, the Federal Constitutional Court — the body of judges that sits above the national political system and ensures the post-Second-World-War constitution remains set in stone — remains the highest rated, but for the first time in the life of the survey even that is now falling.
Support for the court stands at 63 per cent today, down from 81 per cent in 2021, where it had unassailably sat for many years leading to the start of the century. Reported on the figures from the institute they commissioned, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) noted “The Federal Constitutional Court is no longer immune to the widespread loss of trust”, and also an apparent inverse relation between trust in institutions and how much the public knew about them.
The Constitutional court continues to perform well despite the post-Covid fall in trust, yet it is the public institution that voters care least about, with just 23 per cent admitting to paying attention to what it does. Meanwhile, trust in the Federal Government languishes at 28 per cent while 60 per cent say they feel a “strong” interest in what it does.
42 per cent trust the Bundesrat (Germany’s upper parliamentary chamber, which sits in the former Prussian House of Lords), and 36 per cent the Bundestag (the lower chamber). Trust in the Federal Government at 28 per cent is down from 48 per cent in 2021, and the 22 per cent trust in newspapers, magazines, online media, radio, television has tumbled from 39 per cent. As recently as 2017, Germans were polled as the most trusting of the mainstream media in Europe.
Particularly apparent in the research is that Germans are not impressed by the people actually making decisions on their behalf. Very nearly half at 49 per cent of respondents thought they could do better, and said they agreed with the statement “When I look at what goes on in politics, I often think to myself: Politicians have no clue, I could do that better than them”. A similar proportion had the same feelings about judges, with 48 per cent saying they agreed “The judges have no clue; I could do that better than them.”
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