Barbara Prainsack - What comes after trust?

In the keynote on Saturday, Barbara Prainsack, Professor of Comparative Policy Analysis at the University of Vienna and head of the interdisciplinary research platform “Governance of Digital Practices,” will explore the causes behind the declining trust in politics, focusing on the central question: “What comes after trust?”

Globally, the proportion of the population living in democracies is steadily declining. At the same time, the quality of democracy is also decreasing in many countries. In 2022, Austria was downgraded from a liberal democracy to a “hybrid democracy” — a country with free elections and other democratic institutions, but lacking other characteristics of deeper democracies. What explains this trend? What lies behind the declining trust in politics, often blamed as the root cause? And if the public no longer trusts those in power, what comes next?