Research & Policy Briefs From the World Bank Malaysia Hub No. 32 May 4, 2020 An Opportunity to Build Legitimacy and Trust in Public Institutions in the Time of COVID-19 Stuti Khemani Legitimacy in the time of COVID-19 can be understood as the ability of leaders to win compliance with new public health orders because people share a widespread belief that everyone is complying. This perspective—building on the logic of game theory, which can help explain strategic interactions among large numbers of people in a society or polity—yields a powerful insight: that governments in developing countries, as the first line of defense against a life-threatening disease, have received a windfall of legitimacy. On the one hand, this legitimacy windfall can be wasted—or worse, used to intensify divisive politics, grab power, and install government at the commanding heights of the economy and society, even after the pandemic recedes. On the other hand, for reform leaders and international development partners that are motivated to improve governance for economic development, the crisis presents opportunities to build trust in public institutions. In this task, international organizations have a comparative advantage precisely because they are not part of domestic political games. But this dynamic may require changing how donors typically approach corruption in developing countries (in the context of financial assistance to countries with institutional weaknesses that predate the crisis); it may also necessitate change in how reform leaders in countries use the advantage of external partners to exert pressure for reform. The availability and strategic communication of credible, nonideological, and nonpartisan knowledge could enable societies to change a vicious cycle of high levels of corruption/low levels of trust to a virtuous one of high levels of trust/low levels of corruption. Governance Concerns in the Time of the Coronavirus households lack basic life goods, there is far greater political and social unity over the need for NPIs (LiveMint 2020). In India, news outlets This Research & Policy Brief examines the relationship between report that citizens are self-enforcing lockdowns—and even governance and the success of policies to manage the COVID-19 intensifying enforcement, keeping out migrant workers as they pandemic. As technical experts advise governments to institute returned to their village homes (because they had lost their living non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing and space and jobs in the cities as a result of the lockdown) (Agrawal lock-downs, deliver health services, and protect and support markets 2020). and people, many urgent governance questions have emerged: Problems of social unrest, and law and order, predate the current • Will people comply with public health regulations or NPIs? crisis and may continue as the crisis adds to social and economic • Will there be riots on the streets, or social chaos? distress. For example, street violence has broken out in India as • Will governance challenges, such as corruption, get worse, if money migrant workers return to their villages, only to be quarantined and is poured into countries with institutional weaknesses that predate unable to join their families (The Hindu 2020). But there have been the crisis? few reports of newly widespread unrest and noncompliance with • Will the global nature of the pandemic fuel politics of fear, enabling government orders. Across developing countries, there has been little authoritarian leaders to close their borders, or worse, violate evidence of renewed political protests or resistance to government human rights? measures to deal with the pandemic. Consistent with this real-time • What should reform leaders and international agencies do to reading of news reports, ongoing research at the International manage/forestall these concerns? Monetary Fund (IMF) is not finding significant statistical evidence that social unrest increases after epidemics (Spilimbergo 2020). Given the unprecedented nature of this pandemic, this Brief offers answers to such governance questions by interpreting real-time These real-time events can be interpreted using game theoretic events as these unfold during the COVID-19 crisis, using available approaches to understand strategic interactions among large research on governance and the political economy. numbers of people in a society or polity. Using game theory, this Brief shows how the coronavirus pandemic can be understood to have When countries and localities began to introduce social distancing conferred a legitimacy windfall on governments in many developing measures, The Economist (2020a) ran a cover story on the “Politics of countries. A legitimacy windfall carries the risk of being abused. Pandemics,” which implied that developing countries would not have Political leaders could try to use it to stoke the politics of fear and the requisite trust in governments to comply with the lockdown. divisiveness and grab authoritarian power (The Economist 2020b). However, various events since then have suggested that despite low Campante et al. (2020), for instance, provide evidence that epidemics levels of trust, people in developing countries have complied with can be used by politicians to create fear of foreigners and pursue these measures. right-wing ideological policy agenda. Fast-tracked inflow of international development assistance could be captured by elites Events during and after March 2020 present a stark contrast (Andersen, Johannesen, and Rijkers 2020). This Brief offers ideas for between the world’s two largest democracies: the United States and approaches to try to manage these risks and, instead, use the crisis as India. The one with a wealthy economy, strong institutions of law and an opportunity to improve governance. order, and high standards of living for most of its population (and thus ability to physically comply with social distancing measures in the Legitimacy in the Time of the Coronavirus comfort of people’s homes) exhibited greater political confusion and disagreement, distrust of scientists, and citizen protests against the Legitimacy can be defined in a game theory framework as the ability NPIs (Kleinfeld 2020; Tobin 2020; Peters 2020). Prior evidence from of leaders to win compliance with new laws or public orders because other policy areas has shown that political polarization along people share a widespread belief that everyone is complying. Recent ideological lines fuels resistance to scientific evidence in the United work on law and economics reexamines the puzzle of why developing States (Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, and Braman 2011; Kahan 2012). countries have laws on paper that are not effectively implemented In contrast, in the one where poverty is widespread, and where many (World Bank 2017). Instead of relying on explanations about weak Affiliation: Stuti Khemani, Development Research Group, World Bank. e-mail address: skhemani@worldbank.org. Acknowledgement: The author thanks Quy-Toan Do, Deborah Isser, Leora Klapper, Norman Loayza, Mahvish Shaukat, Rishabh Sinha, Antonio Spilimbergo, Michael Toman, and Joel Turkewitz for helpful discussions, comments, and suggestions. A longer version of this Brief is available at https://sites.google.com/view/stutikhemani/ Objective and disclaimer: Research & Policy Briefs synthesize existing research and data to shed light on a useful and interesting question for policy debate. Research & Policy Briefs carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank Group, its Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. An Opportunity to Build Legitimacy and Trust in Public Institutions in the Time of COVID-19 governance, low capacity, and perverse political incentives, Basu the coronavirus concerns corruption, viewed as the lack of trust in (2018) argues that a conceptually clearer way of thinking about public institutions. compliance with a new law is whether the new law changes beliefs about how others are behaving, and thus legitimizes compliance. Where corruption is perceived to be high, it follows naturally that people lack trust in public institutions, believing that public resources Using this perspective, the Brief offer a set of hypotheses about are being stolen for private gain. Here, there is clear evidence that legitimacy, specifically in the context of non-pharmaceutical trust is lower in developing countries, given that people perceive interventions (NPIs) to combat a pandemic. These hypotheses are corruption to be persistently widespread (World Bank 2016a; Chuah, based on the nature of the pandemic as a global, life-threatening Loayza, and Meyers 2020). Beliefs about corruption in the public shock against which governments are a first line of defense. sector yields an “equilibrium”—as the concept is used in game Legitimacy depends upon beliefs—or focal points, in the language of theory—of low trust and reliance on monitoring and punishment as game theory—about how others are behaving in political and the way to control corruption. However, if corruption is too bureaucratic institutions at the time of the shock. widespread, controlling it by relying on monitoring and punishment • Legitimacy of new rules promulgated following a shock is not can become untenable. Perpetrators of corruption can figure this out necessarily lower in developing countries, despite lower trust in and thus become emboldened to continue engaging in corruption, government before the shock (as measured by perceptions of knowing that formal rules for monitoring and punishment are difficult pervasive corruption). to enforce in practice (World Bank 2016a). That is, outcomes of high • Low levels of trust in government before the shock can coexist with levels of corruption and low levels of trust go together. a high level of initial legitimacy to deal with the shock, because When it comes to understanding the governance challenges of responses observed in other countries and the immediate risk to implementing COVID-19 health policies, a substantial body of life create a focal point literature is available that examines corruption specifically in the • Legitimacy to deal with the shock could, however, be lower in countries with greater ideological polarization in political realm of public health service delivery in developing countries. This institutions. Divergence of beliefs between the polarized groups corruption largely takes the form of absenteeism and poor could affect calculations about whether others in their group are performance among doctors and nurses who are on the public payroll going to change their behavior. (World Bank 2004; Chaudhury et al. 2006; Das et al. 2016; Banerjee, • Legitimacy could also be lower where government bureaucracies Duflo, and Glennerster 2008). This research has found that doctors are weaker (have lower autonomy to pursue a defined technical and nurses enjoy job security in the public sector and face few formal mandate), and are subject to greater political interference or are sanctions when they are absent. These findings have created space more dependent on politicians for funding and powers. and funding for unprecedented volumes of research in developing Conversely, legitimacy is greater where government bureaucracies countries using randomized control trials (RCTs) to estimate the are empowered to function autonomously. Strong bureaucracies impact of policy interventions to strengthen incentives of frontline can circumvent the problem of political polarization, even where it public service providers to do their jobs. Given the status quo exists, by providing focal points that are independent of politics, (equilibrium) of poor performance and weak incentives, it is perhaps and presumably rooted in technical or scientific evidence and not surprising that when incentives are credibly strengthened, such as knowledge. when salaries of absent health workers are docked, workers’ • Once political polarization and bureaucratic strength are controlled attendance goes up. However, researchers have found that the for, the difference in legitimacy, of new rules enacted to combat a incentives that worked in the small-scale RCTs have not been shock, between democratic and authoritarian institutional regimes sustained and scaled up into policy (Banerjee, Duflo, and Glennerster may be insignificant. 2008; Dhaliwal and Hanna 2017). These hypotheses would not follow from other ways of analyzing The question relevant to governance policy is whether health legitimacy. For example, political science has analyzed legitimacy of workers should be provided steady wages and job security through governments as a whole by examining cases of protests and resistance the pandemic and beyond, to build a trustworthy cadre of against a government, rather than as an issue of compliance with new community-embedded public health workers. Global health experts rules that have been enacted to combat a shock (Weatherford 1992). called for such a cadre after the Ebola outbreak in Africa, yet it did not Another prominent analysis, the World Development Report on materialize—and is not available for the COVID-19 pandemic. Should conflict (World Bank 2011), examined legitimacy as a bundle of there be more significant or systemic shifts in management practices complex attributes of government, politics, economies, and societies, to give greater autonomy to and bestow trust on health workers to which are far more likely to be present in developed rather than in undertake tasks of a “public good” nature, such as fighting a developing countries. pandemic? The new hypotheses offered in this Brief appear to be relevant to understanding real-time events as these unfold in the context of the Beyond the crisis of pandemics, public sector agencies are pandemic. The interpretation using the logic of game theory can be typically tasked with producing goods or delivering services that are useful especially because, in these unprecedented times, there is little precisely those for which incentives, as generated by markets, tend to else available that is relevant to the pandemic. In developing fail. A classic problem is the task of educating the children of poor countries, because of weaker markets and more interventionist families, whose parents’ capacity is limited by budget and credit states, initial legitimacy may be higher, even when measures of trust constraints, in addition to any behavioral constraints imposed by in government are low before the crisis, because governments are the poverty, lack of education, and social deprivation. dominant institutions through which societies address collective Economic theory argues that optimal contracts in complex problems. organizations that are tasked with providing public goods could use low-powered incentives (steady wages, job security), and rely on Trust in the Time of the Coronavirus recruitment of intrinsically motivated workers, as well as professional Trust has also been broken down in research to the fundamental norms among peers to achieve high performance or productivity (see elements of game theory—beliefs about how others are behaving in a reviews of the literature in Dixit 2002; Khemani 2019). In essence, the particular game of life, society, or politics (Alesina and Giuliano 2015; logic of the theory—following from the nature of tasks that agents are Algan and Cahuc 2014). Within this large body of research, the required to perform in bureaucracies—calls for contract design that 2 segment most relevant for understanding governance in the times of relies on greater trust in professional norms within bureaucracies. Research & Policy Brief No.32 Trust and Politics weaker incentives to deliver services, even when those services are aligned with that party’s ideology (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2010). Despite perceptions of pervasive corruption, survey and other evidence indicates that people in developing countries believe in the High-powered incentives in politics, or concomitantly, low trust role of government, and the role of elections in improving their lives that political leaders will perform well regardless of incentives, matter and the economies. In this sense, “trust” in the role or potential of not only in electoral regimes but in other types of political systems. government is higher in developing than in developed countries. Besley and Kudamatsu (2008) examine variation across autocracies and find that where turnover of political leaders is high, economic Simple average of responses in public opinion surveys shows that performance is better. They interpret this correlation as arising from people in developing countries are far more likely to agree with stronger incentives for performance within autocracies when political questions about the legitimate role of government in the economy, in elites have the power to sanction leaders for poor performance. service delivery, and for redistribution. For example, more than 40 percent of people in countries as different from one another as Brazil, The previous sections have broken down trust along different Egypt, and India hold governments responsible “for ensuring that dimensions and argued that what matters for policy responses under everybody is provided for” (World Values Survey), in contrast to less the current crisis is trust in the potential of government, rather than than 10 percent in Sweden and the United States. trust in political leaders. Trust in the potential of government encourages people to be politically engaged, despite awareness of People in the developing regions of the world believe in the current or prevailing malpractices in politics. Whether this political potential of political institutions to improve their lives and their engagement will be able to improve the effectiveness of policy country’s economy. In response to the World Value Survey, people in responses to the crisis depends upon the quality of that Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and East Asia (the survey did not engagement—whether the platforms of political competition are ask this question in China) respond almost unanimously that elections about economic performance and public service delivery or other are “very” or “rather” important for making a difference in their lives criteria, such as identity and blind ideology (which resists evidence and their countries’ economies (World Bank 2016a). Despite personal contrary to ideological beliefs). There is a risk that leaders can use the experience with malpractices in elections, people nevertheless crisis to highlight attachments to identity, create divisions, and deflect express belief in the potential of elections to improve outcomes. attention away from performance. Consistent with beliefs about the potential of elections to improve their lives and their countries’ economies, people in developing countries have high rates of political participation. In many developing Policy Implications: Leveraging Political Engagement along countries, less educated and lower-income citizens tend to be more with the Focal Points of Change Created by the Pandemic to politically active than those with greater education and income, Improve Public Services Pande (2011) estimates, drawing on household surveys across The pandemic has forcibly created a “focal point”—in the language of countries. game theory—by endowing governments with high levels of People in developing countries are not only engaging in politics as legitimacy to implement public health regulations because voters but also as contenders for leadership positions in local governments are the first and necessary line of defense. Such a governments. Elections in local governments were instituted in a windfall endowment of legitimacy runs a risk of being abused by those wave of decentralization across the world at the turn of the political leaders who are motivated to expand their powers and divide twenty-first century, lowering barriers to entry for leadership society. Conversely, for reform leaders and international development positions (World Bank 2016a). Microempirical research across diverse partners that are motivated to improve governance for economic institutional contexts, such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, development, the crisis presents opportunities to build trust in public Pakistan, the Philippines, and Uganda, shows that local elections are institutions. highly contested, resulting in huge numbers of people engaging for International agencies may be tempted to try to bypass local leadership positions. governments and deliver humanitarian aid through nongovernmental organizations because of concerns about elite capture of foreign aid High levels of political engagement as an indicator of trust in the (Andersen, Johannesen, and Rijkers 2020). This could prove to be potential of government can go hand in hand with low levels of trust in shortsighted and miss another opportunity for improving governance political leaders who wield power over government. An accumulating in both the short and long term. Past research on aid-effectiveness, body of evidence shows that citizens in developing countries use and recent research on the need for state capacity for economic elections to try to strengthen political incentives to respond to their development, suggests that attempts to bypass governments either demands, rather than relying on trust in leaders. Several pieces of fail or are insufficient (Knack 2001; Rajan and Subramanian 2007; evidence suggest this. First, developing countries are characterized by Besley and Persson 2010). high levels of electoral volatility and turnover. Thus, incumbents face a disadvantage, contrary to the typical case of incumbency benefits in The opportunity is to continue to use the focal points, along with developed countries (Klašnja 2015; Uppal 2009). Second, there is the resources being allocated to public health and social protection, evidence that elections can work to exact accountability, despite to target communication and messaging to build peer-to-peer widespread malpractices such as vote-buying and violence (World professional norms and trust within government bureaucracies. Such Bank 2016a). For example, mayors in Brazilian municipalities subject to peer-to-peer pressure and professional norms may improve the term limits engage in greater rent-seeking than those who are up for implementation of policies to combat the disease. More effective reelection, because of the disciplining effect of elections (Ferraz and implementation translated into better health and social protection Finan 2008, 2011). Third, when elections work less well in exacting outcomes, which in turn may build trust in government bureaucracies accountability, it is precisely because trust is high—but is placed in the extending beyond this crisis to strengthen public institutions going “wrong” things. For example, greater trust in social networks can forward. enable vote-buying in elections, even with a secret ballot— and where Several priorities and concrete steps are proposed to set in motion there is greater vote-buying, public health services are worse a virtuous cycle: (Khemani 2015). Where there is greater trust in ethnic networks, co- ethnics or specific political parties perform worse, such as by Strengthening public sector personnel and management increasing rent-seeking or corruption in the use of public resources (Banerjee and Pande 2007). Where there is greater partisan • Focus on frontline state personnel needed for war-scale or ideological attachment to political parties, those parties have implementation of public health measures, and distribution of 3 An Opportunity to Build Legitimacy and Trust in Public Institutions in the Time of COVID-19 supplies to ensure food, water, and hygienic living conditions infrastructure and funds flow for delivering cash transfers period i.e. among the poorest. cash transfers. • Provide these personnel with steady wages, training, and equipment. There has been considerable enthusiasm around using technology • Signal trust through management practices that motivate a sense of to manage funds flows, cut-out middlemen, and improve monitoring. “mission” and encourage peer-to-peer monitoring (rather than Research has found that technology can indeed be used to reduce hierarchical monitoring). leakages in one area of public policy—making welfare payments to • Use local politics as the arena through which norms can shift in the protect the poor and vulnerable (Muralidharan, Niehaus, and public sector. Local politics is the space in which people Sukhtankar, 2016; Banerjee et al. Forthcoming). However, a World communicate to form beliefs about how others are behaving in the Development Report assessing the role of technology concluded that public sector. In places where local politics revolve around vote while it has useful applications to improve governance, the buying and extending the patronage of secure jobs in government, fundamental question remains whether political leaders have the the previous bullet is likely to be ineffective. This is the case because incentives to take up appropriate technologies and not abuse them by politics drives beliefs. If politics continues to revolve around infringing on privacy and civic freedoms (World Bank 2016b). patronage, people would rationally continue to believe that once they have secured a patronage job in the public sector, they do not Leveraging development assistance need to perform. The looming governance question in international development is: Will the governments of developing countries squander the financial Better utilizing international agencies assistance that citizens of developed countries might provide them? Apolitical international agencies, which are not part of the domestic International agencies are worried about whether new scandals will political game, have a particular comparative advantage in helping to erupt as they try to fast-track projects to help the poor and vulnerable shift norms toward those conducive to economic development (World in this hour of humanitarian need. It was only a few months ago that Bank 2016a, chapter 7, box 7.3). That comparative advantage is the evidence of corruption in aid-dependent countries embarrassed credibility of messages about the performance of public policies being these agencies (Jones 2020). How should development agencies pursued by governments. The source of the credibility is scientific and square this circle of giving more money, more quickly with the technical expertise to gather and examine data, and build messages concerns of corruption and misuse? based on hard evidence. This credibility too may be imperfect, in an The foregoing analysis yields the following answers to these age characterized by populist distrust of experts. But in developing questions. Providing more and fast-tracked financing could be countries where political leaders are not trusted, evidence-based accomplished by providing financial assistance to countries largely in messages about the performance of public policies sourced from the form of general budget support, despite the concerns about international professionals may help improve the quality of corruption. To address corruption, and governance more generally, contestation in local political arenas, shifting it away from patronage knowledge products have the potential of being leveraged more and rent-seeking and toward performance in serving the public good. effectively (Devarajan and Khemani 2018). For example, budget Such messaging might counter “fake news” and help undermine the support could be more strongly conditioned on freedom to gather use of divisive identity and fear in politics. data, build evidence about how governments and public policies are performing, and on communicating this evidence using a variety of Strengthening local media local media. Projects could be used as needed to test a new type of The sponsorship of local media in delivering these messages might policy, to generate knowledge about what governments can do better also strengthen local media markets. An extensive policy research to deliver public health, support markets, and protect society. In this report on governance (World Bank 2016a) found that the presence of view, projects serve more as a knowledge product, and leave room to local media markets, such as locally headquartered radio stations in learn from both success and failure, while budget support is the the continent of Africa, is one of the most robust correlates of the primary means of disbursing financing. This enables “unbundling” control of corruption. In contrast, measures of other governance financing from knowledge, so that each instrument is better able to policy areas that are popular with international organizations, such as achieve its objectives, as argued in Devarajan and Khemani (2018). presence of civil society organizations or freedom of information laws, are not found to be robustly correlated with the control of corruption. Evidence of corruption may emerge in this process, as in the The report recommends focusing grants to civil society organizations “cashgate” scandals where donor-supported integrated financial to improve contestability in local political and media markets, rather management systems (IFMS) exposed fraudulent transactions, but than to support social accountability mechanisms that bypass politics. ultimately could not prevent those transactions from happening (Blas These suggestions may be particularly relevant in the time of 2013). The ex ante conditions of budget support would need to be COVID-19 because citizens may not want to shoulder the additional explicit about how evidence of corruption could trigger the cessation burden of monitoring local service delivery. For example, a successful of international support. Determining the size of budget support in case of community mobilization showed that success depends upon relation to the size of the economy, its macroeconomic fundamentals, citizens’ effort at collective action. Banerjee et al (2010) find dramatic and costing of basic public service needs, is also crucial. This would improvements in education outcomes after youth in villages mobilized place the burden of controlling corruption on the leaders and people remedial reading classes among children who were not learning in whose countries it is; this has been referred to as “putting countries in school. However, the social accountability campaign had no impact on the driver’s seat” (Jerve 2002). The weight of research on accountability and performance of teachers on the public payroll. aid-effectiveness and state capacity can be leveraged to support this Addressing political incentives and professional norms in approach rather than donor oversight and control (Knack 2001; Rajan bureaucracies is needed so that citizens can be better served in this and Subramanian 2007; Besley and Persson 2010). Such a strategy hour of need, rather than having to mobilize themselves at every front would free international agencies to focus on generating the global to improve service delivery. public good of knowledge, and tailoring it for practical application to country contexts, using projects as needed for this learning purpose Using technology to deliver public services and benefits rather than as principal vehicles for disbursing financial assistance. Technology, where feasible, can deliver benefits directly to citizens, Governance practices are specific to each policy area, shaped by reducing reliance on agents (and hence opportunities for corruption the nature of the tasks government agents are required to perform in 4 or inefficiencies), such as by establishing secure payment pursuing that policy. For instance, in the area of social protection, Research & Policy Brief No.32 direct transfers to household bank accounts have been shown to knowledge and its strategic communication, taking local political work, and provide an example where technology can be used to institutions into account, could work by countering the spread of “fake reduce corruption (Muralidharan, Niehaus, and Sukhtankar, 2016). news” and improving contestability of local political markets on However, for policies in health and education, no country in the world platforms of the common good. has succeeded without relying on building trust and professional norms among human resource personnel such as doctors, nurses, International organizations have a comparative advantage in public health workers, and teachers. How governance practices are leveraging technical evidence and apolitical, nonpartisan reputations performing, and whether alternatives exist that would improve to communicate messages for peer-to-peer monitoring and outcomes in any policy area, is also part of the knowledge generation professional norms in bureaucracies. Messages and communication that international agencies could intensify. Academics have pointed to could enable citizens to be more critical of identity politics and more the need for more research and learning on governance practices in equipped to hold political leaders accountable for serving the policy areas such as health, education, social protection, and common interest. regulation. In its absence, researchers are hard-pressed to give In sum: Legitimacy for public health regulation has been by concrete policy advice to leaders who want to control corruption necessity thrust upon governments because of the pandemic. This (Olken and Pande 2012). creates focal points to shift expectations in society about the role of government bureaucracies. These focal points could be used to build Using communication strategically to shift norms trust in bureaucracies and the professionalism of public service Examining legitimacy and trust as key concepts of governance using providers. International research and policy could move away from game theory shows how communication is pivotal for moving from relying on high-powered incentives and fueling distrust by asking one “equilibrium” to another by changing what people believe about citizens to directly monitor public service providers. Instead, how others are behaving. Reform leaders in countries can use external international organizations have a comparative advantage in partners precisely because they operate outside the domestic political leveraging technical evidence and apolitical, nonpartisan reputations game for the kind of strategic communication needed to shift from a to communicate messages for peer-to-peer monitoring and vicious cycle of high levels of corruption/low levels of trust to a professional norms in bureaucracies. Where distrust has a virtuous one of low levels of corruption/high levels of trust. constructive role to play—in politics—messages and communication could enable citizens to be more critical of identity politics and more Credible, nonideological, and nonpartisan knowledge is at a equipped to hold political leaders accountable for serving the premium, perhaps more than ever before. The generation of such common interest. 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