Dr Zafar Khan Safdar
Francis Fukuyama argued that the true foundation of economic prosperity is not merely capital, technology, or institutions, but trust, the confidence that binds citizens, businesses, and the state. By that measure, Pakistan’s crisis extends far beyond fiscal deficits and economic stagnation. The deeper challenge is the erosion of public trust, without which institutions weaken, investment declines, and sustainable economic progress becomes increasingly difficult.
The evidence of that erosion is now measurable rather than merely felt. An Ipsos Pakistan survey conducted in December 2025 and January 2026, covering over 6000 respondents across 82 urban and rural districts, found that 68% of Pakistanis believe bribery is common in government institutions, while 27% reported having personally experienced a demand for a bribe. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index placed Pakistan at 135 out of 138 countries in 2024, a further slide from 133 the previous year, with a score of 27 out of 100, meaning the country is perceived as more corrupt than roughly three quarters of all nations on earth. Separately, a Gallup survey found that 88% of Pakistanis believe corruption is widespread in their government, and 70% lack confidence in the honesty of their elections. These are not the findings of hostile external critics but self-reported perceptions of Pakistani citizens about the institutions that govern their daily lives.
The significance of these numbers extends far beyond their surface indictment of governance quality. Trust in institutions is not an abstract civic virtue. It is the practical infrastructure of economic and social life. When citizens do not trust courts, they avoid formal contracts and resolve disputes through informal or violent means. When they do not trust regulatory bodies, businesses operate in the grey economy rather than submitting to oversight that may be arbitrary or corrupt. When they do not trust the tax system to use their money fairly and honestly, compliance falls and evasion rises, producing the narrow tax base that has constrained every Pakistani government’s fiscal capacity for decades. The connection between institutional trust and economic development is not theoretical. Countries consistently ranking in the upper half of the Corruption Perceptions Index attract significantly more foreign direct investment, sustain higher rates of formal sector employment, and maintain broader tax bases than those in the lower half where Pakistan has remained for years.
The erosion of interpersonal trust, among citizens rather than simply between citizens and institutions, is perhaps the less visible but equally consequential dimension of the problem. Social capital, the network of relationships, norms of reciprocity, and generalised goodwill that allows societies to cooperate without constant formal enforcement, has been declining in Pakistan in ways that are harder to quantify but easy to observe. Road rage incidents, online abuse, political hatred that extends into family relationships, and the generalised atmosphere of suspicion and hostility that characterises much of Pakistani public discourse are not independent phenomena. They are symptoms of a society in which the assumption of good faith between strangers has been progressively eroded by years of broken promises, institutional failure, economic stress, and a political culture that has modelled contempt rather than civility. Research across multiple countries consistently shows that inequality, economic anxiety, and perceived unfairness are among the most powerful predictors of declining interpersonal trust, and Pakistan has been experiencing all three simultaneously for the better part of a decade.
The media dimension compounds the problem in ways specific to this moment. Pakistan has simultaneously one of the most active media ecosystems in South Asia and one of the least trusted. The proliferation of channels, social media platforms, and digital publications has not produced a better-informed public but a more fractured one, in which different segments of society consume entirely different factual realities, share no common informational foundation for public debate, and are exposed to a relentless torrent of content optimised for outrage rather than understanding. Trust in media as an institution has followed the same downward trajectory as trust in political parties, the judiciary, and regulatory bodies, leaving citizens without a reliable arbitrating authority to which they can appeal when facts are disputed.
Other societies have navigated comparable crises of institutional trust and recovered, though rarely quickly and never painlessly. South Korea’s democratic transition in the late 80s and its subsequent prosecution of former presidents for corruption demonstrated that accountability, however delayed and imperfect, could partially restore civic confidence in institutions. Estonia rebuilt its governance infrastructure almost from scratch in the 90s through radical transparency, digital public services, and consistent anti-corruption enforcement. Both cases suggest that the path back from a trust deficit is not rhetorical but structural, requiring institutions to demonstrate through sustained, verifiable behaviour that they operate according to stated principles rather than hidden ones.
Pakistan has yet to demonstrate this commitment in a credible and consistent manner. Accountability remains selective, transparency often falls short in practice, and public perceptions of corruption continue to deepen. Societies can endure economic hardship if people believe institutions are capable of delivering a better future. When that belief fades, laws lose authority, reforms lose credibility, and hope itself becomes the country’s scarcest resource. Rebuilding trust is no longer a political choice but a national necessity.
The writer is Ph.D in Political Science and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad. His area of specialization is political development and social change. He can be reached at zafarkhansafdar@yahoo.com and tweet@zafarkhansafdar.
