Trust

How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?

The country comparison, the indicators and the documented cases below show how much of this capability the current data can capture.

125 countries in the frame10 indicators in the registry5 indicators with data124 countries with a score

Compare every country on one scale

The table starts in alphabetical order. Sort by score, confidence, coverage, or trend. A score needs two observed indicators; a trend uses indicators observed at both ends.

Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it shows how strong the evidence behind that score is. Point at a flag to read the country, click it to open the profile.

Solid ring: usable or good evidence
Broken ring: thin evidence, opening further as confidence falls
The shaded band is the middle half of the field and the line inside it is the median.

Trust scores by country

Albania	44.8	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Angola	39.1	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Argentina	50.6	0.43	5 of 7	no trend
Armenia	70.4	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Australia	79.8	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Austria	74.8	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Azerbaijan	47.0	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Bangladesh	35.1	0.48	5 of 7	no trend
Belarus	52.4	0.44	5 of 7	no trend
Belgium	79.1	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Bolivia	39.7	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Bosnia and Herzegovina	52.0	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Botswana	80.1	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Brazil	53.4	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Bulgaria	61.2	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Burkina Faso	59.4	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Burundi	49.9	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Canada	68.3	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Chile	60.4	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
China	55.3	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Colombia	43.2	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Costa Rica	81.1	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Côte d'Ivoire	65.9	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Croatia	58.1	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Cuba	not measured. No score. One indicator is observed here; this model needs two before it can average a dimension score.	0.07	1 of 7. Below the coverage floor: this model needs 2 observed rows before it publishes a score.	no trend
Cyprus	44.0	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Czechia	85.2	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Democratic Republic of the Congo	46.8	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Denmark	94.1	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Dominican Republic	75.8	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Ecuador	40.2	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Egypt	39.5	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
El Salvador	55.3	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Estonia	72.1	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Ethiopia	50.3	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Finland	89.7	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
France	69.8	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Gambia	67.6	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Georgia	56.3	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Germany	87.5	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Ghana	70.7	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Greece	35.6	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Guatemala	47.3	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Guinea	68.1	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Guinea-Bissau	27.9	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Haiti	50.6	0.16	2 of 7	no trend
Honduras	71.6	0.22	3 of 7	no trend
Hungary	66.3	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
India	45.3	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Indonesia	43.3	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Iran	39.5	0.37	4 of 7	no trend
Iraq	30.0	0.48	5 of 7	no trend
Ireland	86.2	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Israel	56.8	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Italy	53.6	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Jamaica	84.9	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Japan	64.4	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Jordan	60.2	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Kazakhstan	47.2	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Kenya	42.6	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Kyrgyzstan	41.6	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Laos	36.8	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Latvia	62.3	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Lebanon	41.2	0.45	5 of 7	no trend
Lesotho	78.7	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Lithuania	66.6	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Madagascar	47.2	0.28	3 of 7	no trend
Malawi	69.4	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Malaysia	58.2	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Mali	77.3	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Mauritius	83.8	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Mexico	41.2	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Moldova	76.6	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Mongolia	56.3	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Morocco	45.7	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Mozambique	59.9	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Myanmar	30.5	0.42	5 of 7	no trend
Namibia	77.7	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Nepal	69.5	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Netherlands	85.1	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
New Zealand	84.8	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Nicaragua	34.7	0.42	5 of 7	no trend
Nigeria	44.5	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
North Macedonia	50.6	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Norway	91.3	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Pakistan	51.3	0.48	5 of 7	no trend
Panama	71.9	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Papua New Guinea	72.1	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Paraguay	66.3	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Peru	47.6	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Philippines	47.5	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Poland	57.2	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Portugal	59.4	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Republic of the Congo	54.3	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Romania	81.6	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Russia	52.0	0.25	3 of 7	no trend
Rwanda	68.5	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Serbia	67.1	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Singapore	70.4	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Slovakia	78.6	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Slovenia	49.0	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
South Africa	83.5	0.26	3 of 7	no trend
South Korea	67.5	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Spain	75.9	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Sri Lanka	53.6	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Sudan	47.3	0.20	3 of 7	no trend
Sweden	89.4	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Switzerland	82.6	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Tajikistan	39.8	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Tanzania	80.2	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Thailand	56.6	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Trinidad and Tobago	50.8	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Tunisia	48.5	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Turkey	46.2	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Uganda	60.4	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Ukraine	47.9	0.25	3 of 7	no trend
United Arab Emirates	47.9	0.16	2 of 7	no trend
United Kingdom	90.5	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
United States	69.9	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Uruguay	58.7	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Uzbekistan	52.0	0.50	5 of 7	no trend
Venezuela	23.8	0.37	4 of 7	no trend
Vietnam	42.9	0.49	5 of 7	no trend
Zambia	75.3	0.29	3 of 7	no trend
Zimbabwe	30.2	0.50	5 of 7	no trend

A score from 0 to 100 is a position inside the frame that all the benchmark countries set: zero is the weakest on a dimension and 100 is the strongest. A score of 10 puts a country near the floor of that frame and does not mean 10 percent of a capability.

Trust indicators

10 indicators define this capability. Gaps and retired rows remain because they lower confidence. Click a heading to sort.

direct capability measuredirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
capability inputcapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
downstream outcomedownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
perception proxyperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.

Trust

Trust indicators
						Note
Bribery incidence	downstream outcome	% of firms	lower is better	World Bank	0.50	Whether the rules hold where a firm meets the state as a stranger. Experience rather than reputation: the firm is asked whether it was itself asked, so it is not the perception composite D23 retired. World Bank Enterprise Surveys, which now run in high-income economies too. Respondent reticence is the known weakness: a firm may not report a request to a survey, so a low value can be a cautious answer. Held out as a check on income grounds under D60 and scored since D123.
Control of corruptionretired	perception proxy	z-score -2.5 to 2.5	higher is better	World Bank	0.55	Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite. It measures reputation for corruption, which is not the same thing as corruption, and it tracks income closely. Prosecution and audit records are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Cooperation beyond the in-group	perception proxy	% expressing trust	higher is better	Joint EVS/WVS	0.15	The distinction that makes this dimension worth measuring: whether trust reaches a person with no tie to the respondent. Generalised trust asks about "most people", which a respondent can fill with their own circle; this item names the stranger. China is the clearest case, high on most people and low on a person met for the first time. The value is the publisher-weighted share answering trust completely plus the share answering trust somewhat, the one sum of two printed columns the adapter stores, exact to about 0.1, over all respondents including don't know and no answer. EVS and WVS ask the same question on the same four-point scale; where one country has both samples, the WVS share is a median 2.2 points higher. Trust in people of another nationality (G007_36_B), which the row once also named, is left out because it reads attitudes to foreigners as much as trust. Fieldwork runs from 2017 to 2023 and every value carries the release year 2022. Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are held, as for interpersonal trust. See D140.
Court case clearance rateno dataset	downstream outcome	% of incoming cases	higher is better	CEPEJ / OECD / national court statistics	0.20	Whether a court finishes what it starts, counted from case records rather than asked in a survey. D23 named it as the observable replacement for the two retired WGI composites and it has stayed unfilled since. CEPEJ publishes it for Council of Europe members and OECD for its own members, so no single publisher reaches this country set, and a harmonised series needs the project second source adapter. See D57.
Generalised interpersonal trust	perception proxy	% agreeing	higher is better	Joint EVS/WVS	0.25	Share answering that most people can be trusted in the official Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 results table, release 5.0.0. The adapter uses the publisher-weighted country results, emits only countries with one survey row, and holds countries with separate EVS and WVS samples until the respondent-level weights can be pooled reproducibly. See D57 and D64.
Government compliance with the courts	downstream outcome	scale 0-4 (never to always)	higher is better	V-Dem	0.40	Whether the rules bind the strongest party: a stranger can rely on a ruling only if the state obeys the ones it loses. V-Dem v16 compliance with judiciary (v2jucomp), the measurement-model estimate on the original 0 to 4 scale, 2025. It is expert-coded, so read it as a judgement, but of one public act (a ruling and the government's response are both on the record), not of a country's reputation for clean rules, which is what separated it from the WGI composites D23 retired. It is one of five inputs to V-Dem's judicial constraints index, which feeds the WGI rule of law estimate through the liberal component, so it is not independent of what D23 retired. It reads democracy closely (r 0.88 with the electoral democracy index): closed and electoral autocracies read low, not high, but a state whose courts seldom rule against it can read high on few contested rulings, which is the likeliest reading of Singapore. See D131.
Intentional homicide rateretired	downstream outcome	per 100,000 people	lower is better	World Bank	0.35	Added 2026-08-26 by D23 as the observable replacement for two retired WGI perception composites, and retired 2026-08-27 by D44 when the diagnostic built in D42 measured what it was doing. It raised this dimension's correlation with log GDP per capita by 0.288, from 0.096 to 0.385, the largest single wealth contribution anywhere in the model. It was added to fix wealth contamination and it was the wealth contamination. The dataset is sound and the objection is to what it measures here: homicide is driven heavily by organised crime, a society can be physically safe while trusting very little, and across this country set the variation it carries is mostly income. Behavioural trust measures remain a gap.
Rule of lawretired	perception proxy	z-score -2.5 to 2.5	higher is better	World Bank	0.55	Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite correlating with control of corruption above 0.95 and with log GDP per capita at 0.83. Court throughput and case clearance rates are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Time to enforce a contract	direct capability measure	days	lower is better	World Bank	0.20	Confidence in contracts, measured as court throughput rather than opinion. Frozen at 2019.
Trust in public institutionsno dataset	perception proxy	% expressing confidence	higher is better	OECD Trust Survey / WVS	0.20	The OECD survey covers members only. Mixing it with WVS items for India and South Africa would break comparability. The Joint EVS/WVS confidence battery (E069) reaches 37 countries from one release, and confidence in the courts (E069_17) is published beside Trust as a check under this id rather than scored: every item of the battery tested (courts, civil service, police, parliament and government) reads higher in the closed and electoral autocracies of the frame than in its democracies, which is deference as much as confidence (A13). The gap stays open for a measure that does not reward a court that cannot rule against the state. See D132.

A check beside the score

This check measures something real about the capability, but it does not meet the model's test for scoring. Country pages show its value.

Confidence in the courtsJoint EVS/WVS (E069_17), 71 of 125 countries, latest 2022
Share of survey respondents saying they have a great deal of confidence in the justice system and courts, of the four answers a great deal, quite a lot, not very much and none at all, in the Joint EVS/WVS 2017 to 2022 survey round.
Confidence in the courts is the public half of what this capability asks: whether people expect the rules to be enforced when a stranger breaks them. It is not scored because the survey answer reads two things the number cannot tell apart. Where courts are independent, confidence is a judgment of how they perform. Where they answer to the state, it is also deference, and saying otherwise to an interviewer has a cost. In this frame the pattern runs the wrong way. India, the Philippines and Indonesia, all electoral autocracies in the V-Dem 2025 classification, lead on the share saying a great deal, and Vietnam and China, the two closed autocracies surveyed, lead once quite a lot is counted too. The ten electoral autocracies average 21.8 percent saying a great deal and the two closed autocracies 28.1, against 13.6 for liberal and 8.4 for electoral democracies. Scored, it would rank highest the states whose courts are least able to rule against them. Income is not why it is left out: the share correlates about -0.18 with log GDP per capita. The value is the share saying a great deal; the share saying quite a lot is in the source note.

Documented examples

These records describe something a country has done that this capability should capture. They stay outside the score because one case is not a comparable series.

Evidence for missing indicators

Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.

Brazillinked to Trust in public institutionsstarted 2001still operating
Cadastro Único, the unified social registry
Since 2001, Cadastro Único has identified and characterized low-income families across Brazil and has become the entry point for more than 40 federal, state and municipal social programmes.
40 programmes, social programmes using the registry, 2026. Ministry of Development and Social Assistance, Cadastro Único, retrieved 2026-08-29.
How it worked: One shared identity and needs record lets multiple programmes see the same household, reducing the need for each programme to build its own eligibility system and making the state more legible to people it serves.
Limits: A registry and its programme count show administrative reach, not whether citizens trust the state or whether benefits arrive accurately and on time. The source is the ministry responsible for the registry, and coverage depends on families keeping their records current.
Brazillinked to Trust in public institutionsstarted 2004still operating
Portal da Transparência, the federal open-books system
Launched in 2004, Portal da Transparência has spent 20 years publishing federal revenue, expenditure, personnel and transfer information so citizens can inspect how public money is used.
20 years, years since launch, 2024. Controladoria-Geral da União, Portal da Transparência, retrieved 2026-08-29.
How it worked: The government turns its own administrative records into a public interface, so oversight can begin with the same transaction detail that the bureaucracy uses to execute and audit spending.
Limits: Publication creates the possibility of scrutiny, not evidence that people use the data or trust the institutions being scrutinized. The portal mainly covers federal government execution and excludes some state-owned and non-federal activity.
South Korealinked to Trust in public institutionsstarted 2023still operating
MyData, citizen-directed data portability
South Korea's MyData policy gives people a route to request and direct the transfer of personal data between services, with the Personal Information Protection Commission describing the scheme as a way to give people control over data portability after the March 2023 legal amendment.
2023 year, year of the legal amendment establishing the data portability right, 2023. Personal Information Protection Commission, MyData policy notice, retrieved 2026-08-30.
How it worked: The state gives people a legal route to move their own data between providers, shifting data access from a private platform choice toward a user-directed right.
Limits: A portability right shows a legal design for user control, not whether people understand it, use it safely or receive better services. The policy notice describes the legal framework and is not an independent assessment of outcomes.
Singaporelinked to Court case clearance ratestarted 2006still operating
Singapore Courts' case-clearance discipline
Singapore's State Courts disposed of 21,816 civil cases against 20,358 filings in 2023, a 107% civil clearance rate; its Community Justice and Tribunals courts recorded a 99% clearance rate in the same year.
107 % of incoming civil cases, state courts civil-case clearance rate, 2023. 99 % of incoming cases, community justice and tribunals clearance rate, 2023. Singapore Judiciary, Caseload statistics 2023, retrieved 2026-08-31.
How it worked: Singapore Courts publish workload by court and case type, set clearance as a management measure and combine procedural reform with specialised tribunals and dispute-resolution pathways. The public series makes backlogs visible while the court system can shift suitable disputes into faster channels without pretending that every case is the same.
Limits: Clearance is disposals divided by filings in the same year, so it can exceed 100% when courts work through earlier stock; it does not show timeliness, fairness, legal-aid access, enforcement or the quality of decisions. The Singapore figures cover court workloads and are not a comparable cross-country civil-justice index without harmonised case definitions.
Portugallinked to Court case clearance ratestarted 2013still operating
Civil-court clearance and the CEPEJ monitoring series
The CEPEJ Portugal country fiche records a 96.1% clearance rate for civil and commercial litigious cases at first instance in 2023, alongside 101.1% at second instance and 105.5% at the Supreme Court; first-instance disposition time was 267 days.
96.1 % of incoming cases, first-instance civil and commercial clearance rate, 2023. 267 days, first-instance disposition time, 2023. European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), Portugal country fiche, retrieved 2026-09-02.
How it worked: Portugal's courts feed case-flow data into a recurring national and European monitoring framework, making incoming, resolved and pending civil cases visible by instance and allowing backlog pressure to be compared over time.
Limits: The clearance rate is an administrative throughput measure for one year and one case class, not a judgment-quality, access-to-justice or public-trust measure. Disposition time is a theoretical estimate derived from pending and resolved cases, and rates differ sharply by court instance; CEPEJ republishes national data and the fiche cannot identify which reforms or court-management practices caused the result.

Read how the benchmark turns an indicator into a score on the method page. The limits page records where this capability is still poorly observed.