Has the link between accountability and trust broken?

Accountability and trust are often treated as intrinsically intertwined. They rise and fall together: strong accountability leads to improved trust. But does holding firm to this supposed link risk doing more harm than good?

Accountability is a mechanistic relationship: an obligation on those entrusted with authority to explain and justify their conduct to a forum with the power to question and, if necessary, sanction them. Trust is different. It is a belief held under uncertainty about another’s reliability or integrity. People may trust a leader because they share values, admire decisiveness or identify with their narrative. None of these beliefs, in themselves, tests whether the leader has given a truthful account of their conduct.

The difficulty deepens because the basis for trust is not universally agreed. Whether at the scale of a team, an organisation, or a democratic nation, those whose trust is sought contain multiple communities with different criteria for trustworthiness. A leader may lose trust among one constituency while consolidating it in another. When Suella Braverman described equality law as a “pernicious, divisive notion of protected characteristics”, she likely strengthened trust among some audiences even as it fell sharply among others. Trust did not converge on a shared judgement of her conduct; it polarised around prior beliefs.

This example illustrates a wider structural problem. Appeals to trust often create an incentive to descend into partisan trust: the pursuit of confidence from a support base rather than from a broader public. In such conditions, accountability mechanisms risk becoming stages for signalling allegiance rather than forums for examining conduct. The audience’s question shifts from “has an adequate account been given?” to “did this performance reinforce my prior trust?”. The same explanation is received simultaneously as candour or evasion depending on who is listening.

“Restoring trust” has therefore become an instinctive but largely meaningless promise. New chairs and chief executives invoke it to mark renewal. Political leaders repeat it after scandal or during campaigns. Commentators treat falling trust as the central institutional failure. Yet the behaviours accountability actually requires, such as acknowledging uncertainty, conceding error, explaining trade-offs, often run against the pursuit of trust, at least as it is commonly perceived. Humility, nuance and revision can be read as weaknesses. Leaders who depend on trust signals learn this quickly. They project assurance and avoid concession, even when the truth is contingent or incomplete.

The risk is not merely rhetorical. When trust becomes the main lens for judging how accountable leaders are, it alters incentives. No matter the intentions of those doing the scrutinising, leaders get rewarded for maintaining belief rather than for giving truthful accounts. Scrutiny becomes adversarial theatre where some leaders regard belittling female journalists as an appropriate way to gain the trust of their supporters.

Global politics offers repeated illustrations. Highly choreographed national addresses and major statements are framed as demonstrations of resolve and authority rather than as opportunities for accountable explanations. While personality plays a part, much of the challenge is structural: once certainty itself becomes the signal of trustworthiness, accountability endures a shift from truth-seeking to allegiance signalling. 

If the temptation to turn trust into performative signalling is too strong for it to serve as the basis of accountability, should institutions and democracies abandon the language of restoring trust? No, but they should relocate it. Trust is better understood as a possible consequence of visible accountability rather than as its measure or goal.

That shift changes what we measure. Institutions can measure whether leaders have met standards of transparency: Have they explained their reasoning? Disclosed evidence? Acknowledged uncertainty and trade-offs? Accepted independent scrutiny? Shown willingness to revise positions based on evidence? These criteria are imperfect, but they are observable.

There are already signs of such a reframing in parts of public life. Some bodies now publish decision rationales, assumptions and uncertainties alongside conclusions. Parliamentary committees press not only for positions but for the reasoning behind them. The proposed duty of candour for public servants will step in where ethical values are not enough to secure truthfulness. Trust may or may not follow; accountability does not depend on it. Instead, the link between accountability and trust may run in the opposite direction from the one we usually assume.