Mistrust of science or distrust in democracy?

The Centre de recherches poli­tiques de Sci­ences Po (CEVIPOF) has been run­ning the Polit­ic­al Trust Baro­met­er, since 2009. This aca­dem­ic sur­vey exam­ines trust as a socio-polit­ic­al issue. It is used to assess con­fid­ence of the pub­lic in polit­ic­al and social insti­tu­tions – such as sci­ence – par­tic­u­larly in the con­text of the Cov­id-19 out­break. The rela­tion­ship between sci­ence and polit­ics, in the broad sense, helps us to ques­tion pub­lic opin­ion through the lens of social struc­tures, cul­tur­al rep­res­ent­a­tions or polit­ic­al anthropology.

Sci­ence is a social insti­tu­tion, just like fam­ily, edu­ca­tion, the law or the mil­it­ary. But, in France, it is also linked to repub­lic­an­ism. The idea of the Repub­lic rests on a pos­it­iv­ist philo­sophy, mean­ing a world of pub­lic action and polit­ic­al debate steeped in sci­ence. The aim is to lead a reasoned debate, on the basis of exper­i­ment­a­tion or, at the very least, sci­entif­ic reas­on­ing. Due to this approach, the French Repub­lic dif­fers from oth­er demo­crat­ic regimes, such as the US demo­cracy, which revolves more around com­munity val­ues. The French Repub­lic is inten­ded to be uni­ver­sal in nature, and to that end it draws on sci­entif­ic ration­al­ity. There­fore, the issue of sci­ence is fundamental. 

The health crisis illus­trated this fact very well. Sci­entif­ic dis­course is borne by dif­fer­ent act­ors: sci­ent­ists, experts who pass on sci­entif­ic know­ledge in a reg­u­lat­ory and polit­ic­al con­text, sci­ence com­mu­nic­at­ors and broad­casters (social net­works, news chan­nels). It also involves dif­fer­ent sources of inform­a­tion, includ­ing stat­ist­ic­al indic­at­ors provided by the gov­ern­ment, sci­entif­ic pub­lic­a­tions, and oth­er sci­entif­ic content.

The latest waves¹ of the Baro­met­er show that pure sci­ence remains a very trust­worthy insti­tu­tion, with a glob­al trust rate of 82%, second only to hos­pit­als (83%) and before the mil­it­ary (76%) or the police (72%). How­ever, when you get into spe­cif­ics it appears that the more a sci­entif­ic insti­tu­tion gets closer to the gov­ern­ment the more trust declines. For sources of inform­a­tion on the health situ­ation, trust placed in doc­tors is 91%. It decreases to 68% for sci­entif­ic experts advising the gov­ern­ment and drops to 42% for the gov­ern­ment alone². 

Sci­entif­ic activ­it­ies are tain­ted by the feel­ing of mis­trust towards the gov­ern­ment. Lack of con­fid­ence in the offi­cial mes­sage also affects experts and offi­cial stat­ist­ics. A demo­crat­ic mal­aise leads to scep­ti­cism towards any speech related to the Cov­id-19 out­break, includ­ing its evol­u­tion, pre­vent­ive meas­ures, or vac­cin­a­tion policy. 

In France, demo­crat­ic mal­aise is rooted in the rise of pop­u­lism, mean­ing the oppos­i­tion between people and elites, the lat­ter includ­ing sci­ent­ists. There is mis­trust in author­it­at­ive speech. But pop­u­lism is not homo­gen­ous, right-wing pop­u­lism is not the same as left-wing pop­u­lism. If mis­trust in sci­ence increases with pop­u­lism (only 36% of pop­u­lists strongly sup­por­ted sci­ence in 2020), its reas­ons are rooted in the polit­ic­al side.

Left-wing pop­u­lism is par­tic­u­larly observed in people close to the polit­ic­al party France Insou­mise, for example. They claim to be anti-estab­lish­ment, express anti-gov­ern­ment opin­ions, but value sci­ence and are in favour of edu­ca­tion and research. Trust issues arise when sci­ence is inter­twined with private interests or when it is used to design dubi­ous or sus­pi­cious tech­no­lo­gies. From their point of view sci­ence is tain­ted by private interest and corruption.

Right-wing pop­u­lism mostly involves voters from the Rassemble­ment Nation­al. This polit­ic­al party is also asso­ci­ated with a rejec­tion of elites and gov­ern­ment­al insti­tu­tions. But mis­trust in sci­ence is based more on affect, com­mon sense or tra­di­tion. Thus, 66% of respond­ents estim­ated that “com­mon sense is often more use­ful than sci­entif­ic know­ledge”. Abstrac­tion, sci­entif­ic reas­on­ing and ration­al debate are thus a source of dis­trust. We observe, for example, that stat­ist­ic­al reas­on­ing is rejec­ted and replaced by the per­cep­tion of imme­di­ate real­ity or chance. Sci­ence is con­sidered to be an insti­tu­tion fab­ric­ated by “sav­ants”, which leads to an arti­fi­cial social divide.

The health crisis did not change this obser­va­tion. The com­par­is­on between stud­ies of 2018 and 2020 shows that demo­crat­ic mal­aise has been trans­posed to the field of health. The Cov­id-19 crisis merely con­firms, or even amp­li­fies, the frac­ture between those who adhere to sci­entif­ic ration­al­ity and those who reject it. And this phe­nomen­on seems to feed con­spir­acy theories.

Fur­ther­more, the pre­vi­ous wave of the Baro­met­er shows that even the decrease in vac­cine hes­it­ancy is not linked to changes regard­ing trust in insti­tu­tions. The wider accept­ance of the vac­cine – which now cov­ers 65% of par­ti­cipants – is only motiv­ated by the wish to return to a nor­mal life (the first answer for 45% of respond­ents favour­able to vac­cin­a­tion). The pop­u­lar cat­egor­ies believe that they are “pro­tect­ing them­selves” where­as upper classes feel that they are “pro­tect­ing others”.

How­ever, the gov­ern­ment is unable to cap­it­al­ise on the rel­at­ive suc­cess of its vac­cin­a­tion strategy. The mis­trust in polit­ic­al decisions is deep, regard­less of accom­plish­ments. Mis­trust is spin­ning and this casts doubt on all the eval­u­ation mech­an­isms of gov­ern­ment policies.

And this situ­ation is spe­cif­ic to France. Even though pop­u­lism also exists in Ger­many or in the United King­dom – coun­tries in which we led com­par­at­ive sur­veys – they are seek­ing more dir­ect actions from their cit­izens in order to improve rep­res­ent­at­ive demo­cracy. In France, they are a rejec­tion of the exist­ing polit­ic­al sys­tem. This situ­ation also explains the sig­ni­fic­ant amount of absten­tion, and the great­er sus­pi­cion towards sci­entif­ic expert­ise in France.

Interview by Agnès Vernet