Comparable estimates of public trust in national government for 115 countries and territories, 1973–2020, harmonizing 1,545 country-year observations from 189 national and cross-national surveys using a Bayesian latent variable model. Select cases to compare levels and trends; shaded bands show the 80% credible interval.
TrustGov scores are posterior means from a dynamic comparative public opinion
(DCPO) latent-variable model, on a 0–1 scale where higher values indicate
greater public trust in the national government. Because they are model
estimates rather than direct survey percentages, each country-year carries
measurement uncertainty — the sd, q10, and
q90 columns. Analyses that use these scores should propagate
that uncertainty rather than treating the means as known quantities.
Coverage is uneven: cases surveyed more often have more precise estimates and longer series. Wide bands mean sparse underlying survey data, not volatile opinion.
This page ships the country-year summaries. The full posterior draws, which you need to propagate measurement uncertainty properly, are in the replication repository.