Falling trust in government leading to weakened national resilience, researchers say

Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and Tel Hai Academic College say Israelis are showing a sharp decline in trust in their government and national institutions, which they believe could have serious implications for what they term “national resilience.”

The researchers define national resilience as a way to measure a country’s ability to withstand, and recover, from challenges such as wars, natural disasters, social unrest, or pandemics.

The results of the poll of 2,000 Israelis over six months since the October 7 Hamas attacks show that respondents feel a growing distrust in their leaders, national institutions such as the army, the police, the courts, and the education system, and declining feelings of patriotism, community cohesion, and a sense of safety.

The researchers, who presented their findings on June 19 at TAU’s annual convention, titled “Israel’s Future,” called for an intervention to stop the decline.

Prof. Bruria Adini from Tel Aviv University’s Emergency and Disaster Management Department led the recent study published in the leading peer-reviewed journal Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being.

National or societal resilience is the capacity of society to cope with different adversities, Adini told The Times of Israel. Insights into what impacts resilience can also help leaders guide their country’s recovery from disasters.

“It means not only being able to bounce back but to ‘bounce forward,’ and to feel even more empowered after a crisis,” she said.

For the study on Israel, Adini worked with Dr. Hadas Marciano and Prof. Yohanan Eshel of Tel Hai, and Prof. Shaul Kimhi of TAU, all of whom work at Tel Hai’s Stress and Resilience Research Center. One of the center’s goals is to conduct annual surveys of Israeli resilience.

Kimhi and Eshel are social scientists who have collaborated on researching Israeli national resilience since the 1990s and say they have developed metrics to gauge it.

Adini said the researchers use objective data collected from polls, surveys, and statistical analyses to measure resilience. They compare that data with subjective analyses such as public confidence in government, community cohesion, and perceived security. These combined factors give a picture of trends in national resilience.

The team studied national resilience after the 2006 Lebanon War, for example, assessing how Israeli society coped with the war. They followed up with studies of national resilience after conflicts with Gaza, including Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

The recent study’s results reveal a drop in Israeli societal resilience over time. This decline might “damage the country’s ability to cope with future disasters,” Adini noted.

Adini and fellow researchers began their longitudinal study soon after Israel’s war with Hamas started on October 7, when about 3,000 invading Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 people and abducted 251, among other war crimes. Since then, the team has tracked both national and individual resilience four times.

The researchers used the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), a widely used metric to assess resilience in individuals.

Individual versus collective

The study indicates that on an individual level, Israelis’ resilience has actually gone up since the war began.

Adini cited the case of a mother who, at the start of the war, was so distressed she wasn’t able to take care of her children, and a teacher who couldn’t go to work.

Now, she said, people are more used to “living alongside the war and forming a new emergency routine. They’ve gone back to work, they take care of their kids, and they’re functioning better than they did.”

Yet the researchers found a significant drop in societal resilience that stems from Israelis’ growing distrust in government leaders and institutions.

When people trust their government, they are more likely to follow its directives. When trust drops, people may not adhere to the government’s laws, or resist government orders.

As an example, Adini said, if the government tells people they can go back to their homes from which they were evacuated, they will be less compliant with directives.

“They’ll say, ‘No, we’re not going back, we don’t trust you, we don’t believe that you can defend us and ensure our security,’” she said.

Soon after the war began, volunteering for social projects and in the military was very high, Adini said. “This reflects Israeli solidarity, one of the four components of societal resilience.”

But by April 2024, “that sense of solidarity decreased substantially.” Although there are still many citizen initiatives, the study factors in how the respondents “view civil engagement,” not the number of projects and activities.

The decline in national resilience may ultimately lead to “an unprecedented crisis in the attitude of the Israeli public toward the state,” the researchers said.

This could be expressed in a drop in civic engagement, they warned.

“People may no longer volunteer for reserve duty and military service and will become less involved in the country’s advancement,” they said.

The researchers give several possible reasons for the decline in national resilience.

“There is great disappointment with the way the war is progressing,” Adini said. “It has gone on much longer than previous ones, and no one can predict when it will end.”

There is also the “very tangible threat” of a full-blown war with Hezbollah.

There are continuing rifts within Israeli society, with different groups blaming one another for the country’s problems.

But Adini said that Israeli decision-makers can use this research to implement government policies that would improve the nation’s sense of resilience.

When she has trained leaders in emergency and disaster management, she’s suggested that they be “transparent” about what they are doing.

“Leaders need to start talking about ‘the day after’ to show people that the situation will be better,” she said. “It is not sufficient to say that we will continue until there is a total victory.’”

She said it is more important to “tell people where their children will go to school on September 1.”

Additionally, local municipalities need to be given the wherewithal to help their communities. The strength of local communities is vital in building resilience. When people work together for common goals, they strengthen national resilience.

Finally, decision-makers need to make plans to give people hope.

“They need to show how they’ll strengthen the economy, how people will be able to go back to their communities in the north,” Adini said.

“The trajectory continues to go down, which is concerning,” she said. “But decision-makers can make plans to build hope. When hope is elevated, so is the level of resilience.”