The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

by Martin Gurri

Henri Rosanvallon, one of the few interesting political analysts today, has written of the “rise of the society of distrust.”1 The public, in a complex society, must depend on specialists, experts, and intermediaries such as political representatives, organized institutionally and hierarchically. When the experts fail, the public can only appeal to other experts, often from the same failed institution. The process has resembled a mutual protection pact among the elites. Failure typically gets blamed on insufficient support: the CIA, for example, demanded and received a bigger budget after 9/11. An exasperated public has countered by notching up the vehemence of criticism and the frequency of its interventions. At times, in some places, the public has abandoned all hope in modern society and lapsed into a permanent state of negation and protest.