Istat data tells us that the institutions we trust most I’m the Fire brigadethe Law enforcement and the President of the Republic. Then, especially in Northern Italy, trust in local administrations prevails over regional, national and European ones. The institution we trust the least continues to be political parties.
The Istat multipurpose survey “Aspects of everyday life” allows us to evaluate how much Italians (from 14 years of age) believe that institutions act effectively in the collective interest. Trust is measured through a scale from 0 to 10Where:
- 0 indicates total mistrust
- 10 indicates trust complete
This scale also allows us to observe how trust has changed over time: today, in fact, we have a historical series over ten years long (2012–2024), which allows us to identify stable trends and significant changes.
The first interesting fact that emerges is that trust in institutions changes little in the long term. The positions in the ranking have in fact remained surprisingly stable over the years. For example, since 2012 almost the 90% of Italians declares to trust the Fire brigade (i.e. give them a trust score of 6 or higher).
Even in 2024 (the most updated data), the Fire Brigade confirms itself as themost esteemed institutionwith very high levels of trust: more than two thirds of Italians give them a vote of confidence between 8 and 10.
Al second place we find them Law enforcementwho maintain very high levels of trust: around 40% assign a very high vote of confidence (8-10) and another 33% give sufficient votes (6-7). However, compared to 2023 there was a slight decline among the most confident, with a reduction of more than two percentage points in the highest ratings.
There Presidency of the Republic is confirmed at third placewith 45% of Italians giving him very high trust (8–10) and a further 23% a sufficient score (6–7). Even in this case, however, a slight decline is observed compared to the previous year.
In the middle of the table we find the judicial systemwhich is given moderate trust: in 2024, 44% of Italians gave it a score between 6 and 10. This percentage interrupts a growth that began in 2020 and culminated in the peak of 2023 (46%). Another interesting aspect concerns the territorial distribution: the judicial system is the only institution towards which the levels of trust are higher in the South than in the North.
Moving down the ranking, the Italian Parliament and the European Parliament are aligned:
- Italian Parliament: 40.8% votes ≥ 6
- European Parliament: 40.2% votes ≥ 6
This is an important change: in 2018 the gap between the two was still significant, but the progressive increase in trust towards the Italian Parliament managed to eliminate it.
Another relevant fact concerns government institutions: there are more of them geographically close to citizensthe more we tend to trust. Specifically, if we compare the percentage of Italians who assigned a vote of confidence at least equal to 6, we obtain:
- Municipal administrations: 50%
- Regional administrations: 41%
- National government: 37%
Furthermore, levels of trust in municipal administrations are higher in small municipalities: 56% of citizens assigned scores between 6 and 10 in municipalities with up to 10 thousand inhabitants, compared to only 38% recorded in metropolitan municipalities. All these differences therefore suggest that the territorial proximity matters a lot in the perception of institutions.
Despite having regained consensus in recent years, i political parties remain throughout the national territoryinstitution that is least trusted:
- little more than 1 in 5 citizens expresses trust (6-10)
- beyond the half assign grades insufficient (1–5)
- more than 1 out of 5 assign vote 0
The data do not reveal significant differences between men and women, while both age and educational qualifications appear to be two relevant factors. In particular, the older you get, the more trust in institutions growsespecially towards the President of the Republic and the police forces.
THE graduates they are, however, more confident towards the President of the Republic and the European Parliamentwhile different levels of government and political parties record relatively higher levels of trust among those with lower educational qualifications.
Putting all this information together, a rather clear picture emerges: Italians tend to trust moreover of those who act concretely And visibly in the area (such as firefighters, law enforcement agencies and local administrations) and less than those who operate on levels perceived as more distant or abstract. Only exception this trend seems to be the President of the Republic: despite not being a territorially close figure, this apparent anomaly can be explained by considering his super partes role, less linked to political conflict and more to respect for constitutional rules.
