More people frustrated with their governments now: Bruce Stokes

MUMBAI: Public opinion surveys done recently in most countries all over the world show that there is a growing feeling of alienation among people towards their governments and it seems a sign of people getting frustrated with the system,” Bruce Stokes, director of global economic attitudes in the Pew Research Center, Washington told ET in Mumbai.

Stokes is currently in India to initiate a public opinion survey on the current political and economic situation in India. Pew Research Center has carried out public opinion surveys in many continents including Europe, Asia and Africa.

According to Stokes, the surveys show that around 80% people in most countries are unhappy with their governments and they feel that the political and economic systems do not function. “Surveys in Europe and also in China show that people in the top income group are unhappier about the conditions they live in than the people with lower income groups.

This was a startling and fascination finding. What we found in China was that the rich were much less tolerant about pollution, corruption and inequality than the poor” , Stokes said. “What we realise is that the economic issues are more or less out of the government’s control . So the governments cannot do much about the frustration that people sense.

For instance in India the rising fuel prices are a big reason for resentment among people but the government can not do much to control the global prices so the sense of frustration grows. Likewise in most countries people are realising that the government is not able to do much to solve their problems” , Stokes added.

“In Europe, growing alienation from the government is making people turn towards the extreme right, in Brazil and Turkey people realised that the government was not effective and the so called ‘good life’ was not delivering anything substantial to them.

It would be interesting to find out what results come out in India,” Stokes observed. Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project assesses public and expert views about economic conditions, values and policies. Stokes is also former senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund and a former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Stokes is author of the recent Pew Global Attitudes studies Pervasive Gloom About the World Economy, European Unity on the Rocks, and Deepening Economic Doubts in India.