WORLD VALUES SURVEY TRUST vs DEMOCRATIC DECLINE — honest summary
================================================================
Two WVS measures merged with Freedom House (FreeScore) and V-Dem (libdem), by country-wave.

A) INTERPERSONAL TRUST ("most people can be trusted") — 106 countries, 378 waves
   LEVEL (cross-national): corr(trust, FH)=+0.24 ; corr(trust, V-Dem)=+0.33
       -> high-trust societies ARE more democratic (classic social-capital finding, BETWEEN countries)
   WITHIN-country (FE): slope -0.09 (p=0.21) — NOT significant
   CHANGE (first vs last wave, 86 countries): corr(Δtrust, ΔFH)=-0.07 ; ΔV-Dem=-0.06 — ~ZERO
       where trust FELL: only 32% lost democracy (mean ΔFH +2.8); where trust ROSE: 19% lost (mean -1.6)

B) CONFIDENCE IN PARLIAMENT (institutional/political trust) — 67 countries, 294 waves
   LEVEL pooled: corr=-0.28 (NEGATIVE) — CONFOUNDED: autocracies report high confidence (China 92, Vietnam 91)
   WITHIN-country FE: slope -0.18 (p=0.005) — significant but WRONG sign (consolidating autocracies raise confidence)
   CHANGE: corr(Δparl, ΔFH)=-0.17 (p=0.09, marginal, wrong sign for hypothesis)
       among established democracies (FH0>=70): corr=-0.09 (p=0.35) — NULL
       where parliament-confidence FELL: only 20% lost democracy (mean ΔFH +3.8)

VERDICT: WVS trust does NOT correlate with the democratic decline in change terms.
- Social-trust LEVEL relates to democracy cross-nationally, but its CHANGE does not track decline.
- Institutional-trust is confounded (authoritarian regimes inflate/coerce reported confidence).
- FH measures institutional STRUCTURE, not public sentiment, so trust can collapse (US parliament conf 52->15)
  while the FH score barely moves -> the two are decoupled country-by-country.
RECONCILIATION: trust IS declining in many established democracies (US, Europe) per Pew/Afrobarometer/Gallup,
but that is a WITHIN-democracy narrative, NOT a clean cross-national correlation with FH/V-Dem decline.
Do NOT claim "declining trust -> declining democracy" as a correlation in WVS data.
