Scaling Trust: Lessons from High-Trust Societies and the Power of Technology
Written By Sanjivni Dwivedi and Vinith Kurian
Historically nations have built trust differently; Scandinavia through transparency, Singapore with strict laws, Japan via social norms, but these models don’t scale everywhere. Enter technology, the great trust equalizer. From India’s Digital Public Infrastructure to Brazil’s technology enabled financial revolution and Estonia’s blockchain governance, digital systems are embedding verification, automation, and transparency into everyday interactions. Can trust become scalable, inevitable, and built into the fabric of society?
"Trust dies but mistrust blossoms." — Sophocles, 400 BCE
Sophocles made a precise observation over two millennia ago: once broken, trust is difficult to rebuild, while mistrust, once planted, spreads rapidly. Despite its powerful impact, trust often seems as fragile as something that must be constantly protected. But what if trust isn’t fragile? What if trust can be made antifragile1, strengthening through challenges rather than crumbling under them? What if forgetting your phone in a taxi doesn’t trigger panic because you know the system will ensure its return?
Now, let us fast forward from the time of Sophocles to today. In some parts of the world, the scenario mentioned above is a lived reality. For instance, Dubai has built a reputation for its high-trust public systems. The Dubai Police's smart lost-and-found system has returned more than 80,000 lost items to owners both inside and outside the UAE, utilizing artificial intelligence and integration with various entities in Dubai (Dubai Police, 2022). This reliability is reinforced by an extensive surveillance infrastructure that ensures accountability at every level, encouraging taxi drivers and other service providers to return forgotten belongings. Taking this example further, when you think about high-trust countries, certain regions certainly come to mind such as Scandinavian nations, Japan, Singapore etc known for their strong institutional trust and social cohesion (Transparency International, 2023).
Why do these countries so readily come to mind when we think about trust?
Despite trust being a deeply personal construct shaped by individual experiences and cultural nuances, there is a broad consensus on what defines a high-trust society. Even if we struggle to define or measure it precisely, trust is something we intuitively recognize and feel. At a societal level, it is not just about belief in individual integrity but confidence in the reliability of systems (Botsman, 2017).
Yet, trust does not follow a one-size-fits-all blueprint. Trust is highly context-specific. What works seamlessly in one society may present challenges in another. Some trust models are deeply rooted in cultural or national identity, making them difficult to extend beyond their familiar contexts. Societies that build trust through shared history, ethnicity, or religion often develop strong internal cohesion, yet this can also create unintended barriers for outsiders. Examples range from the cultural homogeneity of certain European nations to historical cases like apartheid-era South Africa or the Rohingya displacement in Myanmar, where trust functioned within defined identity circles, sometimes reinforcing exclusion (Fukuyama, 1995; Abel, 2014; UNHCR, 2024). This dynamic is not new. Throughout history, empires and societies placed greater trust in those within their immediate realm while viewing outsiders with caution, shaping social and economic structures along lines of familiarity (Putnam, 2000). As the world becomes increasingly interconnected and digital, such identity-based trust models may need to evolve, balancing social cohesion with openness2 to sustain trust at scale.
However, there are models of trust that are not rooted in shared identity alone. Some societies primarily enforce trust through strict legal oversight, ensuring compliance through surveillance and penalties, while others embed trust within governance transparency, fostering accountability through institutional openness. Each model is shaped by historical experiences, governance structures, and societal values, creating distinct yet context-dependent pathways to trust.
As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, the need for a trust framework that transcends borders has never been more critical. To identify a model capable of scaling trust globally, we must examine how historically high-trust societies sustain it, why certain approaches succeed in some regions but falter in others, and whether technology can enable a universally applicable trust mechanism.
How Do High-Trust Countries Build and Sustain Trust?
High-trust societies sustain trust through different mechanisms, shaped by their governance structures, legal systems, and cultural norms. Some nations prioritize institutional transparency, fostering accountability through open governance. Others rely on strict legal enforcement, maintaining compliance through deterrence and penalties. Meanwhile, certain societies embed trust in deeply ingrained cultural norms, where social expectations regulate behavior without the need for formal oversight. Each high-trust country follows a dominant mechanism: its "trust compass", that shapes public behavior, economic activity, and governance. By analyzing these approaches, we can uncover what makes them effective and explore how their principles can contribute to building a scalable, globally relevant trust model.
Institutional Transparency – Scandinavian Countries
Scandinavian nations, including Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, exemplify trust through transparency. Their governance systems prioritize openness, accountability, and anti-corruption measures, ensuring that institutions remain credible and accessible to the public. Denmark ranks first on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2023, reflecting its strong anti-corruption policies and open public records. Additionally, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, operates with high levels of transparency, allowing citizens to track national wealth management. Furthermore, the Scandinavian model integrates comprehensive social welfare systems which includes free education, healthcare, and unemployment protections hence reducing economic uncertainty and reinforcing trust in the state. However, while transparency fosters institutional trust in these countries, this model is difficult to replicate in societies with historically weak governance or deep-seated corruption.
Strict Law Enforcement – Dubai and Singapore
Some countries build trust through strict enforcement mechanisms, ensuring compliance via legal oversight, surveillance, and penalties. Dubai and Singapore are prime examples of this model in action. In Dubai the extensive CCTV monitoring, legal deterrents, and centralized control create an environment where rule compliance is the default. Similarly, Singapore’s strict anti-corruption policies, backed by AI-driven monitoring and zero-tolerance enforcement, make it one of the world’s least corrupt nations (CPI 2023). Its reputation as the ‘fine city’ reflects its use of heavy penalties to ensure adherence to rules, reinforcing institutional trust through compliance rather than voluntary social norms. While enforcement-backed trust models can work in highly regulated environments, they often struggle in democratic societies with weaker institutions or privacy concerns.
Cultural Norms and Social Practices – Japan
In Japan, trust is deeply ingrained in social honor systems rather than enforced by law or institutional oversight. Japanese society places a strong emphasis on personal accountability, reputation, and mutual respect, making trust a self-regulating social norm. This is evident in everyday interactions and the Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police reported over 4.15 million lost items returned in 2022, reflecting public adherence to ethical behavior without the need for strict enforcement. Businesses and public spaces often operate on honor-based systems, reinforcing trust as a cultural expectation rather than a legal obligation. But, this social honor-based model is difficult to replicate globally, as it requires long-standing cultural conditioning and deeply ingrained societal values.
While these countries exemplify strong trust mechanisms, their effectiveness is deeply tied to their historical, cultural, and governance contexts. Transparency thrives in Scandinavia due to long-established institutions, strict enforcement works in centralized states like Dubai and Singapore, and cultural norms shape trust in Japan. But can these models work everywhere? Can a country with weak institutions simply adopt the Scandinavian model? Can societies that value privacy implement trust through surveillance? The reality is that these models don’t scale universally.
So, if traditional trust mechanisms don’t translate globally, what can?
Can Technology Serve as the Great Equalizer in Trust-Building?
As globalization accelerates and digital interactions surpass physical ones, traditional trust mechanisms struggle to keep pace. Systems built on historical credibility, centralized enforcement, or cultural conditioning are no longer sufficient in a world where transactions, identities, and governance operate beyond national borders. This is where technology steps in. Unlike traditional models, technology-driven trust mechanisms can be context-agnostic, scalable, and built into the very fabric of interactions. Rather than relying on institutional goodwill or social norms, technology embeds compliance, transparency, and security by design, making trust a structural feature rather than a fragile social expectation.
Some nations are already building trust-by-design infrastructures that function independently of cultural, legal, or institutional constraints. In traditionally low-trust countries like India and Brazil, digital systems have helped bridge trust deficits in key domains such as finance. Meanwhile, Estonia’s blockchain-based governance demonstrates how technology can embed trust directly into institutional frameworks, proving that trust can be engineered at a societal level as well. Let’s examine how each of these technological trust mechanisms works in practice.
India: Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and the Transformation of a Low-Trust Economy
India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has embedded trust into financial transactions, overcoming historical challenges of informal economies, corruption, and bureaucratic inefficiencies. Aadhaar, covering over 1.3 billion people, enables secure, real-time authentication for banking, taxation, and welfare, reducing fraud (UIDAI, 2024). UPI, processing over 14 billion monthly transactions, eliminates intermediaries, lowers costs, and expands financial inclusion (NPCI, 2024). DigiLocker ensures tamper-proof digital credentials, replacing paper-based bureaucracy (MeitY, 2024), while the Account Aggregator framework allows secure, consent-based financial data sharing (RBI, 2024). Together, these systems have transformed India’s digital economy into a high-trust, inclusive ecosystem.
Is this model scalable? India’s DPI model is adaptable when aligned with local regulations, digital literacy, and institutional capacity. While real-time authentication, interoperable payments, and secure data-sharing can be replicated, efforts are already underway to extend India’s DPI success to other parts of the world.
Brazil: AI-Driven Financial Trust with Pix
Launched by the Central Bank of Brazil in 2020, Pix has transformed financial transactions with instant, 24/7 transfers, significantly reducing reliance on cash and traditional banking. By 2022, 71% to 74% of Brazil’s population was using Pix, driving financial inclusion and accelerating digital adoption (Central Bank of Brazil, 2022). However, with its rapid expansion, fraud risks have also increased. In response, the Central Bank of Brazil has introduced enhanced security measures, including transaction limits, preventive blocks, and a Special Return Mechanism to expedite reimbursements for scam victims (PaymentsCMI, 2022). Additionally, AI-driven fraud detection is being explored, with financial institutions increasingly adopting technologies such as behavior biometrics and device intelligence to strengthen security and enhance user trust.
Is this model scalable? Pix’s success demonstrates its scalability and its replication in other regions depends on regulatory oversight, financial infrastructure, and user adoption to ensure efficiency and trust. It could potentially be replicated in other Latin American countries due to similar contexts.
Estonia: Offering A Blueprint for Digital Governance and Verifiable Trust
Unlike India and Brazil, Estonia was not a historically low-trust society. Instead, it leveraged technology to proactively scale trust, creating a globally recognized model of e-Governance. Estonia has developed a highly efficient digital governance model, enhancing transparency, financial trust, and public services. The e-Residency program has attracted over 122,300 global entrepreneurs, leading to the creation of more than 33,800 Estonian companies. The X-Road data exchange system facilitates over 2.2 billion secure transactions annually, connecting more than 52,000 organizations and streamlining government services through real-time verification (e-Estonia, 2024). Estonia has also integrated blockchain to secure healthcare records, legal contracts, and voting systems, ensuring tamper-proof data and strengthening public trust. Nearly all government services are accessible online, improving efficiency and transparency (Estonian World, 2024).
Is this a scalable model? Estonia's digital trust framework is effective and its replication can be enabled by high digital literacy. This model holds promise as digital literacy is steadily increasing worldwide, with approximately 67% of the global population using the internet as of 2023, providing a growing foundation for digital skills development (DevelopmentAid, 2023). This model serves as a blueprint for digital governance, showcasing how technology can enhance trust and efficiency in public administration.
What do these approaches teach us about scalable trust? These examples demonstrate that technology can serve as a trust equalizer, enabling verifiable, transparent, and secure interactions without relying on social conditioning, centralized enforcement, or legacy institutions. While these models vary, they share a common principle: they embed trust through technology rather than depending on pre-existing societal trust. However, technology alone does not create a high-trust society overnight. Instead, it builds a robust baseline of trust, making key interactions more secure and predictable. On top of this foundation, interpersonal trust and institutional confidence can grow, allowing trust to scale in a meaningful and sustainable way.
But, can trust be designed into global systems as a default state? As digital and financial ecosystems become increasingly interconnected, seamless and scalable trust mechanisms are essential. The key lies in intentionally designing systems that incentivize trustworthy behavior, deter fraud, and embed trust into foundational processes. When systems reward ethical engagement, transparency, and accountability, individuals and institutions naturally reinforce trust. At the same time, mistrust and fraudulent behavior must be actively discouraged, making dishonesty costly, high-risk, and structurally unfeasible. This requires integrating verification mechanisms, automated transparency, and real-time accountability, ensuring minimal room for manipulation or exploitation. The final step is embedding trust as the default state, so that interactions begin from a point of trust rather than a point of mistrust. When systems are inherently reliable, trust is not just an outcome but a built-in feature. While the journey toward a high-trust global system is still unfolding, we see immense potential in collaborative innovation, policy alignment, and technology-driven solutions to make scalable trust a reality.
At Scaling Trust, we look forward to exploring this evolving landscape alongside partners, thinkers, and innovators who share this vision. Trust in our times can be made antifragile; it can be designed to grow stronger through challenge, adapting and scaling like an antifragile system that thrives under pressure, ensuring resilience and sustainability in an increasingly complex world.
References
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Botsman, R. (2017). Who can you trust? How technology brought us together and why it might drive us apart. PublicAffairs.
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Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity. Free Press.
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United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (2024). Seven years of crisis for Rohingya refugees. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/us/news/briefing-notes/seven-years-crisis-rohingya-refugees
Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. Random House.
UIDAI. (2024). Aadhaar statistics and authentication updates. Unique Identification Authority of India.
NPCI. (2024). UPI transaction data. National Payments Corporation of India.
MeitY. (2024). DigiLocker adoption report. Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.
RBI. (2024). Account Aggregator framework: Enabling secure financial data sharing. Reserve Bank of India.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012) defines antifragility as a property of systems that not only withstand shocks but actually improve because of them. Unlike resilience, which resists damage, antifragility thrives under stress, adapting and becoming stronger. When applied to trust, this suggests that well-designed institutions, norms, and governance structures can reinforce societal trust through disruptions, making it more robust rather than vulnerable to failure.
Robert Putnam (2000) emphasizes that strong social cohesion and interpersonal trust are essential for stable democracies and thriving economies. He argues that societies with high levels of social capital experience greater cooperation, lower transaction costs, and improved collective problem-solving, reinforcing the importance of interpersonal trust in economic and political stability.
All artworks are designed by Sanjivni Dwivedi.
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