Trust in citizens and forms of political participation : The view of public managers

• Like all forms of collaborative governance, new forms of citizen participation include risk-taking and therefore depend on mutual trust between thecollaborating actors. While there is a huge body of research on citizens’ trust ingovernments, public officials’ trust in citizens has received very little scholarlyattention. In order to address this gap, this paper draws on a recent survey of arepresentative sample of public managers in local Swedish government(N=1430). Do public managers think that citizens are trustworthy? Does trust incitizens impact which forms of citizen participation public managers prefer?Even though public officials are more trusting than the general populous, weshow that not every public official do trust citizens. Furthermore, the results showpublic managers’ trust in citizens influences their attitudes towards new forms ofparticipation. Just as citizens’ political trust has a positive impact on some formsof participation, but not on others, managers’ trust in citizens matters more forsome forms of participation than others.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Citizen Participation

E-Participation

Public officials

Public managers

Trust

Political Science

Statskunskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)