Defining Trust
We understand trust as a relational concept about ‘keeping promises and agreements’ (Hetherington, 2005, p. 1). This is in keeping with the OECD’s definition where trust is “holding a positive perception about the actions of an individual or an organization” (OECD 2017, p. 16). We also recognise the notion of trust as a psychological contract between the individual and the organisation as “expectations and obligations” (Cullinane and Dundon, 2006; Rousseau, 2001); and, the broader notion of trust as a social contract between government and citizen involving rights and obligations which has commanded the attention of political philosophers since the 17th century from Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, to Rawls and Gauthier, amongst others. We hypothesize that we can abstract from these overlapping definitions various micro-psychological contracts between government and citizen that encompass expectations of service culture, quality and obligations and entitlements of citizenship.
We hypothesize that in combination, trust comprises of various micro-psychological contracts between government and citizens that encompass expectations of service culture, quality and obligations and entitlements of citizenship.
It is important to recognize the three different components of trust that operate in a liberal democracy:
- Trust occurs when A trusts that B will act on their behalf and in their interests to do X in particular and more generally.
- Mistrust occurs when A assumes that B may not act on their behalf and in their interests to do X but will judge B according to information and context. This definition is associated with the notion of a critical citizen and active citizenship and is viewed to strengthen democracy.
- Distrust occurs when A assumes that B is untrustworthy and will cause harm to their interests in respect of X or more generally.
In contrast to mistrust, distrust is viewed to weaken democracy and confidence in government.
For the purposes of this study, this would mean that public trust in government services is earned by agencies delivering on the service promise in a way that values and respects citizen input. Given this understanding, for this study trust is defined as “A citizen’s belief that [the institutions of government] fulfil their mandates with competence and integrity, acting in pursuit of the broader benefit of society” (OECD, 2017, p. 23).
What’s going on? Supply and demand-side theories of political trust
How you tackle the problem of declining trust depends upon how you define the problem, and our data and review of the international literature demonstrate that the problem is multi-dimensional requiring a broad range of responses. The literature can be organised loosely around demand and supply-side theories of trust.
Demand-side theories focus on how much individuals trust government and politics and explore their key characteristics. What is it about citizens (such as their educational background, class, location, country or cohort of birth) which makes them trusting or not? What drives the prospects for political engagement, and what makes citizens feel that their vote counts; or, that their active engagement could deliver value? In general, the strongest predictors of distrust both in Australia and internationally continue to be attitudinal and are connected to negativity about politics experienced in different ways by different groups of citizens depending upon their social and economic circumstances, and the perceived relative power of their political voice.
It is therefore unsurprising that the most marginalised members of our society are embedded in disadvantaged communities and are the most distrusting of government services. Demand-side interventions therefore focus on overcoming various barriers to social, economic or political participation through improved civic or adult education, labour market activation, public participation, and improved representation of marginalised groups, and other forms of institutionalised citizen empowerment.
Supply-side theories of trust start from the premise that public trust must in some way correspond with the trustworthiness of government. The argument here is that it is the performance (supply) of government that matters most in orienting the outlooks of citizens, together with its commitment to procedural fairness and equality. Interventions on the supply-side therefore seek to enhance the integrity of government and politicians, and the quality and procedural fairness of service delivery or parliamentary processes through open government or good governance. This includes mechanisms of transparency and accountability, enhancing public service competence and adopting anti-corruption measures. Performance legitimacy comes from the public’s assessment of the government’s record in delivering public goods and services like economic growth, welfare and security (Boswell 2018). If important, as commonly assumed, then public confidence should relate to perceptual and/or aggregate indicators of policy outputs and outcomes, such as satisfaction with the performance of the economy or the government’s record on education and healthcare.
Procedural legitimacy focuses on the way that officeholders are nominated to positions of authority through meritocratic processes, and the mechanisms of accountability for office-holders, and whether citizens feel that these processes and mechanisms are appropriate, irrespective of their actions and decisions (Tyler and Trinkner, 2017). These issues of performance legitimacy also extend to the construction of representative politics, and the way that representative institutions work and operate in terms of the conduct of the business of government (see Alonso, Keane and Merkel, 2017).
We argue that, since it is beyond the decision-making authority of the APS to address the problem of declining public trust with politicians, it makes more sense to focus our attention on how the APS can deliver the best service experience possible and contribute to bridging the trust divide. This draws us inexorably towards particular supply-side theories of trust which focus on enhancing the quality of public service production. Trust in public services matters because this is where citizens interact with government and an opportunity is provided for strengthening the quality of democratic governance. Intuitively, public service design and delivery should be a fertile space for trust building.
Why trust and distrust matter
If social trust captures relations between citizens, political trust goes more directly to the issue of whether citizens trust their political leaders, when in government, to do the right thing and as Donald Kettle (2017, p. 1) puts it, “keep their promises in a just, honest, and efficient way”. There is widespread concern among scholars and in popular commentary that citizens have grown more distrustful of politicians, sceptical about democratic institutions, and disillusioned with democratic processes or even principles (see Dalton, 2004). Weakening political trust is thought to erode civic engagement and conventional forms of political participation such as voter registration or turnout (Franklin 2004), to reduce support for progressive public policies (Van Deth et al., 2007) and promote risk adverse and short-termist government (Hetherington, 2005), and to create the space for the rise of authoritarian populist forces (Norris and Ingehart, 2018). Also, there may be implications for long-term democratic stability; liberal democratic regimes are thought most durable when built upon popular legitimacy (Almond and Verba, 1963).
The risks of democratic backsliding are regarded as particularly serious if public scepticism spreads upwards from core institutions of governance to corrode citizen perspectives about the performance of liberal democracy and even its core ideals (see Diamond and Plattner, 2015; Mounk, 2018; and, Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018). Others counter that the picture should not be exaggerated, as anxiety about public trust in government usually ebbs and flows over the years (Norris, 1999 and 2011).
In many discussions, it is often naively and automatically assumed that any erosion of social and political trust among citizens is inherently problematic, as it reduces the incentives for cooperation. The Australian case is distinctive also in the sense that it is unusual to see such a crisis in political trust when the economy is performing so well. Despite an extensive period of economic growth, the majority of Australians have little faith in the system of government being able to do anything about the big problems in their lives or those facing society more generally. Declining political trust undermines public confidence in the ability of government to perform its core tasks and address the big public policy problems of our times (Stoker et al., 2018b). It impacts negatively on social cohesion at a time when we need more integrated communities (Miranti and Evans, 2017) and, makes it more difficult for Australia to lead on key geopolitical issues and champion liberal democracy when it is under threat globally (OECD, 2017).
In sum, trust is integral to effective government. It is the ‘glue’ that enables collective action for mutual benefit; without trust our ability to make social progress is constrained severely. Arguably trust is even more important in a federated state where collaborative problem solving is fundamental to maintaining nation building efforts.
But where can we conceptualise trust in government services in this space? Intuitively, political trust can impact positively or negatively on public perceptions of the quality of public service delivery. At the same time, trust in government services could also impact positively or negatively on political trust or other dimensions of trust such as social trust or public confidence in government. Whether there is a significant relationship between these variables is an empirical question and one that we will pursue in our empirical research.