Trust in public administration and public services
6. How should European (research) policy react?
Public administration and public service delivery are among the largest economic sectors in Europe.
Low trust has important implications for both the size and structure of this sector, and the costs of running public services. Trust in public services is essential for the innovative capacity of the public sector, and for building the administrative capacity to deliver policy.
6.1. Recommendations for research priorities
Content-wise, research should more specifically look into the following priorities:
Attitudes: The extent to which public sector actors trust each other (citizens trust in public administration; public officials' trust in the citizens they serve; and inter-organisational trust), and how perceived trustworthiness is created.
Behaviours: Behavioural responses of citizens and public officials to low trust in terms of voice (complaining, public shaming, changing voting behaviours, whistle-blowing), and choice or exit (non-take-up of public services, going private and setting up alterative public service provision mechanisms, quitting one's position, abandoning collaborative networks).
This can be done through observational and through experimental research.
Changing institutional arrangements: The nature and scope of institutional signals reflecting changing levels of trust, such as the contractualisation and juridification of interactions (and the reversal thereof); increases and decreases in monitoring and compliance tools; and the homogenisation or heterogenisation of policy making and service delivery within the public sector. This has implications for the cost of running public services, accountability and equal access to policy making.
The role of institutionalised distrust and deliberate transaction costs in the design of policies and governance structures.
The emergence of trust-based steering mechanisms: these include relational contacting, politicisation, partnership working, or new regulatory styles, and the positive and negative effects of such developments in terms of outcomes, public service market structure, democratic accountability, rule of law, resilience, equal treatment. It should also look at what these mechanisms mean for what we expect from civil servants in terms of attitudes to citizens, their integrity, and core values.
The extent to which changing practices in public sector governance are substitutes or complements to trust.
6.2. Recommendations EU research policy
Changing levels of trust between public officials, in particular EU administrators, and researchers may have important implications for the way how research and innovation policies and funding programmes will operate. In a situation of increasing trust, one may see long-term collaborations with relatively few monitoring mechanisms. The downside is a risk of moving towards a situation where the bulk of research funding goes to an in-group of trusted research partners. In a situation of decreasing trust, this may result in increasing levels of monitoring tools and contracts, and associated high administrative burdens. In particular, it could result in the micromanagement of projects and detailed procedural requirements before and during projects that may stifle
126 innovation. It may also lead to exit behaviours, such as scientists no longer bothering to apply for funding, or funders no longer willing to fund certain projects, a trend that is now already visible in hostile attitudes of governments towards the social sciences for their perceived lack of direct economic impacts.
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