The ability of governments and the global community to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, ensure security, and promote adherence to basic standards of human rights depends on people's trust in their government. However, public trust in government and political institutions has been declining in both developing and developed countries in the new millennium. One of the challenges in promoting trust in government is to engage citizens, especially the marginalized groups and the poor, into the policy process to ensure that governance is truly representative, participatory, and benefits all.

This report examines the influence of trust on policy making and explores some of the steps governments can take to strengthen public trust.

Trust and confidence are topical issues. Pundits claim that citizens trust governments and public services increasingly less - identifying a powerful new erosion of confidence that, in the US, goes back at least to Watergate in the 1970s. Recently, media exposure in the UK about MP expenses has been extensive, and a court case ruled in favor of publishing expense claims and against exempting MPs from the scrutiny which all citizens are subject to under ‘freedom of information.’ As a result, revelations about everything from property speculation to bespoke duck pond houses have fueled public outcry, and survey evidence shows that citizens increasingly distrust the government with public resources. This book gathers together arguments and evidence to answers questions such as: What is trust? Can trust be boosted through regulation? What role does leadership play in rebuilding trust? How does trust and confidence affect public services? The chapters in this collection explore these questions across several countries and different sectors of public service provision: health, education, social services, the police, and the third sector. The contributions offer empirical evidence about how the issues of trust and confidence differ across countries and sectors, and develop ideas about how trust and confidence in government and public services may adjust in the information age.

This paper explores questions related to trust in government and citizen engagement based on a literature review and consultations with experts and World Bank practitioners. The authors unpack the understanding of what trust is by shedding light on different types of trust and their measurements, explore the relationship between trust and citizen engagement, briefly discuss what governments can do to improve their citizens' trust in institutions, and conclude with areas for further exploration. This paper suggests trust in government and citizen engagement form a mutually reinforcing, interdependent dynamic in policy formation that is affected by common attributes and affect development outcomes and effectiveness. It is one in a series of four notes from the Governance Global Practice on citizen engagement in the areas of fragile, conflict, and violence situations, open government, trust, and emerging technology.

The erosion of public trust challenges government’s capacity to implement policies and carry out reforms. While Korea has achieved and maintained rapid economic growth and development, and performs comparatively well in several existing measures of the quality of public administration, trust in ...

This book explores how effective leadership by a chief executive in high political office can be achieved when certain artful practices are exhibited and utilized in exercising the powers of government. It is written from the perspectives of key people who served in the administration of Governor Richard H. Bryan of Nevada from 1983-1989, including the Governor himself.

Some analysts have called distrust the biggest governmental crisis of our time. It is unquestionably a huge problem, undermining confidence in our elected institutions, shrinking social capital, slowing innovation, and raising existential questions for democratic government itself. What’s behind the rising distrust in democracies around the world and can we do anything about it? In this lively and thought-provoking essay, Donald F. Kettl, a leading scholar of public policy and management, investigates the deep historical roots of distrust in government, exploring its effects on the social contract between citizens and their elected representatives. Most importantly, the book examines the strategies that present-day governments can follow to earn back our trust, so that the officials we elect can govern more effectively on our behalf.