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Each crisis is dreadful in its own special way, and so is the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond its lethal nature and truly global spread, one of its characteristics lies within the detachment of cause and effect. The cause, i.e. SARS-CoV-2, can clearly be attributed to health issues, though the COVID-19 pandemic challenges entire public administration (PA) systems well beyond the health sector. Both the lockdown as executed and the first careful exit-steps in their entire complexity increase scope and scale of PA’s tasks and responsibilities, challenging not only health authorities, but all parts of the administrative system, from security administration to public service delivery, with the entire world remaining in very turbulent water. Thus, the question arises how the PA should react to ensure high performance in times of crisis. Our findings underpin the relevance of trust in public administration (or “the government” in general), notably in times of crisis: the higher trust levels are, the more likely compliance of citizens and successful networking with non-state actors is. Even in the absence of many trust generating factors, trust levels are increasing in the current COVID-19 pandemic.
In diesem Artikel gehen wir neue Pfade und beforschen 1) Vertrauen und Misstrauen in Re-gulierung 2) über nationale und europäische Regierungsebenen hinweg 3) in einem Eliten-Kontext und berücksichtigen somit die entscheidenden Akteure im Regulierungsregime als Vertrauensgeber und -nehmer. Wir analysieren Daten einer Umfrage unter Entscheidungs-trägern in den Sektoren Lebensmittel, Finanzen sowie Datenschutz und finden relativ hohes und über Zeit steigendes Vertrauen in Regulierungsregime und - akteure. Dabei sehen wir, dass, v.a.in Deutschland, Regulierung als zu locker in der Anwendung wahrgenommen wird. Ebenso können wir rückschließen, dass inklusivere Regulierung ein wichtiger Faktor zur Vertrauenssteigerung sein kann. Weiterhin stellen wir fest, dass Misstrauen ein weitgehend von Vertrauen unabhängiges Konzept darstellt. Wir finden, dass hohes Vertrauen durchaus mit hohem Misstrauen vergesellschaftet sein kann – teils gar der Regulierungsperformanz zuträglich.
Trust between constituent actors within the European Union (EU)'s multilevel regulatory re-gimes is decisive for regulatory success. Trust drives information flows, increases compliance, and improves cooperation within these regimes. Despite its importance, systematic know-ledge regarding the drivers of trust within regulatory regimes is limited. This paper inquires whether trust in regulatory agencies is influenced by their affiliation with the national or EU governmental level, as well as by their performance. While existing literature predominantly focuses on why citizens place their trust in governments or regulatory agencies, this paper presents original insights regarding the formation of trust among elites within the regulatory regime, including politicians, ministerial officials, agency officials, interest groups, and regu-lated entities. We employ data obtained from a large-scale vignette experiment conducted in six countries involving 752 decision-makers from relevant organizations. The experimental results suggest that both public and private elite actors' trust assessment of regulatory agen-cies does not hinge on cues associated with the governmental level, but rather depends on agency performance. Accordingly, belonging to the national or EU governmental level does not create a difference in trust assessment of regulatory agencies in itself. It, however, shows that particularly elite actors are rather sensitive in terms of the performance of a regulatory agency.
In this paper, we position generalised trust as central to the debate on elites’ assessments of trust in EU multi-level governance. We leverage one of the most influential factors in explai-ning political trust in single-government studies to understand variations in trust towards political authorities at various levels. Departing from existing studies, we hypothesise the dual nature of generalised trust: while it influences how individuals assess their trust in poli-tical authorities, its impact varies depending on different degrees of perceived similarity of these authorities at either the national or the EU level. To test our hypotheses, we conducted an elite vignette experiment involving 567 decision-makers from public and private stakehol-ders within regulatory regimes in eight countries. The results reveal a significant positive effect of generalised trust on political trust when evaluating a national-level regulatory agency. However, trust assessments of EU-level regulatory agencies appear to be largely unaffected by generalised trust levels. Furthermore, we observed notable differences in trust assessment between private and public stakeholders, reinforcing our argument that simila-rity and community belonging underlie the influence of generalised trust on political trust. Our study suggests that EU-level political authorities may derive less benefit from high levels of generalised trust, compared to national political authorities. However, in instances where generalised trust is low, political authorities at the EU level have comparatively more opportunities to cultivate trust in them.
Trust is known to be beneficial for cooperation, though remains underdeveloped in public-private partnerships (PPPs), which are caught in a trust trap due to the cooperative regime’s internal heterogeneity. Accordingly, PPP’s inherent trust relationship is disentangled, and the burden of divergent actor rationales is introduced. We hypothesize that potential PPPs find themselves ex ante in a situation that requires certain repair mechanisms before the ‘usual’ venues of trust development can become effective. As such, exogenous information is theo-rized as quasi-substitute for relational experience that may support the development of a ‘leap of faith’. Theoretical considerations are tested by a vignette experiment with represen-tatives of both the public and the private sector. Within and between-group analyses find strong support for the burden of divergent rationales and stable levels of (role-based) trust. However, the effect of the information treatment on trust levels is limited.
