This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Van de Walle, S. Articles by Bouckaert, G. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Trust in the public sector: is there any evidence for a long-term decline?

Institute of Local Government Studies, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham

Steven Van Roosbroek

Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Geert Bouckaert

Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Concerns with declining public trust in government have become a permanent element of the contemporary political discourse. This concern also extends to levels of citizens' trust in the public administration and public services. Trust is said to be declining, and this decline is generally seen as detrimental to public service delivery. In this article, we examine the main elements in this discussion, review the existing international survey data and summarize the main findings for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Citizens' trust in the public sector is found to fluctuate, and the data generally do not show consistently declining levels of trust. Furthermore, in some countries there simply are insufficient data to come to any conclusions at all about time trends in citizen trust in the public sector.

Points for practitioners

This article summarizes some of the survey material on citizens' trust in the public administration. It allows practitioners to compare trends in public trust in their country across time and space. The findings lead us to reject the hypothesis of a universal decline of trust in the public sector. The article warns against using opinion poll results without considering context. The long-term and comparative perspective on citizens' trust in the public sector is all too often absent from the policy discourse that is frequently based on assumptions and ad hoc approaches.

Key Words: citizen—government relations • comparative public administration • public opinion • trust in government

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol. 74, No. 1, 47-64 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0020852307085733


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				V. Martinez-Tur and J. M. Peiro The trust episode in organizations: implications for private and public social capital Social Science Information, June 1, 2009; 48(2): 143 - 174. [Abstract] [PDF]