‘Come together?’ Citizens and civil servants dialogue and trust

Abstract

Trust is a key element in the co‐creation of solution for public problems. Working together is a gradual learning exercise that helps to shape emotions and attitudes and to create the foundations of trust. However, little is known about how institutions can promote trust. With the intention of going deeper into the subject, this paper focuses on a local experience in Spain: Madrid Escucha, a City Council initiative aimed at stimulating dialogue between officials and citizens around projects to improve city life. Three are our questions: who participate in these spaces, how the interactions are, and what advances are achieved. Based on qualitative research, empirical findings confirm a biased participation in this kind of scenarios as well as the presence of prejudices on both sides, an interaction characterised by initial idealism followed by discouragement and a possible readjustment, and a final satisfaction with the process even when results are not successful.

Revisión sistemática descriptiva de los métodos empleados para investigar la confianza ciudadana en la coproducción de servicios públicos

“…ISSN: 2659-9538 refutaron (Cheng, 2018;Güemes & Resina, 2019). Para explicar estas divergencias, varios autores estudiaron el papel mediador de factores psicológicos (Fledderus & Honingh, 2016) y sociodemográficos (Fledderus et al, 2014;Van Ryzin, 2011), cuando otros demostraron la escasa influencia de los componentes cultural (Fledderus, 2015b;Pestoff, 2006), llevando así a la necesidad de seguir estudiando dicha relación.…”

In Bureaucrats we Trust? Good Governance and Trust in Civil Servants

“…These findings highlight the need for government administration that promotes greater engagement with the public. Güemes and Resina (2019) argue that one of the better ways to encourage trust in public institutions is to support programs that promote dialogue between professionals in the public sector and citizens. Likewise, practices that publicly demonstrate openness, transparency, and accountability may foster trusting attitudes.…”

Expertise and Participatory Governance: The Incorporation of Expert Knowledge in Local Participatory Processes

“…Hence, the prevailing storyline in a given matter legitimizes both the participatory mechanism and whether key actors are characterized as consumers, corporatist stakeholders, or lay citizens, for instance. The literature on democratization of the policy process suggests that a common storyline amongst bureaucrats is one of resistance towards the integration of lay knowledge in the policy process (Güemes & Resina 2019;Hendriks & Lees-Marshment 2019). Bureaucrats often perceive lay knowledge as unreliable with regard to problem solving.…”