The citizen and trust in the (trustworthy) state

DOI10.1177/0952076718811420
AuthorRob Brown
Date01 October 2020
Published date01 October 2020
Subject MatterArticles
untitled Article
Public Policy and Administration
2020, Vol. 35(4) 384–402
The citizen and trust in
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DOI: 10.1177/0952076718811420
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Rob Brown
University of the West of England, UK
Abstract
Public sector modernization has focused on achieving greater efficiency within the
institutions and agencies of the state. In comparison, the relationship between citizen
and state as a basis for service improvement has received less attention. This paper
describes a study that helps to redress this balance by exploring the role that trust can
play as a mechanism of accountability of the state to the citizen and, as a consequence,
improving their mutual cooperation. This poses a challenge for the state – to be trusted
by the citizen requires being trustworthy in the eyes of the citizen. Establishing the
citizen’s view of the characteristics of the trustworthy state, and how this differs from
the norm of trust currently in use within the state, is the subject of the research.
The question is addressed through a process of dialogic action research with users
and frontline staff of two public services (a housing benefit service and a primary health
care general practice). The output of the study is a relational diagnostic, applicable
across the public sector, derived from a synthesis of the tests applied by the citizen
as they assess the trustworthiness of a public service.
Keywords
Citizen participation, cooperation, service delivery, trust
Introduction
The dominant discourse of public sector modernization of the last decades has
concerned reforms aimed to make the state more ef‌f‌icient in generating collective
social benef‌its. It has primarily involved importing management techniques from
the private sector to streamline state institutions and agencies (Hood, 1991;
Kernaghan, 2000).
By contrast, the premise underpinning this paper is that the relationship between
state and citizens should be an equal focus of reform. It reports on a study investigating
the proposition that a stronger form of trust – def‌ined as a mode of social coordination
particularly suited to the governance of relationships of voluntary cooperation – can
Corresponding author:
Rob Brown, 68 York Road, Montpelier, Bristol BS6 5QF, UK.
Email: drrobnpbrown@gmail.com

Brown
385
provide an ef‌fective mechanism of accountability and coordination between citizen
and state. It contributes to a growing debate on the changing role of citizens from a
range of perspectives, including public policy (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2015),
academic discussions of themes such as the relational state (Muir, 2014), and commu-
nity-based models of participation and citizenship (Barnes et al., 2009).
This paper makes four contributions, linking theory and practice, to this debate.
The f‌irst is analytic; creating a model of the citizen/state relationship that def‌ines the
scope for the research in investigating the dynamics of their interaction and high-
lights the potential for trust to play a bigger role in encouraging mutual cooperation.
This poses a challenge; to be trusted by citizens, the state needs to be trustworthy in
the eyes of citizens. How citizens assess this and whether this understanding can be
used to improve the relationship were the questions addressed by the research.
The second contribution is theoretic; investigating the dimensions of these
questions in the literature on trust and the trustworthy state. Contemporary evi-
dence is suggestive that the state is operating to a more limited and traditional
norm of trust than that being adopted by citizens. This hypothesis was tested in
the course of the research by developing and using a three-dimensional typog-
raphy of forms of trust.
The third contribution is methodological; it describes the research challenge in
accessing relational knowledge and the process of action research (AR) involving
service users and frontline staf‌f adopted in response. This method was deployed
with a housing benef‌it (HB) service (providing rent support to qualifying citizens)
and with a city-based general practice (GP) surgery providing primary health care.
The f‌inal contribution is practical; the results of the study conf‌irmed major
dif‌ferences between the citizen’s view of state trustworthiness and that in use
within the state. The factors important to citizens are synthesized into a set of
diagnostic tests used for assessing the trustworthiness of public services.
Satisfying these tests has profound structural consequences for state activities.
The conclusion assesses the implications and value of this insight.
Citizen trust and the co-creation of public value
This section def‌ines the scope and objectives for the study by analysing the citizen/state
relationship from the perspective of the contribution citizens make to the co-creation
of public value, enacted within an intersubjective ‘zone of interaction’. This provides
the context for the research in investigating the potential for trust to supplement
the workings of voice and choice in encouraging more cooperative interactions.
A public value relational model
From a relational perspective, a key shortcoming of traditional approaches to the
modernization of the state is that they fail to conceptualize the contribution of
citizens adequately. A ‘producer’ perspective tends to conceive public services as
the output of a ‘Taylorist’ (Doray, 1988) process of sequential mass production,

386
Public Policy and Administration 35(4)
with the role of citizens conf‌ined to one of passive consumption. Such a limited
view of the role of citizens inevitably limits thinking on the citizen/state relationship
and how to improve it.
The literature on public value (Moore, 1995) provides a more suitable framework
for understanding the reality and dynamic of the relationship from the perspective of
citizens. Def‌ining public value as the extent to which a service achieves its existential
purpose (Kelly et al., 2002) of‌fers an analytic basis for assessing the contribution that
citizens make to this value in cooperation with the state. This adapts the framework,
which was originally conceived as guidance for public sector managers in showing
how they operated within a ‘strategic triangle’ of factors that determine their ability
to create public value. The same three factors help scope the citizen contribution.
The f‌irst is the strategic goals of a state activity – the aims against which the
value it produces should be measured. Moore himself argues that it is citizens who
def‌ine the nature of public goals ‘Partly in terms of the satisfaction of individuals
who enjoy desirable outcomes. . . and partly in terms of the satisfaction of citizens
who have seen a collective need, fashioned a public response to that need, and
thereby participated in the construction of a community’ (Moore, 1995: 45). Others
point out that social norms play a signif‌icant part in delivering these goals (Kelly
et al., 2002). The second factor stimulating public value is the authorizing environ-
ment – the importance of gaining support for action from all relevant stakeholders.
Moore lists a number of relevant groups including staf‌f and politicians; however,
once again the role of citizens in conferring legitimacy and funding is preeminent.
The contribution of citizens to the third factor of public value – the operational
capability to deploy resources – is more underrated and contentious. From a relational
perspective, citizens contribute two types of value in this respect. Firstly, in the success-
ful consumption of a service. This emphasizes the experience of the service user in
generating value. For example, social care that abuses and distresses clients destroys
rather than creates value. As Gro¨nroos observes from the perspective of service man-
agement theory, ‘Value-in-use means that value for the user is created or emerges during
usage, which is a process of which the customer as user is in charge. . .’ (Gro¨nroos, 2011:
287). Crucially, citizens not only create ‘usage value’ for themselves, but they also
contribute to that of others by providing feedback on the success of the service.
Secondly, most public services require citizens to contribute value intrinsic to the
process of production, whether by providing information, accessing and following
service processes or participating in the service itself. This perspective of ‘joint
production’ is compatible with the literature on co-production (Boyle and
Harris, 2009; Ostrom, 1990), though the latter tends to conceptualize the role of
citizens as additive rather than inherent. However, what both perspectives share is
the analysis of the value citizens can bring to the process of production, including
ownership, ef‌fort and intelligence. Figure 1 illustrates this analysis of the three
dimensions of the citizen contribution to public value.
This value obtains in most areas of state activity. Table 1 provides a typography
of the main state functions derived from commonalities in the service ‘of‌fer’, along
with examples of the public value outcome and the citizen contribution.




























Brown
387
Goal definition and
social norms
Strategic goals
c goa
Joint production
The citizen
and successful
contribution to
consumption
public value
p
Legitimacy and
funding
Operational capab
apa ili
bility
Au
A thorizin
uthorizi g env
ng environment
Figure 1. The citizen contributions to public value.
Table 1. Public...

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