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Reforming for Trust: Balancing Responsibility and Citizen Empowerment

This paper discusses how needed reforms in areas like the public sector can unintentionally damage trust within society. It explores the transfer of responsibility from the state to individuals due to spending constraints, growing demands, and limits on state authority. The conflicting dynamics between assertive citizens and state authority are analyzed in the context of the EU Social Agenda from 2001 to 2008 and the UK approach. The text sheds light on the importance of trust, shared values, and the potential consequences of reforms on trust levels. Various solutions proposed by experts are considered, including reasserting trust in professionals, embracing individual self-confidence, and reforming democracy through deliberative institutions. The complexities of rebuilding trust, involving information sharing, subsidiarity, and engagement exercises, are highlighted. Overall, the paper explores the delicate balance between reforming systems and preserving societal trust.

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Reforming for Trust: Balancing Responsibility and Citizen Empowerment

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  1. How needed reforms may damage trust Peter Taylor-Gooby p.f.taylor-gooby@kent.ac.uk

  2. The issue: e.g. NHS reform

  3. Public sector reform • Keynote of reform: transfer of responsibility state → individual • For excellent reasons • spending constraints/ growing demands • limits on state authority • assertive (and richer) citizens • Cf EU Social Agenda 2001 → 2008

  4. UK approach • Labour market activation; pensions • ‘New public management’ • competing providers • consumer choice • budget allocation • targets, regulation, information, from top • Implicit theory: people as social actors → individual rational action

  5. The trust malaise • IRA: alignment of interests • Social: shared values/ commitment • Combination: both contribute • Reforms pursued on good grounds, and which (often) achieve targets, may damage trust for reasons not obvious to reformers • [NB: many other factors influence trust]

  6. Why do we want trust? • Trust as a trap (and a commodity) • But helpful for legitimacy of government and continuing public provision • Pressures from future challenges • Critical trust, informed trust

  7. Solutions I • O’Neill/ Neuberger: reassert trust in professionals, but how to go back? • Furedi: embrace individual self-confidence, but where is public provision? • Seldon: face-to-face trust, but limitations • FSA I: improved information, but hard in a diverse, plural society

  8. Solutions II • Giddens/ Weale/ Renn: reform democracy, citizens’ juries → deliberative institutions • Much interest, many expts, more concerned with informing rather than directing policy • E.G. Bristol health, BC constitutional reform, Wenling, Rowntree experiments, Newcastle centre, ‘people and participation’, etc • Central and local govt interest – GM Debate • OECD, IRGC, Risk Agenda

  9. No easy solution? • All initiatives address particular issues, and are consultations • Not clear this will rebuild trust • Involves elements of information, subsidiarity, engagement exercises etc. • Has to be continuing and embedded • Can’t be cheap - • which returns us to cost-effectiveness!

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