Report on trust in government, politics, policy and regulatory governance

This deliverable offers a systematic and comprehensive review of the literature on trust and regulation and
their relations in three parts. Section 1 provides a brief overview of trust and distrust; their relationship; and
antecedents (drivers) and positive and negative consequences. This second part of provides an overview of
phases and processes of trust building, maintenance and repair as well as a review of how processes of
distrust building or trust-reduction work. The third part suggests that the unfolding of trust relationships
varies according to the type of involved actor, i.e. an individual, organisation, or system (such as regulatory
regimes) and level of analysis. Section 2 moves to regulation. It reviews the main concepts of regulation and
clarifies some of the most important questions around it. This should allow us, in later sections of this
deliverable, to point on some of the possible directions that trust and regulation research may take. It starts
with definitions and a distinction between narrow and broad approaches to regulation. It then clarifies the
concept of regulatory regime; the regulatory agency, the regulatory state and regulatory capitalism. It
concludes with an actor centered analysis of the regulation.
Section 3 deals with trust and distrust in government. It starts with a summary of the drivers of the dis/trust
relations. The main sub-section deals with reviews of the literature on trust and distrust in (a) political
institutions and actors; (b) public administration; (c) among courts; (d) citizens by government and (e.)
between public organizations. Section 4 brings out the critical aspects of the review. It focuses on the
relations between trust and regulation and offer a new conceptualization of their relations. One that will
serve as the basis for section 1.3. The first part of the section moves the discussion of the relations forward
in an attempt to looking at the relations beyond the current literature by distinguishing between four types
of relations: independent, competitive, substitutive and supportive. The second part of the section focuses
on the relations of trust between the main actors of the regime. The third discusses the relations between
trust and regulation, when they touching on explanations for the processes. The fourth revolves around on
assessment of outcomes of the relations. Section 5 deals with the operationalization and measurement of
trust. It deals with the ways in which trust between actors in regulatory contexts has been measured in recent
scholarship. It informed by, and seeks to expand upon, the current knowledge by more specifically examining
measures used in the study of regulatory contexts. It starts with a description of the systematic methodology
used. It then summarizes the purely descriptive findings of the review and an overview of the number of
studies on trust in regulatory regimes published in recent years. It then presents separate discussions on how
trust in different kinds of actors in regulatory regimes has been measured. Section 5 closes with a reflective
and critical discussion of the literature. We analyse prominent limitations and gaps in existing empirical work.