Abstract
High levels of trust in government are important in addressing complex issues, including the realization of the mainstream sustainability agenda. However, trust in government has been declining for decades across the western world, undermining legitimacy and hampering policy implementation and planning for long-term sustainability. We hypothesize that an important factor in this decline is citizen disappointment with the current types of public participation in governance and that this could be reversed through a change from informing/consulting to a relationship of partnership. Using case studies from Western Australia, the paper investigates whether an intervention targeted at establishing a partnership relationship through mini-public, deliberative, participatory budgeting would improve trust and help the implementation of sustainability. These results show evidence of improvements in trust and provide conceptual and practical tools for government administrations wishing to close the detrimental trust gap that may hamper the implementation of a sustainability agenda.
Highlights
Some of the most interesting questions in the study of sustainable development today concern the practical implementation of the sustainability agenda
“Did the intervention validly test as a deliberative democratic intervention with the attributes of a partnership relationship?” If this is the case, : “Did the trust attitudes of the participants improve over the course of the intervention?” and : “Was there an association between the increase in public participation in government through the Participatory budgeting (PB) and the improvements in the trust in government?” These issues are discussed in turn
This was relatively successful with respondents in both the community surveys and the Panels approximating the demographics of the region in terms of gender and geographical distribution, though with fewer youth than expected based on the Australian census data [132,148]
Summary
Some of the most interesting questions in the study of sustainable development today concern the practical implementation of the sustainability agenda. What is often presumed within implementation, but not directly addressed, by governments, is the important role of political trust in the real-world achievement of sustainability. Low trust levels can be a significant impediment to action on current sustainability challenges, and a source of future uncertainty that could undermine any achievements or endanger further progress. The goal of this article is to provide guidance for governments wishing to build political trust when making decisions, either for the implementation of sustainability initiatives or within their wider governance. It outlines principles and processes that could potentially be used to build political trust during the stage of developing broad understanding of the meaning of sustainability, its values, and priorities. We hypothesize that changing the form of citizens’ public participation in governance to one of partnerships will improve political trust levels and the likelihood of implementing sustainability initiatives
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
