Trust, Transparency and Transnational Lessons from COVID-19

Alistair Cole,Julien S Baker,Dionysios Stivas

doi:10.3390/jrfm14120607

Alistair Cole, Julien S Baker + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14120607

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Abstract

The article engages in an exercise in reflexivity around trust and the COVID-19 pandemic. Common understandings of trust are mapped out across disciplinary boundaries and discussed in the cognitive fields in the medical and social sciences. While contexts matter in terms of the understandings and uses made of concepts such as trust and transparency, comparison across academic disciplines and experiences drawn from country experiences allows general propositions to be formulated for further exploration. International health crises require efforts to rebuild trust, understood in a multidisciplinary sense as a relationship based on trusteeship, in the sense of mutual obligations in a global commons, where trust is a key public good. The most effective responses in a pandemic are joined up ones, where individuals (responsible for following guidelines) trust intermediaries (health professionals) and are receptive to messages (nudges) from the relevant governmental authorities. Hence, the distinction between hard medical and soft social science blurs when patients and citizens are required to be active participants in combatting the virus. Building on the diagnosis of a crisis of trust (in the field of health security and across multiple layers of governance), the article renews with calls to restore trust by enhancing transparency.

Highlights

IntroductionResponding to existential dilemmas, the COVID-19 pandemic calls for a major transdisciplinary research effort that necessarily combines several levels of empirical analysis and methodological tools (statistical, experimental, qualitative, comparative, interpretative) and bridges distinct academic and scientific traditions
Responding to existential dilemmas, the COVID-19 pandemic calls for a major transdisciplinary research effort that necessarily combines several levels of empirical analysis and methodological tools and bridges distinct academic and scientific traditions
While contexts matter in terms of the understandings and uses made of concepts such as trust and transparency, comparison across academic disciplines and experiences drawn from country experiences allows general propositions to be formulated for further exploration

Summary

Introduction

Responding to existential dilemmas, the COVID-19 pandemic calls for a major transdisciplinary research effort that necessarily combines several levels of empirical analysis and methodological tools (statistical, experimental, qualitative, comparative, interpretative) and bridges distinct academic and scientific traditions. By linking the medical and social sciences, through the distinct prism of trust, the article contributes to reflections upon the COVID-19 pandemic. The article engages in a transnational and transdisciplinary exercise in reflexivity around the theme of trust and COVID-19 This scoping article is centered on the question of whether the COVID-19 pandemic represents, inter alia, a crisis of trust, one theme that successfully travels between the social and medical sciences. Building on the diagnosis of a crisis of trust in the field of health security and governance (Downs and Larson 2007; Hilyard et al 2010; Lo Yuk-ping and Thomas 2010), the article renews with calls to restore trust (thereby improving understandings of the challenges raised by COVID-19) by enhancing transparency. The authors provide pointers for how to rebuild trust by restoring an optimum trust balance

A Question of Trust

Rebuilding Trust by Restoring an Optimum Trust Balance