JOHN MARK T. MARUQUIN
Student, Ph.D. Major in
Development Management
Divine Word College of
Laoag, Ilocos Norte Philippines
Abstract
This
paper argues that public trust is often mistrusted on the unscrupulous
performance of public services and in political negotiation well-functioning
public services are said to create trust in government. This is a very sensible
reasoning, only part of which corresponds to reality. The relation between governance
or government performance and trust can only be made when very specific
circumstances are present. It is obvious that performance of the public
organization has a certain impact on trust in government, but existing levels
of trust in government may also have an impact on perceptions of government
performance.
Keywords:
Good governance, public trust, government, performance
Introduction
“Public office is a public trust”.
Public officers and employees must, at all times, be accountable to the people,
serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and efficiency; act
with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives (The 1987 Constitution of
the Republic of the Philippines, Article XI, Section 1). Public trust is
considered as one of the most significant aspects in the implementation of
government strategies for any country. In order for citizens to trust their
government, the latter must achieve its ambitious targets to develop and
provide the efficient quality of public services.
According to Avelino P. Tendero
(2008) that public officers and employees of government are therefore
accountable for what they do; they are enjoined to serve the people with utmost
patriotism and justice and lead modest lives. From the foregoing paraphrase of
the constitutional provision, those employees in the government are to conduct
themselves in accordance with certain normative prescriptions and ethical
standards. In a democratic policy, management of public affairs should be in
accordance with the provisions of law. It is these rules of law that define the
area of administrative performance. These rules are value norms, which
government employees must live up to.
Public
trust is perceived at interpersonal and organizational levels in which
fairness, confidence, risk taking and expectations are considered its main
constructs (Colesca, 2009). Public trust in public sector is essential for the
functioning of government especially that it has become increasingly associated
with governance. Public administration has examined trust as a basic ingredient
of social capital in that it helps create networks between people in a
community and helps to make these networks function smoothly (Walker et al.,
2008).
Governments
are always in need to respond the demands of citizens to improve the efficiency
and boost the effectiveness of their public services (Siddiquee, 2008). Lot of
studies has been conducted in terms of different dimensions of good governance.
For instance, Egwuonwu (2011) focused on the behavioral aspects of governance
that consists of accountability, justice, transparency, genuine disclosures,
integrity and high performance. Others discussed good governance in terms of
equity, efficiency, sustainability, transparency, accountability and security
(Khan, 2013, Kefela, 2011).
A.
Efficiency. In the importance of good
governance, it is saving and protecting the environment by manageable use of
the natural resources (UNESCAP, 2012).
B.
Transparency. Transparency is the process of
making decision and it is properly implemented through the regulations and
rules (UNESCAP, 2012). In other words, it is the disclosure of any related
information to the interested stakeholder on timely manner (Salin & Abidin,
2011).
C.
Accountability. Accountability is
considered as a key prerequisite of good governance for both public and private
institutions (UNESCAP, 2012). Accordingly, Khan (2013) described accountability
as an open government that supports good level of social and political
objectives of authority, sharing, respecting the rights and empowering the
equity. Thus, governments must find a balance between the requirements of
accountability to the society and those of state governments (Kluvers, 2010).
Many
public sector reforms have been motivated by a belief that the public trust in
public services is low, and declining. Where statistics are available, though,
there is little evidence of such declining trust (Van de Walle, Van Roosbroek,
& Bouckaert, 2008). Furthermore, there is a wide variety within the public
sector, with some services being trusted a lot (especially those in the health
sector, and emergency services).Still, trust in more generic public sector
categories such as “the public sector”, “civil servants” or ‘bureaucrats’ tends
to be quite low when compared to other institutions. Bureaucracies tend to
feature in the bottom half of ‘most trusted institutions’ rankings, yet
generally well above institutions such a politicians or the press.
Do citizens trust Public
Officials?
In
public administration we have observed a sharp increase in attention for the
public perception of government and trust more in particular, to more
sophisticated multi-country analyses of trust, looking at country-level explanations
for differences in trust. In this trust relation between citizens and
government, it has often been assumed that outputs matter and that distrust
results from low government performance. Research has however shown that the
process by which services are being delivered, or the process by which policies
are being implemented is at least as important. Trust is thus at least as much
influenced by procedural justice as it is by outputs (Van Ryzin, 2011).
Do
Public Officials trust citizens?
Things
work more smoothly, it has been argued, when citizens trust their government
and each other. This reduces transaction costs because there are fewer
instances where trustworthiness has to be checked prior to the transaction. But
what about the attitudes and opinions at the other end of the relationship:
government itself? Do administrators actually trust citizens enough to involve
them and to drop their suspicion? While citizens’ trust has received a lot of
attention, the opposite relation has received only marginal attention (Wu,
J.and Yang, Y. (2011). Expressions of such distrust are visible in officials’
unwillingness to involve citizens in decision-making, in their unwillingness to
take their views seriously or in an overall relatively skeptical attitude
toward citizens. The reason for such distrust can be multifaceted, ranging from
negative prior experience, over a belief that citizens aren’t sufficiently
knowledgeable to play a role, to a conviction that citizens have profound
negative intentions when interacting with government. Official’s distrust in
citizens may evoke a reciprocal reaction, leading to a mutually reinforcing
dynamic. Mutual distrust has become well documented in studies of street-level
bureaucracy, and especially studies focusing on interactions between welfare
officials and welfare clients, where officials suspect all claimants of
cheating, and where clients perceive officials not to be there to help them,
but to punish them for their dependent situation.
Trust
in citizens has become very relevant in an age when governments want to reduce
red tape and control- and inspection-related burdens. This has lead to
innovations such as labeling or self-regulation, where companies are for
instance granted exemption from regular inspections after they have proven to
comply for a number of consecutive years. Systems such as sectoral
self-regulation or horizontal inspection require a great deal of trust in
citizens’ and companies willingness to follow the law. Replacing extensive
control systems by trust-based arrangements requires a total change in
officials’ thinking and may prove to be very hard when officials continue to be
faced with attempts at cheating.
Public
sector actors, suspicious about each other’s motives, and a political discourse
fuelling citizen distrust in government culminated in the introduction of
series of public sector innovations all directed at strengthening control and
command systems within the public sector (Van de Walle, 2010). This
strengthening happened mainly through a widespread introduction of
contract-type arrangements, and through an expansion of the use of
(performance) information. Contracts were introduced to regulate relationships
between ministers and top officials; between ministries and agencies; between
government bodies and external contractors; and between public employers and
employees. Both sides of the principal-agent relationship were thought to have
antagonistic interests, and contracts were a way of canalizing mutual distrust
and of inserting control into the system. Performance information helped actors
in the system to control others, and to call them to account.
The
most important question dealt with in this paper will be: Do citizenries have a negative opinion of government because its
services do not work properly, or do citizens evaluate government
administrations and their performance in a negative way, because their image of
government in general is a negative one?
Trust
in government may be based on experiences over a long period of time, on the
current situation or on expectations of the government in future the level of
trust inspired by the current government, the more likely it is that a person
will express specific support and trust, while long-term experience points more
in the direction of diffuse support and trust.
The
broad performance perspective presupposes that certain modern public reforms
imply better quality of public services and hence high levels of public
satisfaction and trust in government. Such an assumption of course throws up
many questions, which can be debated and elaborated, both theoretically and
empirically: some reform measures will affect some public services, others will
not, and service quality improvements may have other origins than reforms.
Quality improvements for some people may imply disadvantages for others, and
quality improvements may in any case be primarily connected to political
symbols and hype. People may react to purely symbolic quality improvements,
while real quality improvements may be seen by some as of little significance
compared with other aspects of a service, either because access to a service is
limited or simply because of a lack of responsiveness. A further possibility is
that people have other reasons for trusting government than satisfaction with
public services.
Conclusion
It
seems upright and heroic public servants have die or get up in politics for
press and public to pay attention to them. That can hardly to encourage
excellence in government nor would it inspire others to emulate good work or
the youth to aspire for careers in honest and competent public service. People
wants to see more responsiveness, integrity, competence, efficiency, compassion
and other hallmark of exemplary public service, to bring the wider public
attention especially among students pondering their future.
People
may be satisfied with the existence of a particular service or the availability
of certain services that meet their needs. At the same time, they may also be
satisfied with information concerning services, the accessibility and
friendliness of the service providers they meet, the competence of service
personnel, the fairness, effectiveness and efficiency of the services, or other
factors.
If
one presupposes that satisfaction with government services is trust enhancing,
implying that the consumer role is important and performance is of significance
for trust, one can ask whether people will react equally to all public
services. One essential variable could be how universal the services are,
meaning how many people they potentially cover. Public services range from
those that are collective or universal, like education in most countries, which
is potentially consumed by everyone, to those that are more selective and
individual and target more specific groups of clients. One expectation might be
that the more controlling, selective and individualized a service, the more
dissatisfied the user is likely to be.
Increasing
government authority by modernizing public services is therefore just a partial
strategy, since actual performance is not equal to perceived performance and
because differences might exist in citizens’ minds on the definition and
necessity of public service performance. A one-sided focus on performance will
not be sufficient, since perceptions and definitions of performance are not
only created in government- citizen interactions, but also in everyday
citizen-citizen relations. Restoring trust in government cannot just be based
on a managerial action-plan but requires social engineering as well. The core
question should therefore be how government can alter these perceptions and
evaluation criteria in a way that is acceptable in a democratic society.
Public
trusts have both institutional and personal aspects. People may trust both the system as
such and individual actors they encounter or observe. This may include both
central political leaders and actors in the administration and public service
sector. Another possible combination is trust in the political-democratic
system as such but distrust in current leaders or other political actors. This
distrust may be based both on myths or symbols, for example distrust fashions
furthered by the mass media, or else on first-hand negative experiences with
government representatives. People may trust certain political and
administrative leaders because of their achievements or personal charisma but
not the institutional features of the political-administrative system. If we
relate these basics to the distinction between diffuse and specific support, it
is probable that individual elements of public trust or trust will be more
related to specific support while institutional elements are linked to diffuse
support.
References:
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The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the
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