DECLINING SYSTEMIC TRUST IN THE POLITICAL ELITE IN THE EU’S NEW MEMBER STATES: THE DIVERGENCE BETWEEN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE BALTIC STATES

In the last decade there has been a process of rolling-back Europeanization efforts in the EU’s new member states (NMS), a process intensified by the global crisis. This de-Europeanization and de-democratization process in the NMS has become a significant part of a more general polycrisis in the EU. The backslide of democracy in the NMS as a topical issue has usually been analysed in terms of macro-politics, formal-legal state institutions, party systems, and macroeconomics. The most significant decline of democratization, however, is evident in the public’s decreasing participation in politics and in the eroding trust. This decline in systemic trust in political elites in the NMS has been largely neglected by analysts. Therefore, this paper concentrates on this relatively overlooked dimension of declining trust and social capital in the NMS. This analysis employs the concepts of governance, trust, and social capital to balance the usual formalistic top-down approach with a bottom-up approach that better illustrates the divergence between East-Central Europe and the Baltic states’ sub-regional development.

Institutionalizing Trust? Regular Summitry (G7s and European Councils) from the Mid-1970s until the Mid-1980s

This chapter describes how the maintenance and fostering of trust was a crucial element in founding both the G7 summits and the European Council in the mid-1970s. Deeply anchored in the strong friendship between West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt and French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, both initiatives sought to deepen interpersonal relations as well as recover systemic trust in the Western (economic) systems in an informal, multilateral setting. The institutionalization and frequency of these meetings not only allowed for the development of a framework of informal coordination even in the absence of trust; it also provided a platform for the socialization of new leaders and a ritualistic display of Western unity, thus addressing potential international and domestic deficits of trust by “formalizing informality.”

Political Crisis and Societal Governance:How Media Can be Societal Media?

Political frustration of the people often comes along with protest movements on the streets. The street democracy becomes most powerful when the political system loses the people’s systemic trust. Therefore, we can see the street democracy as a symptom of the systemic political crisis. We have to be vigilant for political adventurism that exploits the people’s discontent. However, considering the chronic fiscal deficits of governments, we cannot rely only on governments. We have to expand our view beyond politics and governments. We are facing various problems at local, national and global level. It is necessary to develop societal governance that mobilizes and organizes multi-functional resources to cope with the multi-level challenges. As J.N. Rosenau formulates, governance is an encompassing phenomenon that embraces governmental and non-governmental mechanisms. This paper reformulates the comprehensiveness of societal governance as multi-functionality and multi-levelness. It means that societal governance is an ecosystem of collaborative efforts that mobilizes multi-functional resources to cope with public problems across local, national and global levels. Innovations in media (especially, in the Internet) can contribute to creating fertile conditions for the efforts by advocating issues and connecting actors and resources. Media can make another step to a next stage of the development as liaison media in societal governance. Now we are witnessing the next step of the media’s development towards “societal media”.Political frustration of the people often comes along with protest movements on the streets. The street democracy becomes most powerful when the political system loses the people’s systemic trust. Therefore, we can see the street democracy as a symptom of the systemic political crisis. We have to be vigilant for political adventurism that exploits the people’s discontent. However, considering the chronic fiscal deficits of governments, we cannot rely only on governments. We have to expand our view beyond politics and governments. We are facing various problems at local, national and global level. It is necessary to develop societal governance that mobilizes and organizes multi-functional resources to cope with the multi-level challenges. As J.N. Rosenau formulates, governance is an encompassing phenomenon that embraces governmental and non-governmental mechanisms. This paper reformulates the comprehensiveness of societal governance as multi-functionality and multi-levelness. It means that societal governance is an ecosystem of collaborative efforts that mobilizes multi-functional resources to cope with public problems across local, national and global levels. Innovations in media (especially, in the Internet) can contribute to creating fertile conditions for the efforts by advocating issues and connecting actors and resources. Media can make another step to a next stage of the development as liaison media in societal governance. Now we are witnessing the next step of the media’s development towards “societal media”.

Persönliches und systemisches Vertrauen/Misstrauen in systemtheoretischer Perspektive – Funktionen und Wirken in sozialen Beziehungen / Personal and systemic trust/mistrust in a system‘s theory perspective – functions and effects in social relationships

Vertrauen ist ein Kommunikationsmedium, das in den Ausprägungen persönliches und systemisches Vertrauen sowie Misstrauen in unterschiedlichen Systemtypen wirksam werden und soziale Beziehungen organisieren kann. Der Beitrag stellt Funktionen und Merkmale von Vertrauen sowie Misstrauen vor und zeigt auf, wo sich das Medium Vertrauen in einer Kommunikationsbeziehung verorten lässt und welche Rückschlüsse daraus gezogen werden können. Abschließend werden Optionen zur Generierung von Vertrauen in Organisationen aufgezeigt.

CAPAM Symposium on Networked Government: Building public trust through public–private partnerships

Collaborative working through public–private partnerships, though not new, has become more common. Strong partnerships are built and sustained by norms of reliability consistent with the high levels of systemic trust that the principles of good governance encourage. This article examines two public–private partnerships in Hong Kong in which government actions have severely undermined the trust necessary for the public–private partnership model to work effectively. In the first case, the trust established through a long-standing government/civil society partnership in the delivery of school-based education has been dissipated by acrimonious public wrangling over the autonomy of the service providers. The second case focuses on a large-scale infrastructure project to build an arts hub on redeveloped land. Policy inconsistencies by the Hong Kong government, together with deep suspicions about the extent to which large, well-connected businesses have influenced the project’s development, have seriously undermined the trust of arts community stakeholders and the general public.