Trust, collaboration, and participation in governance: A Nordic perspective on public administrators' perceptions of citizen involvement

This study analyzes public administrators' trust in citizens' capacities to participate in governance, their collaborative tendency, and the association between these factors and public administrators' willingness to implement citizen involvement efforts. The purpose of the study is to examine whether public administrators' trust in citizens' participatory capacities predicts a willingness to implement citizen participation efforts within the central administration of a Nordic welfare country. The central administration of Finland presents a counter case to previous studies, which have mostly focused on the United States. A unique survey of administrators, operationalized similarly to previous studies, was conducted, and analysis of the data provides both confirmatory and novel insights. The analysis finds that administrators' trust in citizens' participatory capacities strongly predicts their willingness to implement citizen participation initiatives. However, this relation can significantly decrease or increase depending on the degree to which administrators value the procedural legitimacy of collaborative governance.