TY - JOUR
T1 - Social trust and public digitalization
AU - van Kersbergen, Kees
AU - Svendsen, Gert Tinggaard
PY - 2024/6
Y1 - 2024/6
N2 - Modern democratic states are increasingly adopting new information and communication technologies to enhance the effi- ciency and quality of public administration, public policy and services. However, there is substantial variation in the extent to which countries are successful in pursuing such public digitalization. This paper zooms in on the role of social trust as a possible account for the observed empirical pattern in the range and scope of public digitalization across countries. Our argument is that high social trust makes it easier to digitalize the public sector to the benefit of overall society. We develop a simple game-theoretical model that specifies this positive externality from a high-trust culture and provide empirical evidence that a higher level of social trust is associated with a higher level of public digitalization. Of course, high-trust countries cannot do without the rule of law (formal rules of the game) and some institutionalized mechanisms of control and accountability. However, from our argument, it follows that one future challenge could be that control crowds out trust, so that the balance is no longer optimal. If such overcontrol occurs, public digitalization win–win situations between citizens and government can be undermined, even in high-trust countries.
AB - Modern democratic states are increasingly adopting new information and communication technologies to enhance the effi- ciency and quality of public administration, public policy and services. However, there is substantial variation in the extent to which countries are successful in pursuing such public digitalization. This paper zooms in on the role of social trust as a possible account for the observed empirical pattern in the range and scope of public digitalization across countries. Our argument is that high social trust makes it easier to digitalize the public sector to the benefit of overall society. We develop a simple game-theoretical model that specifies this positive externality from a high-trust culture and provide empirical evidence that a higher level of social trust is associated with a higher level of public digitalization. Of course, high-trust countries cannot do without the rule of law (formal rules of the game) and some institutionalized mechanisms of control and accountability. However, from our argument, it follows that one future challenge could be that control crowds out trust, so that the balance is no longer optimal. If such overcontrol occurs, public digitalization win–win situations between citizens and government can be undermined, even in high-trust countries.
KW - Digitalization
KW - Game theory
KW - Public administration
KW - Public policy
KW - Social trust
U2 - 10.1007/s00146-022-01570-4
DO - 10.1007/s00146-022-01570-4
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0951-5666
VL - 39
SP - 1201
EP - 1212
JO - AI & Society
JF - AI & Society
IS - 3
ER -