Social trust and public digitalization

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 -