Citizen Participation: Linking Government Efforts, Actual Participation, and Trust in Local Politicians

Abstract

The present study analyzes several aspects of the relationship between citizen participation and trust employing data from Norwegian municipalities: first, the impact of local government efforts to increase participation on trust in local politicians, and second, the impact of these efforts on actual participation, which is a missing piece in the literature. The findings show that local government initiatives have a very limited effect on trust, and no effect on actual participation. A strong negative relationship between actual participation and trust suggests that participation is mainly protest-related, and not the result of local government initiatives to include citizens in decision making.