In government we trust?

By Christiny Miller 

This week I attended the OECD Global Forum on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy to understand better where democracy stands in the world and what learnings I can bring into ZOE's work on governance in the EU.

In 2024, democracy has been put in focus with this so-called ‘year of elections’—the biggest election year in human history with elections happening all around the world, including for the European Parliament back in June.

However, quantity doesn’t mean quality; global trends on the health of democracy are not good. Around the world and in Europe, an uptick in the power of the far right has signalled that some are not satisfied with their governments’ performance and have turned to something new. Kevin Casas-Zamora, Secretary-General of International IDEA said on a panel that the institution’s recent report on the Global State of Democracy shows that in [geographical] Europe, more countries have declined than advanced on indicators of democracy since 2018.

Democracy and trust

Democracy isn’t just about elections. Various sessions at the OECD Global Forum stressed the importance of citizen engagement and public involvement in decision-making processes.

Public participation in policymaking through consultations, citizen assemblies, and other methods, is also key in a system where power rests with the people.

So, what does this have to do with trust? Everything. The ability of a government to do its job requires that the population believes that they are working in their best interests. But it is a two-way street: the government also needs to trust the people to give useful input and feedback into the process.

Unfortunately, trust is decreasing across OECD countries. The OECD, in its recent report, notes that while trust in public services is relatively high, there is lower trust when it comes to the government’s management of trade-offs and complexity. In particular, only 37% of people believe the government fairly balances the interests of different generations and only 30% believe that their political system gives them a say.

While we are living in a time of increasing complexity, the government’s ability to manage trade-offs is of utmost importance, as is the population’s trust in this ability.

Measuring trust is a great start to addressing this problem, and I commend the work of the OECD in collecting this data. As Toyin Akinniyi said in a panel discussion, “what you don’t measure you can’t improve” and also, importantly, “what you don’t measure you can’t celebrate” when we do see improvement.

From box-ticking to real impact

So, how can we improve trust? Well, people need to feel heard. That means not just listening to them, but also ensuring this is reflected in policy. Participation exercises should not be performative box-ticking exercises but should have an impact on policy.

So, what can this look like?

Citizen Assemblies. Leo Varadkar, former Prime Minister of Ireland, pointed to significant advances achieved through citizen assemblies, namely on same sex marriage and reproductive rights. Still, he noted that a key shortcoming was that citizens were not faced with trade-offs, a reality that policymakers face in their own decision-making.

European Citizen Panels. In 2021-2022, the EU held the Conference on the Future of Europe to foster citizen-led discussion to shape Europe’s common future. As a follow-up, the European Citizen’ Panels were established, each bringing together 150 randomly selected citizens to discuss a specific topic more deeply. Topics have included food waste, energy efficiency and hatred in society, among others .

These panels are a great way to get citizen input on broad topics, but they do not allow them to engage more deeply in the policy process, nor to consider trade-offs, as highlighted by the experience in Ireland.

Standing Citizen Panels. At ZOE, we propose Standing Citizen Panels as part of a process which looks at the key question of how policymakers can better uncover and manage trade-offs in the policymaking process. These panels consist of a randomly-selected group of people representative of the European population with a geographic and demographic spread. This group would be available to provide public input on policies from the earliest stage of drafting to ensure that policies are designed in a way that has already considered and balanced the impacts on different groups of people. An added benefit is that these panellists would gain a better understanding of how European policy is made and have some ownership for the process. More about this proposal can be found in our Policy Cycle 2.0 report.

While trust in institutions is declining, especially in terms of how governments deal with trade-offs, bringing people into the decision-making process is essential. Involving them through Standing Citizen Panels can help them have a hand in mitigating trade-offs, reducing harm of policies and building trust along the way.