Government Trust in People: Missing Link in Citizen Participation in Implementation of Public Policies (Case study: Markazi Province)

This study looks at the views of public administrators in citizens, in particular their level of trust toward the ability, integrity, and benevolence of citizens when participating in public programs. This research is in the category of applied research, from target audience view; from objective perspective, it belongs to descriptive research category and from data collection view, it is in the survey research category. Path analysis and mediator analysis via Bootstrap method were used for data analysis using SPSS software. The findings of the present study indicate that trust in citizens can play a mediating role in influencing the three factors of propensity to trust, public administrators' past experiences and government bashing by people on citizen participation, whereas public administrators' trust in citizens plays a mild (complementary) role in influencing self-efficacy of public administrators on citizen participation. Public administrators' trust in citizens will lead to the enhancement of the level of cooperation between the government and citizens, and real participatory governance will not be possible without the trust toward citizens. The constructive effect of trust is to enhance and improve the level of cooperation between government and civil society. To build government trust in citizens, to believe in their practical knowledge and skills, to listen to their demands and voices, to share power with them, to truly demonstrate trust and respect in administrative processes, and to train and engage them in this process should be at the heart of managers' decisions in the process of formulating, implementing, and evaluating policies.