The Erosion of Trust During a Global Pandemic and How Public Administrators Should Counter It

Abstract

This article argues that public administrators must advance a more equity-based assessment of vulnerabilities in American communities and more risk-based communication strategies. It provides an overview of partisan motivated reasoning, how this has influenced the response to the coronavirus pandemic. Experimental evidence then demonstrates how the framing of the pandemic can influence trust in various public messengers. The coronavirus pandemic is merely one of the many exigent threats humanity faces today. Public administrators are the planners, engineers, analysts, auditors, lawyers, and managers on the front lines of these existential crises. It is their job to sift through the information environment and—however boundedly—tackle problems. For the sake of the American democracy, public administrators need to regain the people’s trust. They could start by leveling with them about the challenges ahead.

From populism to the “plandemic”: why populists believe in COVID-19 conspiracies

“…These institutions represent the established political order, which populists oppose as it is regarded as a manifestation of elite power betraying common citizens rather than serving them. However, these institutions play a central role in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 as well as communicating its dangers; even if their response may sometimes be hesitant, inconsistent, or contradictory (Deslatte 2020).…”

COVID-19: effective policymaking depends on trust in experts, politicians, and the public

“…In contrast to the gradual eroding of trust in the UK, more US citizens exhibited greater and more intense distrust of restrictive government actions. Distrust of government (and trust in other sources such as religious institutions) combines with selfinterest to fuel noncompliance (Kettl 2017;Baum, Jacobson, and Goold 2009;Rakich 2020), ranging from continued social gatherings (most notably at church), the refusal to wear masks, and extreme cases such as the armed protesters occupying the Michigan State Capitol (Deslatte 2020). This difference relates partly to a history of anti-rationalism and anti-elitism that has fueled US citizen distrust of government leaders and institutions (Rigney 1991), and now exacerbated by social media.…”

Who Can I Count On: Honor, Self-Reliance, and Family in the United States and Iran

“…As our contrast to the U.S., we focus on Iran, a Muslim-majority society with strong honor norms in which honor concerns may be chronically accessible (Ashayeri & Ajami, 2015;Razavi et al, 2020). In both countries, the COVID-19 pandemic increased stress and anxiety about health and well-being (Chen et al, 2021) and undermined public trust in government (in the U.S., Deslatte, 2020;in Iran, Harris, 2020). At the same time, the structure of government and political tenor of the U.S. and Iran are considerably different and their societies organize moral values differently (Atari et al, 2020).…”