Trust in governmental institutions is the main requirement for effective new public governance
ENThe first article presented in the book “Trust in governmental institutions is the main requirement for effective new public management” is based on a discussion of the changing communicative activities of governmental institutions caused by the application of new public administration perspectives. As stated in the chapter, the essential requirement for democracy is the efficiency of the interactions of governmental institutions and other stakeholders, such as citizens and NGOs that depend on trust. The efficiency of communication activities depends on the information that is available for the participants in the new public management processes. One of the main information sources for stakeholders that encourages participation in discussions and debates is the media, but based on the implementation of modern IT, more active involvement of the stakeholders in public management processes is feasible. Of course, the use of information technologies promotes interactions that are based on confidence in public sector institutions, in the mutual understanding of shared interests between individuals and those institutions, and on understanding the importance of the possibility to participate in decision-making processes. In the chapter, the confidence in governmental institutions is discussed as the main factor that determines the efficiency of the application of a new public governance idea. In democratic societies, greater attention is paid to citizens’ trust in the governmental institutions, mostly in public authorities, and the main factors that affect that trust are issues such as openness, transparency, honesty, good intentions and professionalism.The issue of trust is discussed in the section: why trust is important in the new public management and what determines the decline of trust, and what are the factors and communicative actions that ensure the establishment and strengthening of trust between the different representatives and participants of public management. The set of factors that could be used for the analysis of trust in governmental institutions are introduced in the section. The theoretical discussion presented in the chapter is supplemented by the data from surveys conducted in 2016. The communication of governmental institutions in their webpages were analysed, taking into account the factors that influence trust and those that are based on the communicative activities of governmental institutions. As the author of the chapter claims, information technologies shape the communication processes in several possible ways, and mainly, to some extent, they create possibilities to engage citizens and other stakeholders in public discussions and decision-making processes. These processes change the communication actions of the participants of new public management (in these specific cases, governmental institutions and their stakeholders) from one-way communication to “two-way”. [From the publication p. 9-10]
