FSS-DSOC 2024/2025 Luncheon Seminar #1: “Trust, distrust, trust norms and posturing in public governance”, by Prof. Valerie BRAITHWAITE

Trust has emerged as an important concept in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments had most success in eliciting cooperation from the public when trust in authorities was high. The COVID-19 pandemic shone a light on the importance of cooperation: Not all precautionary behaviours could be made mandatory. The public needed to take the initiative with personal hygiene and stay up to date with the latest information about the virus. The public also needed to act responsibly with testing and isolation measures.

With increasing interest in trust has come an interest in distrust in public authorities. Debate continues about whether distrust is the opposite of trust or a different dimension. In this paper, I use motivational posturing theory to shed light on the relationship between trust and distrust.

Within a motivational posturing framework, trust and distrust in government authorities are not static concepts but are parts of a dynamic trust-trustworthiness spiral. The up and down spiral is activated by trust norms and whether they are honoured or breached. Trust norms are shared social understandings of what we must do to be trustworthy and have others gift their trust to us (Braithwaite, 1998a). A trust norm acts in this way: Did I breach a trust norm? What can I do to repair the breach? The trust-trustworthiness spiral goes down with a breach and then goes up as the relationship is repaired. The dynamic relationship between authorities and the public is represented in motivational posturing theory by the postures of capitulation and resistance.

Sometimes, however, the trust-trustworthiness relationship breaks irreparably. This state is measured through rejection of trust norms  and motivational  postures of gameplaying and disengagement. Postures of gameplaying and disengagement represent distrust as a severed relationship with government. Postures of gameplaying and disengagement are least likely to be responsive to government authorities offering to repair the relationship.

Valerie Braithwaite is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet, formerly the Regulatory Institutions Network) at the Australian National University (ANU). She is also the founder (with John Braithwaite) of RegNet. Valerie researches human services regulation – the regulation of aged care, work health and safety, social welfare, child protection and education, as well as the regulation of the system that pays for these services – taxation. Her work has focused on how regulators and regulatees engage with each other, how compliance is achieved, and when defiance emerges. Valerie also brings an outstanding academic record in child protection, social sciences and psychology to the Reference Group, which makes an invaluable contribution to shaping the Review recommendations. So far, Valerie has (co-)authored more than 150 articles/chapters and 11 books. Her Google citations have reached 16,000.

Valerie has served as an advisor on regulatory policy in Australia and overseas. She has conducted two reviews of tertiary education for the government, one with Kwong Lee Dow on higher education, the other being a review of the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011 (the NVETR Act) – “All Eyes on Quality Report” in 2018. Valerie is currently serving on the Expert Advisory Panel for designing the regulatory framework for the new Aged Care Act and is a member of the Advisory Council for the Australian Skills Quality Authority