Bring mutual trust back: explaining underdevelopment among privileged regions

ABSTRACT

This article examines how trust between the regional government and its citizens contributes to the embodiment of participatory policymaking at the provincial level and impacts regional development. Different from previous studies on trust, which focused primarily on quantitative approaches and thereby left the social-political context out, this study employs a qualitative approach to present more profound findings and contextual aspects that reflect actors’ trust. The context is the existence of a local political dynasty that dominates the political, bureaucratic and business arenas. It also captures a regional development paradox in which a province is persistently underprivileged among well-developed adjacent regions. Primary data collection involves in-depth interviews with selected business actors, academics, NGOs and high-, middle- and low-ranking government officials at the provincial level. The findings reveal a lack of trust between the regional government and citizens, which explains poor participation in policymaking hence sluggish regional development. Each actor seems to lack the necessary competence, integrity and benevolence to cooperate in regional policymaking. These findings also fill a theoretical gap left by previous studies on trust which have primarily focused on citizen trust in government. At the same time, this article also pays more attention to government trust in citizens, which remains understudied.

KEYWORDS:

• Government trust in citizens; mutual trust; participatory policymaking; public trust; regional development

1. INTRODUCTION

Literature on development discrepancies among regions in emerging economies is saturated by arguments on political-economic determinants. Even though underprivileged regions have received development spillover from their well-developed counterparts, little is known about why regional development remains sluggish. Alternative explanations focusing on internal circumstances encountered by a regional government are necessary. While regional governments possess authority and resources for development, they are only put to good use throughout regional policymaking that involves citizens. Right at this point, the regions suffer from weak participatory policymaking. While this deficiency is a common phenomenon, previous studies of public participation heavily address the relationship between actors and institutional design without scrutinising trust as a crucial requirement for creating collaborative relationships (Bouckaert, 2012).

Over the past several decades, the decrease in public trust level has become a critical issue in many countries. Some highlighted underlying factors are corruption, economic inequality, and the government's inability to deliver public services (Chang, 2013; Cheema & Popovski, 2010). In response to that problem, bringing the government closer to the people is a notable strategy for boosting public trust (Lee & Yu, 2013). It is assumed that when the government is closer to its citizens, the citizens trust in the government and the citizen participation in policymaking will be higher. However, this linear relationship between trust and public participation requires further exploration. Although establishing trust in government is essential, the relationship between trust and citizen participation in policymaking is ambiguous (Lee & Schachter, 2019). In addition, the relationship is indirect. As Wang and Van Wart (2007, p. 276) maintain, ‘although participation builds public consensus, consensus building alone does not lead to public trust. Signing the agreement does not win public trust; fulfilment of the agreement does’. In this context, Cruz-García and Peiró-Palomino (2019) argue that trust plays a crucial role in facilitating citizens’ demands.

Previous studies show that the level of public participation globally is low. The low participation in policymaking is related not only to the low awareness of citizens, but also to the negative views of the government on its citizens (Yang, 2005). These negative views include citizens’ desire for personal gain and their criticism of public organisations (Lee & Yu, 2013). At this point, trust as the underlying factor contributing to the low public participation is still understudied. Moreover, most studies on trust analyse the perspective of citizens by evaluating public trust in government. As a multi-way interaction, trust should also be observed from the government side which has not received adequate attention.

Mutual trust is crucial for achieving participatory policymaking (Vigoda-Gadot et al., 2012). Yang (2005) suggests that to improve citizens’ trust, the government has to improve its trust in the citizens first. Moreover, Lee and Yu (2013) assert that when civil services have trust in citizens, their efforts to involve and empower the public will increase. However, previous studies on trust mostly used the quantitative method without paying detailed attention to the context. Therefore, deeper exploration through a qualitative approach is required.

Mizrahi et al. (2009) argue that a region's political culture impacts public sector performance and trust. Moreover, Bjørnskov and Méon (2015) confirmed that institutional quality mediates the positive effects of trust on productivity and economic performance. Hence, this article explores why there may be a lack of trust between government and citizens and how it affects policymaking participation, leading to regional underdevelopment.

To answer the research question, this study takes Banten province, Indonesia, as the locus due to its development progress, which is behind nearby provinces in Java Island as the centre of development. From the social aspect, Banten province is strongly associated with political dynasties dominating political, bureaucratic, economic and business areas. The political dynasty in this study refers to the previous governor (Ratu Atut, 2007–2015) and vice governor (Andika Hazrumy, 2017–2022) administrations. Political dynasties in Banten have been historically rooted in powerful informal leaders in the society called ‘Jawara’, representing local Moslem elites and certain family clans. Certain clans have a long experience of possessing resources and influence in Banten areas, maintaining their primordial network across societal groups and accumulating wealth. Their powerful influence can even mean their family members winning local elections at the provincial and municipal levels. The domination of the political dynasty represents the practice of corruption and nepotism committed by the local bureaucracy. This condition illustrates a poor local institutional quality that is assumed to impact government-citizens trust.

Based on the state of the art, this article proposes two hypotheses. First, the lack of trust between citizens and government happens because of the intertwining of the citizens’ cynicism toward the government, which is captured by local political dynasties, and the low citizens’ support for implementing local policies despite their high criticism of the government. Second, the lack of trust between citizens and government has resulted in less participation in policymaking, leading to regional underdevelopment.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Acquired resources are important for regional development progress. As a region attempts to increase incoming investments and knowledge linkages from external parties, the latter becomes a significant factor in shaping regional policymaking mechanisms (Asadi & Samimi, 2023). These external parties are not homogenous; their incoming does not replace existing regional citizens. However, they complementarily shape the juxtaposition of multiple governance and policymaking mechanisms (Eversole, 2011; Mendez et al., 2022). This constellation helps mitigate political tensions within intergovernmental intersections nurtured between the national policy aggregating regional policy interests and the underlying sociocultural differences across regions (Waite, 2023). Nevertheless, such a policymaking mechanism only facilitates nurturing but does not necessarily achieve essential democratic development (Lama-Rewal, 2023), particularly when the predominantly political elites undermine policy efficacy (Keban, 2019).

In the state-society relationship context, trust contains a feature of multi-way interactions between the government and its citizens at the individual and organisational levels. Two components shape trust, i.e., ‘risk/vulnerability’ and ‘interdependence’ (Fisher et al., 2010; Hardin, 2002). Möllering (2006, p. 111) defines trust as ‘an ongoing process of building on reason, routine, and reflexivity, suspending irreducible social vulnerability and uncertainty as if they were favourably resolved, and maintaining thereby a state of favourable expectation toward the actions and intentions of more or less specific others’. Regarding this, competence, integrity and benevolence are leading aspects featuring government-citizen trust (Grimmelikhuijsen & Knies, 2015; Mayer et al., 1995). While competence refers to the ability to perform responsibilities, integrity is concerned with whether the government has respected fairness and openness, maintained good faith and honesty toward society and tried to fulfil all commitments with actual acts (Grimmelikhuijsen & Knies, 2015). Finally, benevolence gauges how much people (trustors) think the government (trustee) cares about their welfare without any ulterior intentions (Kim, 2005).

Establishing effective governance involving the government's relationship with its citizens requires public satisfaction with government development performance, thereby increasing citizens’ trust in the government (Bouckaert & Van de Walle, 2003; Yang, 2005). In addition, participation correlates positively with government performance (Mizrahi et al., 2009). Using participation as a recent paradigm in policymaking, citizen engagement in the process also influences public satisfaction with policy. In this context, trusting citizens entails making decisions or granting them a more active role in administrative processes based on the information they provide or the assurances they make (Moyson et al., 2016). Consequently, mutual trust between the government and citizens is essential for genuine public participation (Vigoda-Gadot et al., 2012) and is believed to influence regional development performance. Moreover, the study conducted by Bjørnskov and Méon (2015) demonstrated that trust has the potential to impact the direct assessment of a country's economic performance, which is influenced by the quality of legal and regulatory governance.

3. METHOD

3.1. Overview of the research site

Indonesia has implemented a decentralisation policy since 1999. Since then, local governments have been granted higher autonomy to manage their jurisdiction. Decentralisation warrants democratic policymaking at the local level while providing incentives for the people to take part in the process. Therefore, chances are significant for a local government to earn high trust from its citizens.

A vast development gap between western and eastern regions in Indonesia prevails after around two decades since the implementation of decentralisation. Western Indonesia, primarily Java Island, has been the centre of development and is much more well-developed compared to eastern Indonesia. The latest data from the Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board (2022) showed that the total investment value in Java Island shares almost 50% percent of the total investment at the national level.

Banten province is an outlier located on Java Island, a considerably privileged region in western Indonesia. However, its development in many aspects has been running slowly compared to its neighbourhood provinces and some development indicators are even lower than the national level as shown in the following table.

Table 1 indicates that Banten's development performances exhibit a lower level of achievement compared to the average value of other provinces in Java – known as privileged regions – and national ratings. There is a significant difference between Banten and the rest of the Java-based provinces in all development indicators. Besides the economic-related performance, i.e., GDP per capita, investment growth, economic growth and unemployment rate, Banten's scores in the health and education sectors are also worse than its counterparts in Java. These figures are not different from those in the national scope. Banten has lower GDP per capita, economic growth, unemployment and school participation rates than national averages. While Banten's investment growth surpasses the national average, its impact on local economic development and employment remains uncertain. Its human development index (HDI) level is comparable to those at nationwide level, but that national figure also accounts for regions in eastern Indonesia which are severely underdeveloped compared to their western counterparts. While education and basic social services lack development prioritisation, school attendance remains low, hence inadequately supplying skilled workers.

Table 1. Banten’s development performance compared to the average value of Java-based provinces and the national level (2022).

Development indicators	Indonesia	Average value of privileged regions (Java-based provinces)	Banten
Human Development Index	72.91	76.19	73.32
GDP per capita (in USD)	4.783	6.734	4.107
Stunting prevalence	21.60%	17.76%	20%
School participation rate	73.15%	74.99%	69.22%
Economic growth (compared to 2021)	5.31%	5.38%	5.03%
Unemployment rate	5.86%	6.12%	8.09%

Source: Statistics Indonesia (2021–2022); Banten Province (2023).

3.2. Data collection method

Different from previous studies on trust which applied a quantitative method, this study employs a qualitative method by analysing documents related to business policies at the local level, followed by semi-structured and face-to-face interviews to collect primary data. This strategy was chosen because trust is highly contextual and must be interpreted within its particular context (Bouckaert & Van de Walle, 2003). Thus, employing a qualitative method to examine trust is novel and supports this claim.

To address the study topic about mutual trust, interviews were conducted with government representatives and citizens. Citizens were represented by business actors (associations and individuals) who are direct beneficiaries and stakeholders of locals following business policies; academics focusing research on government-business relations and local government; and a local NGO activist conducting surveillance on the performance and public policy of the provincial government. On the government side, the source population consists of high-, middle- and low-ranking Banten province officials accountable for business policies. These sources were from at least nine local units, although only five were required for this study because some local units have identical functions and responsibilities. Figure 1 depicts a mapping of source persons in this study.

Figure 1. Caption: interviews at Banten province.

Sources in this study include government and non-governmental actors consisting of NGOs, academics, and business actors. From the province government, interviews are conducted with high, middle, and low-ranked government officials.

Since the interviews deal with human participants, a consent statement from the interviewed sources is necessary. Nevertheless, the consent was stated verbally without subsequent written expression as per request by the sources. This protocol considers the local culture of Indonesians who commonly prefer to consent to the interview with fewer formalities. The consent statement is included in the recordings, becoming part of the transcription. The research supervisor examined the interview protocol and instruments before data collection, which passed for the ethical consideration for approval.

3.3. Data processing

Nine sources were involved in this study. All interviews were performed in Bahasa, Indonesia, each lasting between 90 and 120 min on average. As all interviews were recorded digitally, the initial step in data processing was to create transcripts. Relevant statements in each interview were then translated into English. Afterward, the coding process was conducted in three steps: open, axial and selective. In the first step, all statements from the interviews were coded. The next step was grouping similar codes into the same category. The core categories used in this study are as follows: (1) social and political contexts, (2) government trust, (3) citizen trust, (4) participation in policymaking and (5) development performance. Table 2 presents the sample of codifications.

Table 2. Sample of codification.

Codes	Quotes
Social and political contexts	‘The existence of a political dynasty is the core problem in Banten. […] their domination in almost all business sector and policy is the problem.’ (Interview with D) ‘Small kingdoms at district/city level have also become one of the obstacles to the conduciveness of the investment climate in Banten.’ (Interview with C) ‘Due to the like-and-dislike factor and the high political interest factor, the regulation is not effectively implemented […] Selling and buying public official positions has become commonplace.’ (Interview with C)
Government trust	‘I don’t trust them (business actors and citizen in general) because they have a lot of tricks to avoid paying fees/taxes.’ (Interview with G – emphasis added) ‘Their (NGOs, academic, and business actors) competence is not sufficient. If they give input, the input is actually not significant (to our policy).’ (Interview with F – emphasis added) ‘For cases in the business permit, there are still some tricks to avoid permit, and they don’t comply with the permit regulations.’ (Interview with F) ‘They don’t really have good intentions in dealing with us (the government). […] The people in the association do not represent the interests of its members. They only carry their own interests as entrepreneurs.’ (Interview with F)
Citizen trust	‘Some civil servants in Banten may actually be competent, but their placement is not in accordance with their competence. They realise that Banten has many shortcomings, but when asked what they have done, almost all of the answers are just about planning.’ (Interview with C) ‘[…] The government lacks integrity and transparency, for instance regarding the management of local budget. […] The provincial government is not competent enough to develop regional potential and attract investors. There is no matching interest between the government, business actors and the public’ (Interview with D) ‘[…] they have good intention and care to us, they come to us when we invite them for discussing our issues.’ (Interview with A and B)
Participation in policymaking	‘The participation is still top down. We don’t actually have a participatory development model yet.’ (Interview with D) ‘Public participation in development planning is only to fulfil obligations, only administrative, not substantive in nature.’ (Interview with B and C) ‘The provincial government has never invited us (business owners) to discuss business issues or policies.’ (Interview with A and B) ‘There are (public) forums, but they are not yet institutionalised, because it is not easy to involve other parties. Getting them involved is just a waste of time. There’s no point getting them involved either, the fact is they won’t be giving you any valuable input.’ (Interview with F – emphasis added)
Development performance	‘Banten as a whole, in my opinion, the existing government projects are not necessarily able to directly answer the needs of the society’. (Interview with C) ‘Health and education services, as well as poverty, the performance of the government is all tagged in red.’ (Interview with C) ‘The government has not seriously improved the quality of education. Our human resources have not been able to compete with neighbouring provinces.’ (Interview with A, B, C, and D) ‘Investors don't want to invest in Banten, that's a big question, one of which is that there are indeed some kind of levies that aren't mentioned in the law, but there are people who have the power to determine how much investors have to pay if they want to invest.’ (Interview with B and D) ‘There is no match between the interests of the government and investors. In fact, the local government is not ready on how to attract investors and develop what is already there.’ (Interview with A and B)

4. RESULTS

4.1. The social and political context

The political dynasties in Banten dominate local political dynamics. Political dynasty in this context refers to people who are connected to the Governor and to whom the Governor has given authority to administer certain matters in Banten. The matters include business, bureaucracy, and politics. The dynasty plays an important role in shaping the relationship between the provincial government and its citizens and impacts trust between the government and citizens.

The network of the political dynasty is rampant across organisation units and agencies of the provincial government, which shaped favourable preferences of its policy choices and directions accordingly. The network places its members into important bureaucratic positions to ensure those policy desires are fulfilled. The two sources also witness, ‘[…] the fact is that they have to pay some amount of money to get a higher position in the government. The political dynasties play a big role in this issue’.

Such a privilege is tantamount to the so-called ‘local kingdom’ commonly perceived by the locals, as suggested by C and D, sources coming from academia and NGOs.

Small kingdoms at district/city level have also become one of the obstacles to the conduciveness of the investment climate in Banten. (Interview with C)

The existence of “little kingdoms” that dominate the business sector in each district/city in Banten is an additional factor that must not be overlooked. (Interview with D)

Citizens believe that the previous Governor and vice governor's families were heavily involved in the majority of development sectors and local budgeting plans. All of the political dynasty features come at the expense of functioning local government, which starts from the ineffectiveness of regulatory enforcement. As source C puts it, ‘Due to the like-and-dislike factor and the high political interest factor, the regulation is not effectively implemented […]’.

4.2. Government-citizen trust relations and participation in policymaking

Citizens perceive that government officials predominantly grouped under the political dynasty benefit from mismanaged local budgets, with budget allocations and money dispensing occurring according to their interests. Source D affirms this issue by saying, ‘[…] The government lacks integrity and transparency, for instance, regarding the management of the local budget’. As a result of a lack of transparency in various areas, including local public financial management, business permit issuing, procurement and policy formation, they are not worthy of citizen’s trust.

As source C puts it, ‘Some civil servants in Banten may be competent, but their placement is not in accordance with their competence. They realise that Banten has many shortcomings, but when asked what they have done, almost all the answers are just about planning.’

Citizens do not benefit from basic social services supposedly provided by the provincial government. Perception has benevolence at its worst. The government pays little attention to improving the quality of education, which contributes to the low quality and competitiveness of human resources in Banten. Nevertheless, business actors slightly differ from other citizens. Sources from business actors are satisfied with the willingness of the officials to discuss business matters and economic development even though they realise that these officials do not possess sufficient abilities and commitment to articulate their aspirations into development planning and practices.

On the contrary, provincial government officials are keen to discredit viable capacities, integrity and attitudes of citizens from the business sector for their engagement in policymaking processes. Government officials view citizens as inadequate in knowledge, integrity and benevolence; as a result, they cannot fully trust citizens. Both high-level and low-to-middle-level officials express these views and opinions. Evidence comes from F, a high-level official, who suggests (emphasis added), ‘Their (NGOs, academic and business actors) competence is not sufficient. If they give input, the input is actually not significant (to our policy)’.

In the interview, source individuals were asked to rate their level of trust on a scale from 1 to 10, and they all provided the same response: 6 points. Most of the reasons are connected to the inadequate ability and lack of good faith in dealing with the government. F explains this, ‘They don't really have good intentions in dealing with us (the government)’. In addition, business actors are deemed to commit fraud, such as business document forgery and tax evasion schemes. These views do not just come from sources of high-level positions, such as F, but also G, H and I, who hold middle- and low-level positions. The latter even stated explicitly that they do not trust business actors based on the reasoning, ‘I don't trust them (business actors and citizens in general) because they have a lot of tricks to avoid paying fees/taxes’ (emphasis added).

Government officials perceive business actors as unqualified to participate in policymaking and do not represent the business sector as they bring their self-interest. Source F debunks them, ‘[…] The people in the association do not represent the interests of its members. They only carry their interests as entrepreneurs’. The idea that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are always in opposition to the government and that their participation has little impact on the policy's actual content contributes to the NGOs’ ‘noisy’ nature. So, their participation in policymaking is viewed as a waste of time.

NGOs and academics argue that Banten has not yet implemented genuine participation. Considering all perceptions about each counterpart, public participation in policymaking proceeds with all procedural formalities. Sources C and D perceive the involvement in development planning is low due to its top-down nature, ‘[…] only to fulfil obligations, only administrative, not substantive in nature’. Nevertheless, interviewees A and B, from business, suggest worse, as no chance exists for any invitation, ‘the provincial government has never invited us (business owners) to discuss business issues or policies’. The public's understanding of the need to participate in and contribute to policymaking is low.

The officials argue that their difficulties in engaging with multiple stakeholders in policymaking are related to the low educational levels of most citizens, who are therefore deemed less capable of participating. Source F, holding a high-level position, admits, ‘There are (public) forums, but they are not yet institutionalised because it is not easy to involve other parties’. There have not yet been any regular, not incidental, meetings that fulfil business actors’ expectations, although institutionalising such a forum is mandatory and imposed by the central government. Province officials keep themselves satisfied just with opening the forum rather than to elicit genuine public desires. The lower rank official, source G, affirms this information only to provide an apology for not engaging them deliberately, ‘Engaging the public in the policy formulation is both desirable and necessary. While issuing policies, we cannot accommodate their desires, but we do listen to them’.

4.3. Implications for regional development

In this instance, government and corporate actors lack a shared interest in mapping investment potential. As source D mentioned, ‘The provincial government is not competent enough to develop regional potential and attract investors. No matching interest exists between the government, business actors and the public’. Insufficient capability and a mismatch of official placements result in the inability to solidify the mapping and planning of its large local economic potential to attract new investments.

The unmatched interests are not only prompted by the incompetence of Banten provincial officials. B coming from business reaffirms, ‘Investors don't want to invest in Banten, that's a big question, one of which is that there are indeed some kinds of levies that aren't mentioned in the law, but there are people who have the power to determine how much investors have to pay if they want to invest’. The monopoly of the dynasties in most business sectors discourages business players from investing in Banten due to the ambiguity of property rights, business permits and extortion, as well as the uncertainty of business rules and unfair competition. Their development policies and procurements disincentivize incoming prospective investments.

The unconducive business climate worsens development deficiencies in Banten. Even though Banten is situated on Java Island, full of well-privileged provinces, such as Jakarta and West Java, sources from academia and NGOs (sources A, B, C and D) reiterate public complaints about the unmet expectations of the general public, ‘The government has not seriously improved the quality of education. Our human resources have not been able to compete with neighbouring provinces’. Furthermore, ‘Health and education services, as well as poverty, the performance of the government is all tagged in red’, said source C. The underpinning problem was similar to that with investors, ‘[…] the existing government projects are not necessarily able to directly answer the needs of the society’ (interview with C).

5. DISCUSSION

The establishment of government-citizen trust and the actualisation of public participation do not occur in a vacuum. This study demonstrates that the local social-political context, i.e., the existence of informal leaders from a certain family clan, especially in taking control over the local business sector, leads to the lack of social trust between them and the society members. It is a widely held view in society that the most influential family clan possesses significant chances for engaging in rent-seeking behaviour. When the clan becomes involved in politics and establishes political dynasties within the bureaucracy, society perceives that its family members benefit from the Governor's favouritism, enabling them to exert influence in various government matters, such as the appointment of key public officials, management of public procurement, expansion of business development, and local investment.

The domination of political dynasties in political, bureaucratic and business arenas represents the practice of corruption and nepotism within the provincial administration. It reflects a weak government institution that leads to public perception assessing the lack of government competence, transparency and integrity as the leading indicators in shaping trust. Although the citizens’ perception of the government's benevolence is contingent on its willingness to establish a public forum discussing business issues, there is an inadequate channel to evaluate government transparency and integrity. In a broader context, Bjørnskov and Méon (2015) suggest that poor government quality is assumed to mediate the impact of trust on economic performance.

In the same pattern as citizen trust, government trust in citizens is even lower. Government officials perceive that citizens lack competence, integrity and benevolence. This perception mostly comes from their assessment that citizens lack sufficient knowledge and education and their prior observations of citizens as boisterous and frequently critical of government policy. In addition to a lack of public trust, the provincial administration suffers from persistently inadequate institutional design and capacity to facilitate public participation. Cruz-García and Peiró-Palomino (2019) confirm that trust is crucial in facilitating citizens’ demands. Hence, low trust correlates to low public participation. This condition is further exacerbated by the political dynasty's and its allies’ involvement in nearly all development sectors. Most of their decisions are excessively favourable to their interests and do not satisfy public requirements (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Trust, participation, and development relations in Banten.

The figure depicts the relationships between the three major aspects investigated in the case of Banten Province in which trust influences, public participation and the performance of local development.

As a result of the lack of public participation, local development programmes do not reflect public requirements. In addition, there is no shared objective and interest between the parties. It results in poor government performance and regional development. This result is consistent with the findings of Mizrahi et al. (2009) which demonstrate that a non-participatory culture promotes negative correlations between participation in decision-making and performance.

Despite the aforementioned general phenomena, some cities in Banten province are an exception, as they are less dominated by political dynasties. For instance, the city of Tangerang Selatan, with its remarkable growth of the special district Bumi Serpong Damai, demonstrates a significantly more developed business climate which results in excellent local development. This region has been cultivated by entrepreneurs in which its current position is quite secure, making it challenging for a network of political dynasties to intervene. This phenomenon demonstrates the significance of dynastic influence on local development. It also indicates that the lower the prevalence of political dynasties, the better the local development is.

6. CONCLUSIONS

This study illustrates unhealthy relationships between the government and citizens. It shows that trust shaping is dynamic and strongly related to the local condition. Moreover, local political regime features and cultures shape the relationship between government and citizens, such as institutional capacity, power distribution and constellation among actors. The political dynasty prevalence negatively impacts regional development; thus, some regions with less dynasty capture are better developed. Citizens believe that government policies only benefit the ruling political dynasty and its allies; as a result, their participation in policymaking is futile. This low public participation impacts the unmatched interest between citizens and government in designing regional development programmes, which results in low regional development performance.

Mutual trust between government and citizens is supposed to trigger the embodiment of authentic participation leading to development performance. The relationship between them, however, is dynamic and not direct. Matching interests among actors and fulfilling public needs become essential factors influencing development achievement. Comparing local governments based on the uniqueness of local context is suggested for obtaining a comprehensive understanding of trust, implementing participation in policymaking and fostering regional development.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).