Compatibility of the Incompatible: How Does Asymmetric Power Lead to Coexistence of Trust and Distrust in Adversarial Policy Networks?

ABSTRACT

Asymmetric power has been found to hinder the development of trust that is essential for structuring policy subsystems or networks. Using a multinomial logistic analysis of a local hydraulic fracturing policy network in New York, our findings indicate that (1) power imbalance affects the coexistence of trust and distrust and (2) power imbalance interacting with certain types of social relationships (policy communication, regulation, and knowledge exchange) leads to the coexistence of trust and distrust. We suggest three implications for the governance of policy networks and policy process literature: increasing levels of trust do not guarantee decreasing levels of distrust, asymmetric power has an impact on structuring “ambivalent” relations, and adversarial policy subsystems can take four structural forms depending on the levels of trust and distrust.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy networks
• asymmetric power
• trust
• distrust
• paradox

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. The degree of goal incongruence may not necessarily equate to that of value incongruence. However, organizational goals are viewed as the operative values of an organization and strategic decisions and choices to maximize values (Rainey, 2014). Thus, we assume that the extent to which goals are incomparable is typically reflected in value incongruence.

2. Four central informants include (a) a manager of an industry support organization, (b) a community organizer of a landowners’ group, (c) a program manager for fracking-related activities in a local and statewide civic organization, and (d) a director of local government’s economic development agency. They were selected by virtue of their capacity to provide an accurate picture of the fracking network boundary based on organizational types, fracking attitudes, and political reputation (Park & Rethemeyer, 2014).

3. The informants determined the breakpoint to specify network boundary based on the listed actors’ influence. A consensus emerged across the four informants.

4. Interviews were conducted with the lead person from each organization. We assume that the person in the highest hierarchical position in an organization represents the organization’s perspectives regarding fracking. We also verbally instructed the interviewees that they respond to the survey questions as a representative of an organization, not an individual interested in fracking policy.

5. While we address the focal actor’s experience of coexisting trust and distrust toward the same target, examining different trust/distrust levels held by two nodes for each other in one dyad relation can be another interesting future research topic (see, Farrell, 2004). We appreciate the anonymous reviewer’s comment on it.

6. In our data, the total number of network actors is 25. However, 18 actors participated in the semi-structured interviews. Each focal actor can respond to up to 24 relationships because we excluded the self-tie and included the relationships with non-respondents. Eighteen participants can form 432 relations (=18*24). However, there remain 264 usable relationships for the analysis due to some missing data across all variables included in the model.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation, Republic of Korea [NRF-2016S1A3A2924956];Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea; KDI School of Public Policy and Management.