Inleiding en context
Beste mensen, het is vandaag maandag 28 november 2022. De donkere dagen en de regen maken mij niet vrolijk. Daarom om te beginnen een hopelijk vrolijk stemmend liedje: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRCe5L1imxg Schitterend. Maar nu naar de ´kennisparel´ van vandaag. Die betreft een vergelijkende studie binnen 22 landen naar het vertrouwen in publieke instituties. Dat vertrouwen is in veel landen vanwege vele verschillende oorzaken de laatste jaren flink afgenomen. Ook in Nederland doet de overheid op allerlei manieren haar best om het vertrouwen in die publieke instituties terug te winnen. Dat blijkt geen eenvoudige opgave te zijn.
Wat drijft het vertrouwen in de overheid? Bijgesloten ´kennisparel´ presenteert de belangrijkste bevindingen van de eerste grensoverschrijdende OESO-enquête over vertrouwen in de overheid en openbare instellingen, onder meer dan 50.000 respondenten in 22 OESO-landen waaronder Nederland. Het onderzoek meet de overheidsprestaties op vijf drijvende krachten achter vertrouwen – betrouwbaarheid, reactievermogen, integriteit, openheid en eerlijkheid – en biedt inzichten voor toekomstige beleidshervormingen en aanpassingen om het vertrouwen in de overheid te herstellen. Het onderzoek markeert een belangrijk initiatief van OESO-landen om te meten en beter te begrijpen wat het vertrouwen van mensen in openbare instellingen drijft – een cruciaal onderdeel van het versterken van de democratie. Om van te leren ook binnen de Nederlandse ontwikkelingen en initiatieven om het vertrouwen in overheidsinstellingen te herwinnen.
Bron
OECD (2022). Building Trust to Reinforce Democracy: Main Findings from the 2021 OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions. Paris: OECD Publishing, 121 pp. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/governance/building-trust-to-reinforce-democracy_46990396-en
Samenvatting
People generally trust the reliability of government, but levels of trust vary significantly across institutions and few people feel they have a say in what government does according to a new OECD report. As countries work to address the ongoing impacts of the largest health, economic and social crisis in decades there is a need for governments to boost trust. Levels of trust in government remain slightly higher than in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, but do remain under strain.
According to the report based on a survey of 50,000 people across 22 OECD countries, trust and distrust are evenly split. The survey found that on average across countries 41.4% of respondents say they trust their national government, and 41.1% say they do not. The report is the first and most exhaustive cross-national gauge of what drives public trust in open democratic governments. The survey is aimed at helping governments better understand where citizen confidence is wavering, where it remains solid and what needs to be done to close the gap. The survey took place during the COVID-19 pandemic and for most countries before Russia embarked on its unprovoked, unjustifiable and illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. Most countries were surveyed in the period November 2021 to February 2022, with Finland and Norway surveyed in 2020 and Portugal and the UK surveyed in March 2022.
Governments need to engage and respond better to peoples evolving expectations. They need to boost integrity, tackle undue influence and address increasingly pressing long-term structural challenges. Ultimately, to boost trust, government’s need to get better at taking people into their confidence, by better communicating the need for reforms and their impact. Key takeaways from the report include:
Most people feel that government is reliable: On average across countries, most people feel that, even during times of crisis, their government is reliably delivering crucial public services such as education (57.6%) and health (61.7%), that it enables easy access to information on administrative procedures (65.1%) and protects personal data (51.1%). Only a third (32.6%) are concerned that governments would not be prepared for a future pandemic.
Public trust varies across institutions: The police (67.1%), courts (56.9%), the civil service (50.2%) and local government (46.9%) garner higher levels of public trust than national governments (41.4%) and parliaments (39.4%).
Governments could do better in responding to citizens’ concerns and tackling issues that are important to them, like climate change: While 50.4% think governments should be doing more to reduce climate change, only 35.5% are confident that countries will actually succeed in reducing their country’s contribution to climate change. Less than a third of citizens feel they have a say what government does (30.2%).
Generational, educational, income, gender and regional gaps in trust indicate that progress can be made in enhancing participation and representation for all: Disadvantaged groups with less real or perceived access to opportunity and voice have lower levels of trust in government. Women and people with less education and lower incomes tend to trust the government less. Younger people also have lower trust in government than older ones, with an almost ten percentage point trust gap in surveyed OECD countries. These gaps may reflect the negative impact that wider societal inequalities are having on public trust and their role in fuelling partisanship and polarisation. The report shows, for example, that people who did not vote for their country’s incumbent government are far less likely to trust it.
Public perception of government integrity is an issue: Slightly less than half of citizens(47.8%), on average across countries, think a high-level political official would grant a political favour in exchange for the offer of a well-paid private sector job. Around a third (35.7%) think that a public employee would accept money in exchange for speeding up access to a public service.
The OECD Trust survey will be repeated every two years to follow progress in countries and gather evidence of what works and what does not as countries work to further strengthen public trust.
Afsluitend
De laatste jaren wordt in de strafrechtketen (Preventie, Opsporing, Vervolging, Berechting, Strafuitvoering en Nazorg (ex-gedetineerden, slachtoffers)) regelmatig tevredenheids- en klantonderzoek gedaan onder betrokkenen (justitieconsumenten) in die keten. Het kan dan bijvoorbeeld gaan om de mate waarin er sprake is van preventiebereidheid, tevredenheid over het contact met en optreden van de politie, de wijze waarop het OM omgaat met zaken, tevredenheid over en vertrouwen in de rechtspraak, bejegening van gedetineerden, bejegening van reclassenten en slachtoffers van criminaliteit. Getracht wordt om vanuit dit perspectief trends te onderkennen bij de verschillende klanten. Wat doen we goed, wat gaat er minder goed, en wat gaat niet goed?
De mate waarin er binnen een samenleving vertrouwen bestaat in de instituties is één van de graadmeters van het maatschappelijk welzijn en democratisch gehalte. Samenlevingen gekenmerkt door een hoog publiek vertrouwen hebben in de regel een aangenaam sociaal-cultureel klimaat en ook in economisch opzicht functioneren deze soepel. Kortom: het is zaak voor de Nederlandse overheid om het vertrouwen in de publieke instituties en daarmee in het democratisch gehalte van Nederland permanente aandacht te schenken.