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PUBLIC CONFIDENCE IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

A Discussion Paper prepared for the Office of the Auditor General of Western Australia prepared by Associate Professor Neal Ryan - Faculty of Business, Queensland University of Technology

March 2000

INTRODUCTION
Public confidence in government has become more important as opinion polls have indicated a constant decline public trust in government, in Australia and overseas (Papadakis, 1999; Orren, 1997; Pharr, 1997). Declining confidence in public institutions has been considered an indicator of fundamental problems in the nature of democratic political systems (Papadakis, 1999: 78). If governments and the institutions associated with government lose popular legitimacy, the capacity of systems of government to command authority, especially through voluntary compliance, may be under threat.

Furthermore, there is a danger that participation in political and policy-making process will become more unrepresentative of the population (Nye and Zelikow, 1997: 277). Public confidence will affect the extent to which the public contribute to work of government especially through taxation, and enter into the public domain including working for the public sector (Nye, 1997: 4). Government and the public sector are central institutions in maintaining a civil society. Public confidence is an important influence on the capacity of these institutions to discharge their responsibilities. It is also important because of the impact on representative democracy (Burstein, 1998).

This discussion focuses mostly on the factors attributed to the post war decline in public confidence in government. The distinction between public confidence in executive government and public confidence in the public sector is difficult to determine from the literature dealing with this issue, although it is reasonable to assume that differences exist. For example, Lam notes that the Hong Kong civil service has been able maintain high levels of public confidence (32% compared to an international average of around 10%), at times when confidence in the ruling government is low (Lam, 2000: 4).

However, the literature dealing with confidence in government usually fails to distinguish between executive government and the public sector. Accordingly, the following analysis uses the literature dealing with the more general issue of government, and attempts to determine the issues that are likely to be relevant to the public sector, such as service delivery, accountability and public participation. Here, the focus of attention is mostly on those considerations that might be within the ability of the public sector to influence public confidence in the public sector.

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