This chapter examines how the issue of trust is reflected in the longstanding pragmatic perspective of the policy sciences and how it offers a pathway by which to ‘politicize’ understandings of policy capacity (including that used by Government Competitiveness). It proceeds with a discussion about the roots of epistemic instability, including the influence of a century of technocratic thinking on contemporary efforts to frame policy problems. The chapter continues with a discussion of how the rise of populism and decline in trust is destabilizing the epistemic certitude of technocracy. The chapter then turns to an examination of how this destabilization can be more intricately understood by viewing trust through the lens of policy capacity and Government Competitiveness. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how trust might be better integrated into studies of policy and administration in an era when the politics－administration divide seems to be an increasingly contested concept.
Hartley, Kris. (2022). “Illuminating the dark corners of policy capacity: trust and crisis response.” In Im, Tobin et al., eds. Performance of 10 years of research on government competitiveness. Published by the Center for Government Competitiveness, Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. Funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea and the Ministry of Education of Korea. ISBN: 9788963475103. Available at National Assembly Library of the Republic of Korea (in Korean): http://dl.nanet.go.kr/SearchDetailView.do?cn=MONO12022000060471