GOVTRUST

About

A Multi-Level Perspective on Trust and Public Governance
The GOVTRUST Summer School focuses on trust and public governance for societal transitions and explores these issues from a multi-level governance perspective. Creating and maintaining trust in public governance is essential for a well-functioning society, especially when trust is more than ever under pressure in the face of grand societal challenges. Such grand societal challenges - e.g. climate change, digitalisation or global pandemics - emphasise the complexity of contemporary governance, as they require collaborative efforts from public, private and non-profit actors as well as individual citizens in multi-layered decision-making arenas. For such complex governance systems to perform well, trust is a fundamental condition. While a certain degree of distrust between societal actors might be functional in specific instances, the recurring reports of breakdowns in trust point to significant problems for society. When trust evaporates, cooperation between citizens, private and non-profit organisations, and public actors is compromised, making effective governance of societal transitions very hard to achieve. Therefore, governments and societal actors increasingly seek ways to foster trust. Drawing on high-level scientific expertise from multiple disciplines (incl. political science, communication science, law, behavioural economics and public administration), the GOVTRUST Summer School investigates a wide range of critical questions about the dynamics, causes and effects of trust and public governance from a multi-level perspective. Through a combination of (guest) lectures, discussions and workshops, participants will be stimulated to think across disciplinary boundaries, interact with each other and engage with speakers from academic and professional backgrounds.

The GOVTRUST Summer School is co-funded by the European Union through the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence STRATEGO.

Course leader

Sophie Op de Beeck, Reasearch Manager GOVTRUST

Target group

PhD students, senior (postdoctoral) researchers, practitioners and policymakers interested in trust and public governance. Multi-disciplinary participation is strongly welcomed. The number of participants will be limited to 30 students.

Course aim

By the end of the summer school, participants will:
be able to identify and summarise the significance of key research topics in the field of trust and public governance.
be able to engage critically in an academic discussion on trust and public governance with both experts and peers.
be ble to assess the value and proper use of different methods related to the field of trust and public governance.
be able to process theoretical and methodological insights on trust and public governance as well as incorporate expert feedback in the development of a research paper.

Fee info

The tuition fee includes course material, lunches, coffee breaks, and one networking dinner. It does not include travel, accommodation or meals other than the ones mentioned before.