The Erosion of Trust During a Global Pandemic and How Public Administrators Should Counter It

• DOI: 10.1177/0275074020941676
• Date: 01 August 2020
• Author: Aaron Deslatte
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Subject Matter: Institutional Responsibilities & Obligations of the Administrative State to the Citizenry IT ServesPublic Management, Public Trust, & the Quest for Democratic Governance

https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074020941676

American Review of Public Administration

2020, Vol. 50(6-7) 489 –496

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074020941676

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Public Management, Public Trust, & the Quest for Democratic Governance

“You don’t have to speak truth to power, because they know it

already.”1

—Noam Chomsky

Introduction

The American public could use some truth-telling, about the

deficiencies in its governments, its economies, and its

national civic dialogue.

SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coro-

navirus 2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease

(COVID-19), has exposed weaknesses—not in the United

States’ federalist fabric (Adolph et al., 2020), but in its

degraded administrative systems and capacities. This essay

argues that individual citizens—as tribalized and fractious

as they seem—have been poorly served by public officials

with career incentives to avoid risks, downplay long-term

threats, and enact administrative burdens. Public adminis-

trators must advance a more equity-based assessment of

vulnerabilities in American communities and more risk-

based communication strategies. Citizens have never had

access to more information—and thus more difficulty in dis-

cerning facts from fallacy. Public administrators are the

planners, engineers, analysts, auditors, lawyers, and manag-

ers on the front lines of this and future existential crises. It is

their job to sift through the information environment and—

however boundedly—tackle problems. For the sake of the

American democracy, public administrators need to regain

the people’s trust. They could start by leveling with them

about the challenges ahead.

Underequipped state and local government agencies have

struggled to coordinate a consistent response to the pan-

demic, creating and exacerbating tensions between levels

and units. State-level guidance on social distancing and shel-

tering has appeared to vary by partisan identification (Allcott

et al., 2020; Kushner Gadarian et al., 2020). Problems with

organizing a coherent response to the virus have fueled

sweeping judgments of the suitability of federal systems of

governance for responding to existential challenges

(Connors, 2020; Haffajee & Mello, 2020; Perez & Ross,

2020).

The pandemic has given Americans a glimpse of the rami-

fications of a decades-long corrosion of federal, state, and

local government administrative capacities. This is an invest-

ment opportunity, not just in green infrastructure or health

care, but an opportunity to invest in social capital. We will

need it more than ever in the coming years.

941676ARPXXX10.1177/0275074020941676The American Review of Public AdministrationDeslatte

research-article2020

1Indiana University Bloomington, USA

Corresponding Author:

Aaron Deslatte, Assistant Professor, Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and

Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Bloomington, 1315 E. Tenth

Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-1701, USA.

Email: adeslatt@iu.edu

The Erosion of Trust During a Global

Pandemic and How Public Administrators

Should Counter It

Aaron Deslatte1

Abstract

This article argues that public administrators must advance a more equity-based assessment of vulnerabilities in American

communities and more risk-based communication strategies. It provides an overview of partisan motivated reasoning, how

this has influenced the response to the coronavirus pandemic. Experimental evidence then demonstrates how the framing of

the pandemic can influence trust in various public messengers. The coronavirus pandemic is merely one of the many exigent

threats humanity faces today. Public administrators are the planners, engineers, analysts, auditors, lawyers, and managers

on the front lines of these existential crises. It is their job to sift through the information environment and—however

boundedly—tackle problems. For the sake of the American democracy, public administrators need to regain the people’s

trust. They could start by leveling with them about the challenges ahead.

Keywords

risk communication, COVID-19, trust, motivated reasoning, climate change