Bring mutual trust back: explaining underdevelopment among privileged regions

This article examines how trust between the regional government and its citizens contributes to the embodiment of participatory policymaking at the provincial level and impacts regional development. Different from previous studies on trust, which focused primarily on quantitative approaches and thereby left the social-political context out, this study employs a qualitative approach to present more profound findings and contextual aspects that reflect actors’ trust. The context is the existence of a local political dynasty that dominates the political, bureaucratic and business arenas. It also captures a regional development paradox in which a province is persistently underprivileged among well-developed adjacent regions. Primary data collection involves in-depth interviews with selected business actors, academics, NGOs and high-, middle- and low-ranking government officials at the provincial level. The findings reveal a lack of trust between the regional government and citizens, which explains poor participation in policymaking hence sluggish regional development. Each actor seems to lack the necessary competence, integrity and benevolence to cooperate in regional policymaking. These findings also fill a theoretical gap left by previous studies on trust which have primarily focused on citizen trust in government. At the same time, this article also pays more attention to government trust in citizens, which remains understudied.