Scope and methods of analysis

In this literature review, we take an integrative approach (Snyder, Reference Snyder2019), seeking to map out, synthesise, and critically assess puzzles and contradictions within the scholarship on trust in the welfare state and social policy research. Thus, our focus is not on gathering a highly systematic collection of extensive and multifaceted literature but rather on developing a framework for analysing welfare users’ political (dis)trust.

For this review, we selected publications that present findings on how welfare state institutions, including their institutional design, modi operandi, and frontline work practices shape users’ perceptions of welfare state and, in turn, their trust in welfare state. More specifically, as noted, we analysed studies on trust in the field of social work, including frontline workers’ practices and working styles, as perceived by users and research on perceived distributive and procedural justice and its impact on trust. The selection criteria for publications to be included in the study was their relevance in one of the following topics: making a methodological contribution to study of trust in welfare, or examining the effect on political trust exerted by: social policy design, social policy implementation, perceived institutional outcomes, distributive and procedural justice, and encounters with frontline workers. We decided to exclude other factors influencing citizens’ political trust, such as national cultural or societal characteristics, economic issues, media and public discourse, and citizens’ individual features, such as their demographic profile, socio-economic status, or political preferences. Social trust and intra-institutional trust also fell outside the scope of the analysis.

In this study, we seek to answer the following research questions:

1) How is users’ and citizens’ trust in the welfare state at its different levels of organisation operationalised in empirical research?

2) What mechanisms and factors relevant in citizens’ direct encounters with social assistance shape such trust, according to the literature?

To answer the latter question, we propose to deconstruct the relevant elements in the literature on trust in order to reinterpret the perspective of users and citizens in their relations/experiences with welfare state institutions.

To respond to our main research question on the operationalisation of citizens’ trust in welfare institutions, we need to review the broader literature on political trust. Apart from those that take a highly analytical approach and discuss trust-related concepts as well as the nature of political trust, as in the case of the Handbook of Trust Research (Bachmann and Zaheer, Reference Bachmann and Zaheer2006), or the Routledge Handbook of Trust and Philosophy (Simon, Reference Simon2020), there are a handful of contributions that directly address the sources of citizens’ trust in the political system. In particular, the Handbook on Political Trust (Zmerli and Van der Meer, Reference Zmerli and Van der Meer2017), the Handbook on Trust in Public Governance (Six et al., Reference Six, Hamm, Latusek, van Zimmeren and Verhoest2025), and the Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust (Uslaner, Reference Uslaner2018) deal with those issues; however, in general, this literature focuses mostly on welfare state performance and contextual factors (Kumlin and Haugsgjerd, Reference Kumlin, Haugsgjerd, Levi and Levi2017). Therefore, we further review the literature that situates citizens’ trust in public actors within a complex governance network (Six et al., Reference Six, Hamm, Latusek, van Zimmeren and Verhoest2025) or shows its manifestations in different political arenas (Uslaner, Reference Uslaner2018). In drawing on the work that is more focused on the users’ experience and perspective, we go beyond the aforementioned contributions and existing literature reviews (Kumlin and Haugsgjerd, Reference Kumlin, Haugsgjerd, Levi and Levi2017). In particular, our goal is to emphasise: 1) the distinctiveness of users’ experience with social assistance, illustrating welfare institutions’ procedures of granting or denying the access to benefits and services, and 2) users’ experience of personal relationships with frontline workers.

Political trust in the welfare state: The variety of notions

Although there are various specific definitions of trust, scholars seem to agree that trust can be interpreted broadly as individuals’ willingness to be vulnerable in relations with others, based on positive expectations of the latter’s intentions and competencies (Kim, Reference Kim2005: 618). Such an approach, encompassing cognitive, emotional, and behavioural components (ibid.), also applies to political trust, in which the trustee’s perspective ‘shifts from being an individual to being the government as a whole, an institution of government or a large group of people in the government’ (Theiss-Morse et al., Reference Theiss-Morse, Barton, Wagner, Bornstein and Tomkins2015: 169). Recognising the diversity of objects and forms of political trust is highly relevant in social policy and welfare state research. The multilevel nature of welfare state structures and citizens’ encounters with policy institutions and professionals contributed to individuals’ making sense of how the state works. Such diverse perspectives are then reflected in multistrand scholarship on trust in the welfare state. Table 1 provides an overview of the types of political trust, depending on the trustee.

Table 1. Overview of trust types in research on political trust in the welfare state, by trust type and trustee

* In definitional terms (Kim, Reference Kim2005), trust in government is also institutional trust. However, this term is typically used in research on trust in institutions implementing social policy, to emphasise the institutional features of the trustee.

** In definitional terms (Theiss-Morse et al., Reference Theiss-Morse, Barton, Wagner, Bornstein and Tomkins2015: 169), all types of trust listed in the table are manifestations of political trust. However, this term is typically used in research on trust in government to emphasise the political features of the trustees.

The category of user trust or client trust (Kohl et al., Reference Kohl, Amilon and Olsen2022; Kvakic and Wærdahl, Reference Kvakic and Wærdahl2024) denotes the attitude of welfare service users towards the frontline workers granting or providing those services. Although some scholars also use this term when describing citizens’ trust in services at the aggregate level (Jessen, Reference Jessen2010), this notion of trust typically characterises direct, personal relations between users and frontline workers.

In social work scholarship, user trust is perceived as positive and desired, belonging to the core values of social work (Smith, Reference Smith2001) and necessary in performing successful social work. Some scholars recognise trust as an essential feature of productive relationships between social work practitioners and those who require their services, whether individuals, groups, or communities (Wilson, Reference Wilson2008: 67). User trust in the social work literature is contrasted not only with distrust but also with the situation of a trust vacuum, in which neither a trusting nor distrusting relationship between actors is present. Such a vacuum is considered typical in the managerialist approach to human service delivery, which introduces the contract culture based on obligations, guidelines, and procedures, leaving no room for uncertainty, and thus for trust (Aymer and Okitkipi, Reference Aymer and Okitikpi2000: 690; Smith, Reference Smith2001). The crucial role of user trust in social work is related to its effectiveness. Numerous studies have shown that user trust in personal services contributes to successful intervention in social work, as it builds users’ rapport (Rautio, Reference Rautio2013), enables clients to overcome fears and participate meaningfully (Smith et al., Reference Smith, Gallagher and Wosu2012), and helps to disclose information about abuse (Cossar et al., Reference Cossar, Acheampong, Brandon, Boudier, Bailey, Fritz-Campbell, Belderson, Snape, Biggart, Thibou, Sharpe and Thrower2013).

Such an understanding of user trust assumes that specific professionals are the target of that trust, as it is developed within and through individual interactions between professionals and service users. As a consequence, trust is based on the user’s confidence in an individual professional providing assistance. Thus, trust is evolving and is earned (Wilson, Reference Wilson2008: 71) thanks to social workers’ qualifications and skills – the latter may include the use of specific strategies to obtain that trust, in particular in psychodynamic social work (The Framework for Social Work Education in Scotland, 2003; Wilson, Reference Wilson2008: 349; Robbins and Cook, Reference Robbins and Cook2018; Senghaas et al., Reference Senghaas, Freier and Kupka2019). Such a notion of gradually developed trust allows for a distinction between the initial trust and a deeper trust (Behnia, Reference Behnia2008) and between the user’s attitude facilitating the start of cooperation with frontline workers and a deeper relationship resulting in clients’ opening up and revealing personal information to social workers. Thus, establishing user trust depends on the competencies of human service professionals and is a part of the social work curriculum. Those competencies encompass the awareness of generally unfavourable contexts, such as low social trust among users’ acquaintances and welfare users’ difficulties in trusting public officers.

Similarly, managerial studies focused on the process of trust formation point to various bases for trust, such as personality, institution, and cognition (McKnight and Cummings, Reference McKnight, Cummings and Chervany1998). These may exist simultaneously and complement each other – trust in an institution may increase trust in individuals through ‘structural assurance’ (ibid.). Trust in a person may stem from an expectation that their actions will maintain the ‘persistence of the social order’, will be competent, and that their performance will be ‘morally correct’ (Connell and Mannion, Reference Connell and Mannion2006, quoting Barber, Reference Barber1983), i.e. the principles of predictability, competence, fairness, plus the meaning of interpersonal relations. In contrast, trust can be understood as proportional to the reduction of uncertainty by means of organisational rules giving small discretionary power to those making decisions, hence minimising the degree of freedom to disappoint expectations (Connell and Mannion, Reference Connell and Mannion2006; quoting (Gambetta, Reference Gambetta1988: 420).

Within the research on trust in the welfare state, a set of analyses is focused on the issue of trust in public institutions’ employees. The category of trust in employees is mostly researched from the perspective of citizens’ experiences and evaluations of procedures used by welfare institutions. It is, thus, understood as resulting from perceptions of procedural justice or fairness. Such an approach is employed, for instance, in Frederiksen’s (Reference Frederiksen2018) interview-based study on citizens’ trust in employees of public healthcare and primary schools in Sweden and Denmark. Frederiksen finds that the procedural legitimacy of welfare institutions ‘hinges on trust in employees as professionals’ (p. 253), with competence, commitment, and fairness being cornerstones of employees’ perceived professionalism. Similarly, Fersch (Reference Fersch2016) argues that this form of trust is, in fact, impersonal, as it is systematically embedded in a reliance on a system of autonomous control.

Gregg van Ryzin’s (Reference Van Ryzin2011) analyses are an example of a broader conceptualisation of trust in employees. He uses the term ‘trust in civil servants’ measured with response to survey statements ‘most civil servants can be trusted to do what is best for the country’ (van Ryzin, Reference Van Ryzin2011: 750), arguing that this trust is relevant, as civil service is ‘the largest arm of modern government and the one that most regularly interacts with citizens in their ordinary lives’ (van Ryzin, Reference Van Ryzin2011: 755). His findings on public administrations’ performance having a strong effect on trust in civil servants belong to the cornerstones of the literature on the performance–trust link (see: Zhang et al., Reference Zhang, Chen, Petrovsky and Walker2022 for a literature review).

Furthermore, trust in institutions or institutional trust is an overarching category encompassing government and legislative institutions and – as some authors argue – trust in employees (Fersch, Reference Fersch2016). Nevertheless, the typical use of that category in research on trust in the welfare state is in regard to institutions implementing various policies, such as healthcare and pension providers (Edlund, Reference Edlund2006), providers of welfare social services, public services in general (Jessen, Reference Jessen2010), public employment services (Shore and Tosun, Reference Shore and Tosun2019), the social insurance agency, elementary schools, hospitals and unemployment agencies (Stensöta and Bendz, Reference Stensöta and Bendz2019), or education, healthcare, and tax authorities (Taylor-Gooby, Reference Taylor-Gooby2011). Jonas Edlund (Reference Edlund2006) proposes that trust should be understood as trust in the ‘institutional capabilities’ of the welfare state and its agencies. Such capacities are perceived as depending on the risks of the welfare state failing to deliver the benefits and services it is meant to implement (Edlund, Reference Edlund2006: 399). Similarly, for Peter Taylor-Gooby, ‘trust in the welfare state as an institution’ reflects the extent to which people trust social institutions to deliver good services fairly (Taylor-Gooby, Reference Taylor-Gooby2011: 21).

Finally, trust in government involves the broadest category of trustee. In research on welfare states, trust in government is typically understood as an indicator of citizens’ support for the welfare state, welfare system, or political system as a whole. However, several authors emphasise diverse aspects of the meaning of ‘trust’. For instance, He (Reference He2018) understands trust in government (also referred to as institutional trust) as citizens’ assessment that the government is trustworthy and fair. Kumlin (Reference Kumlin2002) uses the category of political trust as a synonym for political support (p.108), which mirrors citizens’ general attitudes towards politicians and the political system. Both Berg and Dahl (Reference Berg and Dahl2020) and Betkó et al. (Reference Betkó, Spierings and Gesthuizen2022) underline that trust in the government captures trust in the political system, encompassing trust in political actors, institutions and the overall quality of the system. The highly general institutional level allows us to understand trust as citizens’ confidence in effective governance and to perceive trust as reflecting the legitimacy of the political system.

In sum, there are relevant differences in the theoretical understanding of trust, depending on the type of trustee. As presented in Table 1, user trust primarily captures the nature of service-users’ experiences and perceptions of direct contact with frontline workers. Trust in employees, in turn, reflects citizens’ perceptions and evaluations of the competencies and moral integrity of the professionals implementing policies at various public institutions. Trust in welfare institutions primarily reflects citizens’ confidence in those institutions’ organisational and political capacity to provide social benefits and services effectively and fairly. Finally, trust in government is regarded as closely related to the perceived legitimacy of the country’s political and welfare systems. Overall, as the complexity and institutional power of trustees increase, trustworthiness criteria shift – away from the quality of the interpersonal relationship with a frontline worker toward the perceived performance of the institution as a whole. At the same time, the higher the level of complexity and power, the less normative the notion of trust becomes. As noted above, trust is seen as indispensable in the context of user trust in social work and human service provision, whereas this expectation is less prominent at the level of trust in government.

Although, as noted, there are relevant differences in the theoretical understanding of various types of trust, depending on the unit of analysis, the boundaries between citizens’ political trust towards various institutions of the welfare state are often blurred. Namely, at the upper levels of the welfare state institutional hierarchy, the distinction between concrete public institutions is often vague for citizens. Van de Walle and Bouckaert (Reference Van de Walle and Bouckaert2003) emphasise this issue, arguing that when research participants are asked to assess their trust in more abstract levels of state organisation, it is far from evident for them how to interpret terms such as ‘the government’ and whether, for instance, public schools or social insurance institutions are included as parts of it. This puzzle is made more complex by the fact that while direct encounters with frontline workers and specific welfare institutions influence citizens’ (dis)trust towards the welfare state as a whole (Zacka, Reference Zacka2017), these interactions are also the main way citizens experience the welfare state, with frontline workers in fact being citizen’s ‘access points’ to abstract systems (Fersch, Reference Fersch2016: 1). This mechanism is well described, in particular, in studies on vulnerable users, such as immigrants whose perception of countries’ welfare and political system is based on contacts with frontline workers (Sæbjørnsen and Willumsen, Reference Sæbjørnsen and Willumsen2017; Tembo et al., Reference Tembo, Studsrød and Young2021; Sanfelici, Reference Sanfelici2023). Simultaneously, though, levels of trust in political actors at different tiers of state organisation and towards different state institutions are highly diverse, which means that people do differentiate between, for instance, local public institutions and the government’s trustworthiness (Betkó et al., Reference Betkó, Spierings and Gesthuizen2022). The literature itself presents mixed findings, demonstrating that no automatic upscaling mechanism takes place in the case of trust-building: trusting the frontline workers of a local public institution does not always result in greater trust in the government (Fersch, Reference Fersch2016). The articles collected in the themed section, to which this review article serves as an introduction, shed more light on the complexity of these mechanisms and how (dis)trusting ‘them’ – that is, the state in general – may be a vernacular phenomenon.

Diverse operational choices made in research on trust in welfare contribute to difficulties in clearly specifying the meaning of ‘trust’ at various levels of state organisation. As presented in Table 2, there are two approaches to the operational definition of trust, depending on how explicitly trust is used as a word/term. The first assumes that only the explicit and direct use of ‘trust’ as a word (or such synonyms as ‘confidence’) constitutes a valid indicator of a trusting attitude or relationship. The second approach takes a broader view, assuming that there can also be other indicators of citizens’ trust. These include survey questions about citizens’ satisfaction with welfare institutions’ performance, expectations of that performance, and whether employees or institutions meet trustworthiness criteria. Similarly, in in-depth interviews, indirect statements are also considered to reflect trust. The following is a quote from a research participant interpreted by Sæbjørnsen and Willumsen (Reference Sæbjørnsen and Willumsen2017): 48) as a clear expression of user’s trust:

Table 2. Operational choices in research on trust in welfare state

Rarely do interviewees’ statements clearly meet the definitional criteria of trust, that is, rarely do they include the expressed expectation that the trustee will act in the trustor’s interest, as in the previous quote. Thus, indirect operationalisation of trust may lead to the conflation of trust and synonymous categories. One clear example is satisfaction with social services, as recognised by de Van de Walle and Bouckaert (Reference Van de Walle and Bouckaert2003). For some authors (Van Ryzin, Reference Van Ryzin2011; Vigoda-Gadot, Reference Vigoda-Gadot2007), satisfaction is a driver of political trust; for others (He, Reference He2018), it is the outcome of trust and a sign of policy legitimacy. Although these findings also suggest a bidirectionality of these relationships, the fact that some authors (Jessen, Reference Jessen2010; Taylor-Gooby, Reference Taylor-Gooby2011) consider satisfaction with services as the actual indicator of trust highlights the conceptual challenges inherent in research on trust and its similarity to other relevant categories.

Irrespective of direct or indirect questions about trust, operational choices also vary in terms of the scope of measured trust. The most typical approach aims to capture the overall trust of a citizen towards the institution. However, some authors specify a more detailed object of trust – such as trusting that what a civil servant does is best for the country (van Ryzin, Reference Van Ryzin2011). Others (Taylor-Gooby, Reference Taylor-Gooby2011), in turn, propose trust indices that seek to capture diverse aspects of institutions’ performance.

Furthermore, the understanding of political trust in welfare state scholarship also depends on whether the phenomenon is interpreted as a cause or effect of policies. Whilst both mechanisms have been proven to occur, in a manner consistent with policy feedback theory (Mettler and Sorelle, Reference Mettler, SoRelle, Weible and Sabatier2018), the meaning of political trust may differ depending on the direction of the relationship. Trust-as-effect represents, in broad terms, citizens’ relationships with caseworkers, positive evaluations and satisfaction with current policies. It indicates that citizens perceive public employees and institutions as meeting trustworthiness criteria. Trust-as-cause, by contrast, may be closer to the aforementioned definition of trust, in which future-oriented decisions are in the context of scarce information. That trust, in conceptual terms, is closer to citizens’ willingness to accept policy-related requirements or giving policymakers the benefit of the doubt in implementing policy changes.

The next sections of this paper focus on the sources of trust in the welfare state. In particular, we attempt to reconstruct scientific knowledge about those institutional factors influencing trust in welfare which may be relevant for vulnerable users of social assistance. As noted, we assume that those users’ experiences with the welfare state are shaped by various levels of welfare state organisation and include formal procedures, modes of policy implementation, and direct encounters with frontline workers. Consequently, those experiences are often shaped by contradictory messages that the welfare state’s organisation sends to welfare users or citizens.

Welfare regimes and policy design as trust-building factors

Apart from the general types of trust depending on the level of institutional complexity, the process of trust-building can also be influenced by the particular welfare state model/regime (Møller and Stensöta, Reference Møller and Stensöta2019). However, the links between welfare state regimes, types, or any other institutional diversity in welfare states and citizens’ trust remain underexplored – only a few studies have explicitly addressed the issue of trust concerning (reforms of) public services and the interpretation of welfare claimants’ trust or distrust of institutions (Bugge, Reference Bugge2021; Betkó et al., Reference Betkó, Spierings and Gesthuizen2022). Kumlin and Haugsgjerd (Reference Kumlin, Haugsgjerd, Levi and Levi2017) explore the links between welfare state change (e.g. as a result of austerity measures) and levels of trust. Still, a more systematic analysis of how specific features or guiding principles of different welfare state models influence trust is needed.

Although not directly related to trust as such, the research of Soss (Reference Soss1999) on citizens’ attitudes towards welfare as largely depending on programme design and programme experience brings some very relevant conclusions. In the case of means-tested programmes, which entail users’ more frequent contacts with caseworkers, clients felt powerless due to the discretionary power of individual caseworkers, perceived as a ‘pervasive threat’ (Soss, Reference Soss1999: 366). They were more politically quiescent and overall passive when it comes to claiming assistance, filing complaints, etc. There are two interrelated features of welfare regimes on which citizens’ trust in welfare may depend, albeit indirectly: (1) the principle of redistribution, in particular, whether benefits are universal or means-tested; (2) the institutional embeddedness of frontline workers and their attitudes towards welfare and its users.

The welfare state regime and its dominant principle of redistribution have been shown to affect social trust, i.e. trust between citizens. Social trust, and more generally, the overarching culture of (dis)trust, affects political trust to some extent (Bargsted et al., Reference Bargsted, Ortiz, Cáceres and Somma2023). Levels of social trust (also understood as social capital) may vary according to the institutional features of the welfare state, with the universalist welfare state, for example, contributing to high levels of social trust by reducing citizens’ desire to suspect others of unjustified welfare use and by increasing the sense of belonging to a polity. This illustrates the fact that ‘the specific design of welfare state policies matters for the production of social capital’ (Kumlin and Rothstein, Reference Kumlin and Rothstein2005: 339), which could contribute to high levels of citizen trust in welfare state institutions. However, if social trust is treated as a more inherent, ‘cultural’ trait of a given society, possibly even serving as the basis for welfare state legitimacy, then the varying influence of the particular welfare regime on trust-building process is more difficult to grasp and institutional trust may be one of the manifestations of the overall high level of social capital.

Taking a broader perspective and studying the relationship between policy design and political trust, Betkó et al. (Reference Betkó, Spierings and Gesthuizen2022) identify a link between a selective welfare system, in which claimants’ eligibility is tested, and negative feedback loops regarding trust. Using data from natural experiments about activation policies in the Netherlands, they find that professionals have incentives to distrust clients, and that such a relationship becomes reciprocal. Also, Bugge (Reference Bugge2021) demonstrates that the experience of using social assistance has a negative impact on individuals’ political trust. However, this is due to the effect of the means-testing procedure, whereas the separate effect of conditionality on trust turns out to be positive.

Furthermore, the domination of cash transfers vs. services in a given welfare regime can become the source of variation in the levels of trust between citizens and policymakers. Although on the one hand, cash transfers can increase trust in government by building a relationship between decision-makers and citizens, while on the other, especially in the case of conditional cash transfers or cash benefits, after income testing citizens may experience stigma or the feeling of guilt. Additionally, it can be difficult for citizens to know to whom to attribute a programme and therefore whom to reward with greater trust (Evans et al., Reference Evans, Holtemeyer and Kosec2019). This can often depend on other issues related to accountability – i.e. whom to trust or distrust in relation to cash-transfer programmes. This effect is driven by large increases in trust in elected leaders instead of appointed bureaucrats (ibid.).

Although not directly addressing the issue of trust, the welfare regime (understood in a wider context, including institutional and cultural context, in which a particular welfare regime is embedded) can have an impact on structuring the relations between public service employees and welfare claimants. As far as the role of frontline workers is concerned, welfare states may structure their level of discretion as well as both formal and informal rules and practices. Formal and informal rules may shape the relations between public service employees and welfare claimants. Although not focusing on the issue of trust as such, Jewell (Reference Jewell2007) noted differences in how frontline workers respond to clients’ individual needs in three countries representing three different welfare state regimes: the United States, Germany, and Sweden. In particular, frontline workers participating in activation and income support programmes in those three countries have various capacities to respond to the claimants’ needs. In a nutshell, in the US, characterised by a liberal welfare regime where spending on the welfare state is limited, frontline workers act with limited resources, undermining their ability to respond to claimants’ needs. This is contrasted with the situation in Sweden and Germany, where the frontline workers have stronger authority and greater institutional/organisational resources (Jewell, Reference Jewell2007). Differences in the perception of frontline workers as helpful or effective may influence trust levels among claimants and citizens.

Apart from the way that institutional and organisational capacities may shape frontline workers’ role in the trust-building process, welfare regimes may also inspire various values and beliefs about welfare and the nature of citizens, especially claimants’ rights and obligations. Referring to Jewell’s (Reference Jewell2007) work, Møller and Stensöta (Reference Møller and Stensöta2019) suggest that frontline responses to managerial pressure are filtered through welfare state regime types. Studying the cases of frontline workers’ policies, practices, and motivations in Sweden and Denmark, the authors emphasised the role of trust as one of the central characteristics of the universalistic welfare state. Both countries are characterised by low inequality in regard to socioeconomic factors and gender, high general trust, and encompassing welfare states (Sønderskov and Dinesen, Reference Sønderskov and Dinesen2014). The authors confirmed that caseworkers in both countries tend to respond to a ‘structural problem explanation’ that sees reasons for clients seeking support as rooted in the structures of society, not in the individual client. In addition, two types of frontline bureaucracy are noted: ‘statesperson’ and ‘professional’ (Møller and Stensöta, Reference Møller and Stensöta2019). While the former would perceive solidarity as originating from a view of citizens as clients and taxpayers, the latter develops his or her ‘own’ guidelines for the work, albeit still within the framework of the rules.

In a wider context, the welfare regime’s orientation towards a certain set of values can have an impact on the way the problem is identified. In her study of changing welfare regimes throughout the historical development of public services for families in Hungary, Lynne Haney pointed to the role of public service employees (in that case, social workers) as ‘need interpreters’ (Lynne Haney, Reference Haney2002). The basic difference between how the interpretation of needs differed in a ‘liberal’ welfare regime, i.e. after the collapse of state socialism, from the state-socialist practices was the focus on needs as caused by the source of the problem: systematic and structural (in the case of state-socialist regime) or individual failure (in the case of liberal welfare regime). Using this literature to interpret the level of trust between public employees and the citizens/potential welfare claimants could be useful for looking at how a more general set of values, as possibly expressed by or embedded in the welfare regime, influences the interpretation of various difficult life situations of welfare claimants. On the one hand, a narrow, individualistic interpretation of the situation can contribute to the disciplining and potential stigmatisation of welfare claimants, often referred to as ‘blaming the poor’, especially when it becomes a standard with implications for mutual distrust in the public office. On the other, especially in the conditions of state socialism, a structural view on social issues can be over-deterministic and imply slightly paternalistic relations between frontline workers and the potential beneficiaries.

Services’ organisation and implementation as trust-building factors

The discussion about managerial pressures in relation to social policy is one of the dominant topics in the literature on public services concerning welfare policies – involving a shift from a more ‘traditional’ (or ‘Weberian’) type of bureaucracy to a new type of governance, called New Public Management (NPM) (Newman, Reference Newman2007; Pollitt and Bouckaert, Reference Pollitt and Bouckaert2011). Although NPM has been applied to various domains of public policy, it has also served as one of the triggers for or channels of welfare state retrenchment and/or recalibration: the focus here was not so much on the institutional reform of welfare state or policy reforms themselves, but more on welfare governance (Newman, Reference Newman2007). NPM has also been interpreted in terms of an ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ (Bröckling, Reference Bröckling2016), which, in the case of welfare policy practices, also at the level of street-level bureaucracy, influenced the mode of interaction between public service employees and beneficiaries.

The shift in performance evaluation using benchmarking and intensified reporting also introduced strong elements of ‘new managerialism’ (Brodkin, Reference Brodkin2011) in public services across different domains and welfare state types, becoming a common trend. In relation to public employment services, for example, the reorganisation of policy governance not only entails new ‘citizen-customers’ but also service-oriented ‘neo-bureaucrats’ (Møller and Stensöta, Reference Møller and Stensöta2019). Trust, in this case, is a less relevant issue, as metrics and benchmarking replace ‘less measurable’ indicators of the relations between public service employees and the potential beneficiaries. At the same time, though, this shift in welfare governance should not be perceived as holistically determining the mode of interactions involved in the delivery of welfare services and benefits. Therefore, public employees, possibly to gain the trust of welfare users, may also resist managerial pressure to ‘blame the poor’ by bending the rules based on their own moral judgements – a practice the authors label ‘citizen agency’ (Maynard-Moody and Musheno, Reference Maynard-Moody and Musheno2000). It should be noted, though, that there are cases where the NPM approach applied to civil servants positively contributed to the emergence of citizen trust, although this is more evident in the US literature (van Ryzin, Reference Van Ryzin2011). Thus, stricter monitoring of procedures and outcomes (in accordance with the NMP approach) may contribute to an improvement in public institutions’ performance, which in turn increases citizens’ political trust (van Ryzin, Reference Van Ryzin2011).

Finally, within the literature on policy implementation and political trust, there is a stream dealing with the impact of organisational features, such as outsourcing service provision, on political trust. Berg and Dahl (Reference Berg and Dahl2020), comparing users’ experiences with private and public schools in Sweden, find that the mode of provision moderates the relationship between the perception of being treated unfairly and trust in the government. That link turns out to be stronger in private schools, purportedly due to higher perceived accountability of public services. Yet, it appears only in connection with negative experiences – being treated fairly does not increase the level of trust.

Perception of just redistribution, obtained help, and fair treatment as trust-building factors

There are three broad streams of research that relate welfare institutions’ functioning to citizens’ political trust. Overlapping scholarship about institutions’ performance, distributive justice perceptions, and procedural justice perceptions provide a detailed list of factors that contribute to citizens’ trust.

From the ‘performance–trust link’ literature (van Ryzin Reference Van Ryzin2011; Berg and Dahl, Reference Berg and Dahl2020; Zhang et al., Reference Zhang, Chen, Petrovsky and Walker2022) we know that institutions’ outputs and outcomes, as perceived by citizens and citizens’ satisfaction with service quality do positively affect political trust, but that impact is far from direct or unconditional (Berg and Dahl, Reference Berg and Dahl2020). For instance, in a mentioned study by van Ryzin (Reference Van Ryzin2011), the government’s ‘outcome indicators’ as measured in an international survey (‘The government is successful in providing: healthcare for the sick people; decent standard of living for the old; dealing with threats to security and fighting unemployment…’) were found to positively influence trust in civil service. Zhang et al. (Reference Zhang, Chen, Petrovsky and Walker2022) performed a meta-analysis, finding evidence for the robustness of the expectancy-disconfirmation model, adapted from the field of psychology to study public administration performance, where citizens’ satisfaction is the result of them comparing ‘their perceptions of the performance of a public service against their prior expectations’ (Zhang et al., Reference Zhang, Chen, Petrovsky and Walker2022: 143).

The literature on the impact of perceived distributive justice on political trust (Kumlin, Reference Kumlin2002; Kluegel and Mason, Reference Kluegel and Mason2004; Zmerli and Castillo, Reference Zmerli and Castillo2015; Bobzien, Reference Bobzien2023), also provides strong evidence that the more citizens agree that what they receive from the state is in accordance with what they perceive as just redistribution, the more they are likely to trust the state and its institutions. In a larger sense, citizens’ perceptions of the fairness of outcomes are important predictors of legitimacy (Tyler, Reference Tyler1990). For instance, Zmerli and Castillo (Reference Zmerli and Castillo2015) find a relationship between positive answers to the question ‘How fair do you think the income distribution is in your country?’ and citizens’ political trust. Likewise, Bobzien (Reference Bobzien2023) shows that the narrower the ‘fairness gap’ – that is, the disparity between preferred and perceived inequality – the stronger citizens’ trust in government. Furthermore, egocentric and sociotropic perceptions of justice – that is, assertions along the lines of ‘I received the services and help I have a right to’ or ‘people receive the services and help they have a right to’, respectively (Kumlin, Reference Kumlin2002) – are found to impact trust in an entangled fashion, as a ‘sizeable chunk of a total personal experience effect [on trust] is channelled through collective sociotropic judgements’ (ibid, p. 221). This stream of research also shows that various types of public services’ perceived fairness have different impacts on political trust. Kumlin highlights that, among such benefits and services as healthcare, childcare, public transport and others, it is social welfare that turned out to have the strongest impact on trust (Reference Kumlin2002, p. 226).

Research on procedural justice (van Ryzin, Reference Van Ryzin2011; Abdelzadeh et al., Reference Abdelzadeh, Zetterberg and Ekman2015; Schnaudt and Hahn, Reference Schnaudt, Hahn and Heppner2021), in turn, emphasises the role of such factors as impartiality and the lack of frontline workers’ bias, the good faith of authorities, and the ability of users to take part in decision-making processes when granting benefits and services. Van Ryzin (Reference Van Ryzin2011) lists fairness, understood as the lack of favouritism, equity, respect, and honesty, as major trust-beneficial aspects in the process of granting benefits and services to citizens. Overall, researchers converge in the stance (van den Bos, Reference Van den Bos2023) that due to citizens’ mixed experiences with being granted and denied benefits and services as well as their having difficulties in assessing what others actually receive from the state, the relevance of perceived procedural justice – the experience of being treated fairly by public institutions and their officials – gains prominence as a trust-building factor.

Strategies and features of frontline workers in building users’ trust

The literature on frontline work and human services delivery, mostly based on users’ opinions, provides detailed knowledge about the factors contributing to users’ trust. The core element of these findings is the essential role of time in building trusting relations between users and professionals. Björkhagen Turesson’s (Reference Björkhagen Turesson2020) study of social workers in Sweden reports that relationships with clients need to be spread out over a period of time long enough to demonstrate the professionals’ perseverance. Other authors also argue that the duration of the relationship matters for trust (Cossar et al., Reference Cossar, Acheampong, Brandon, Boudier, Bailey, Fritz-Campbell, Belderson, Snape, Biggart, Thibou, Sharpe and Thrower2013), that trust is facilitated by service users and frontline workers ‘getting to know each other supported by their working together’ (Rautio, Reference Rautio2013). Frontline workers also reported time to be a necessary factor for establishing trust from domestic violence victims (Zacka, Reference Zacka2017: 202). The role of time encompasses both a sufficiently long duration of the relationship between user and professional (Brown and Calnan, Reference Brown and Calnan2016; Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Hean, Abebe and Heaslip2020), frontline workers’ availability, and meetings that are sufficiently long to enable clients to open up and raise their concerns (Senghaas et al., Reference Senghaas, Freier and Kupka2019), to permit frontline workers to provide thorough explanations, and to allow for relaxed communication (Zacka, Reference Zacka2017: 257).

Professionals’ effectiveness and competence as a condition for the emergence of users’ trust is also a recurrent theme in the frontline delivery literature. Cossar et al. (Reference Cossar, Acheampong, Brandon, Boudier, Bailey, Fritz-Campbell, Belderson, Snape, Biggart, Thibou, Sharpe and Thrower2013) findings about youth using social services in the UK indicate that frontline workers’ being knowledgeable, offering effective support, and working in accessible and available services was reported by users as trust-promoting. The meaning of professionals’ effectiveness goes beyond factual benefit or service delivery. For example, the social workers interviewed by Rautio (Reference Rautio2013) emphasised that clients’ trust is attained through simple, small-scale, everyday actions, which revolve around making sure that any commitments made by professionals, even at the smallest level, are upheld (Rautio, Reference Rautio2013; Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Hean, Abebe and Heaslip2020).

Numerous studies on user trust point to professionals’ knowledge and understanding (Lundahl et al., Reference Lundahl, McDonald and Vanderloo2020; Tembo et al., Reference Tembo, Studsrød and Young2021). They stress the importance of frontline workers’ having in-depth knowledge of regulations and procedures and also having extensive experience, including personal experience. For instance, caseworkers revealing their family status as parents was found to be a trust-building factor in child-centred family services (Buckley et al., Reference Buckley, Carr and Whelan2011; Rautio, Reference Rautio2013). Moreover, studies on user trust often refer to the importance of understanding clients’ situations. In particular, understanding vulnerable users’ previous experiences of trust breaches, ruptured personal bonds, lack of support from family members, or experiencing domestic violence (Rautio, Reference Rautio2013; Brown and Calnan, Reference Brown and Calnan2013; Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Hean, Abebe and Heaslip2020) were also addressed as relevant contexts that frontline workers need to adequately recognise and respond to. Other barriers to developing users’ trust include parents’ fear of having their children transferred to foster care (Björkhagen Turesson, Reference Björkhagen Turesson2020; Lundahl et al., Reference Lundahl, McDonald and Vanderloo2020; Tembo et al., Reference Tembo, Studsrød and Young2021), users’ mandatory participation in services (Lundahl et al., Reference Lundahl, McDonald and Vanderloo2020), and the threat of information about the client being filed to other institutions, including resulting in distrust, as the ‘interconnectedness of different professionals from various welfare services was clearly perceived as a surveillance mechanism’ (Tembo et al., Reference Tembo, Studsrød and Young2021). Thus, having the skills to handle such situations of uncertainty and fear, both by talking openly and decreasing users’ anxiety, was reported as contributing to trust.

Consequently, frontline workers’ communication style focused on decreasing the power asymmetry (Zacka, Reference Zacka2017) perceived by clients and reducing their anxiety is a highly salient theme in the respective literature. For example, Buckley et al. (Reference Buckley, Carr and Whelan2011) study on child protection services in Ireland reports that users consider caseworkers’ personal qualities important for trust-building, including: showing respect and not treating users like a target of the programme, demonstrating warmth and friendliness (also emphasised by Rautio, Reference Rautio2013), showing empathy and understanding (Senghaas et al., Reference Senghaas, Freier and Kupka2019) so that a ‘kind of friendship’ can eventually develop, having a good sense of humour and the ability to ‘have a laugh’, being ‘normal’ and ‘easy to talk to’, ‘understanding what parents went through’, ‘reassuring clients’ (Buckley et al., Reference Buckley, Carr and Whelan2011: 108). Caseworkers being likely to ‘sit down, have a cup of tea (…) talk about the hurling [and acting like an] everyday bloke’ (Rautio, Reference Rautio2013: 107) and addressing clients in an individualised way (Senghaas et al., Reference Senghaas, Freier and Kupka2019) were mentioned as ‘good practices’ to achieve trust. These attitudes were contrasted against caseworkers being ‘bossy’, ‘business-like’, and ‘judgemental’, which were reported to be trust-detrimental. However, neither frontline workers’ focus on establishing friendship-like close relationships nor their prioritising a good atmosphere in encounters with clients was presented as automatically contributing to user trust. On the contrary, balancing power and possible sanctions (Brown and Calnan, Reference Brown and Calnan2013) with an individual approach and sincere communication about the risks was presented by users as increasing trust. Rautio (Reference Rautio2013) argues that being open and honest in communication with frontline workers and ‘giving enough time to the parents and listening to and being understanding towards the parents were also considered important’ (Rautio, Reference Rautio2013: 930).

Finally, ‘investment’ in mutuality of trust is influential: listening (Buckley et al., Reference Buckley, Carr and Whelan2011; Rautio, Reference Rautio2013) giving clients’ the benefit of the doubt, giving them a say (Rautio, Reference Rautio2013), following their own requests and recommendations (Lundahl et al., Reference Lundahl, McDonald and Vanderloo2020). For instance ‘being believed and not being judged’ was reported as trust-beneficial by youth users of welfare services in Cossar et al. (Reference Cossar, Acheampong, Brandon, Boudier, Bailey, Fritz-Campbell, Belderson, Snape, Biggart, Thibou, Sharpe and Thrower2013) study, which also notes: ‘although breaching confidentiality could result in a loss of trust and a feeling of betrayal, there were equally cases where the sensitive handling of this issue led to a greater degree of trust in the relationship between the young person and professional because they appreciated that the worker cared enough about them to take action.’ (Cossar et al., Reference Cossar, Acheampong, Brandon, Boudier, Bailey, Fritz-Campbell, Belderson, Snape, Biggart, Thibou, Sharpe and Thrower2013: viii).