Quick review of my APSA panel on trust and accountability in government

This last weekend was the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago.  The good news is that there was some excellent research in the public administration section (as well as others).  The bad news is that the allocation of panels to the public administration section was tiny.  We have a lot of work to do to increase the footprint of the section in the APSA.

I was happy to participate in a great panel (first thing Thursday morning) to a full room -- totaling about 10 chairs.  The overall topic was trust and accountability in administrative agencies and my comments are after the break.




The panel was an interesting combination of papers.  One had to think quite a bit to find common themes -- but such thought was rewarded.  Two of the papers focused on government contracting and accountability.  This is not obviously tied to the sorts of trust research represented in the other panels.  The focus here was on the relationship between contract managers and the recipients of government contracts and grants.  It did not take long to see how important this topic is in the current political environment -- with the strong preference for government through contracting.  Two of the papers (including my own) focused on public assessments of trust.  One paper focused on how people apportion blame across executive, legislative, and private parties.

The emergent theme (represented in the panel topic) was quite interesting. The connections between trust as measured by public opinion vs. accountability in contracts resembles the classic divide between elite and mass research in political science.  I am hoping that some work will bring these two issues together -- but that may call for more careful conceptualization on trust and accountability.

I encourage everyone to check out the papers (available at www.ssrn.com).

The full panel description is below:

Chair(s):	Gene A. Brewer University of Georgia, cmsbrew@uga.edu
Author(s):	Managing Accountability in Wartime Contracting under Evolving Notions of 'Inherently Governmental'       Holly T. Goerdel University of Kansas, hgoerdel@ku.edu Contract Performance in Federal Agencies: Assessing the Impact of Incentives on Contract Outcomes       Amanda M. Girth Ohio State University, girth.1@osu.edu     Randall S. Davis   Miami University, randalldavis3@gmail.com     Edmund C. Stazyk   American University, stazyk@american.edu Holding Government Accountable: the News and Federal Agencies       Alexander Ruder Princeton University, aruder@Princeton.Edu Organizational Trust and Risk Communication: Trust in the EPA and Opposition to Fracking       Scott E. Robinson Texas A&M University, drscottrobinson@gmail.com     Arnold Vedlitz   Texas A&M University, avedlitz@bushschool.tamu.edu     James W. Stoutenborough   Texas A&M University, jws0018@uah.edu     Xinsheng Liu   Texas A&M University A Cross-National Examination of Trust in the Public Service      David J. Houston University of Tennessee-Knoxville, dhouston@utk.edu     Nurgul R. Aitalieva   University of Tennessee, Knoxville, naitalie@utk.edu
Discussant(s):	Beryl A. Radin Georgetown University, bradin@ix.netcom.com Marissa Martino Golden Bryn Mawr College, mgolden@brynmawr.edu