TiGRE for better Trust in Governance and Regulation in Europe
The demands of citizens and public authorities for data and privacy protection, financial stability, product safety and traceability are constantly increasing. In such a context, all actors need to trust governance and regulatory regimes that their interests are safeguarded. However, recent scandals, such as major data leakages and privacy-threatening behaviour by Facebook, Google or Zoom for instance, have created threats for citizens’ trust in regulatory regimes.
In TiGRE, we believe that an optimal level of trust is a precondition and a consequence of well-functioning of regulatory regimes, which operate across different levels of governance for carrying out regulatory policies. In this context, we will investigate under which conditions regulatory regimes are trusted by analysing the interactions between the involved actors. We aim to draw a more encompassing picture of trust dynamics and understand their drivers as well as their political and socio-economic effects.
“While trust may expand the time horizon of a system, loss of trust may make it contract, thus diminishing the system’s complexity and its potential for giving satisfaction.”
“Political trust is best thought of as a differentiated attitude toward different levels of the political system.”
– William A. Gamson
“Trust does not reside in integrated circuits of fiber optic cables. Although it involves an exchange of information, trust is not reducible to information.”
“Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that m*** f*** reflection.”