Key findings
- It is possible to discern that interventions concerned with transforming state-society relations necessarily involve or require raising trust levels within society and/or between state-society. However, only a few of these interventions present trust-building as a central or explicit objective.
- In contrast, descriptions of trust deficits in fragile states abound in governance and institutional reform programme documents.
- It appears some development agencies treat ‘trust’ as a cross-cutting dimension that enters into discussions around related themes such as social cohesion, inclusion, accountability, and resilience.
- Some interventions do track levels of trust (within society, between state-society), sometimes as a (proxy) indicator of building social cohesion or social capital, but measuring trust levels and trust-building is challenging, and techniques are still nascent.
- Illustrative cases of interventions that have involved building and/or measuring trust levels in society have been found in four areas: 1) social accountability, 2) community driven development, 3) tax-related interventions and 4) transformative social protection. The report summarises key points found from each approach.
