Thomas M Vogl
email: thomas.vogl@oii.ox.ac.uk

Theoretical Foundations for the Study of Social Innovation in the Public Sector

Keywords: Technological change, public administration, social innovation, social and material, theoretical foundations

Over the past two decades, there have been significant debates around the theoretical foundations for the study of social and material implications of technological change in organizational settings. Various scholars have looked at these foundations with a focus on either the social and the material as discrete entities, the social and the material as interactive, the sociomaterial as a concept representing the constitutive entanglement of the two, or the sociomaterial as imbricated but analytically distinct. These debates sometimes lead to statements about which foundations are the most appropriate upon which to build studies; however, it may be more productive to delineate what each theoretical foundation affords for the study of social innovation. This paper sets out the affordances of each perspective for the design and execution of research into technologically supported social innovation in the public sector. It provides relevant examples from child protection services to illustrate where and how these different theoretical foundations help researchers to understand phenomena associated with social innovation. In so doing, this paper seeks to clarify the diverse approaches to the study of technologically supported social innovation, their assumptions, and where they may be adopted most effectively.

Introduction

This paper aims to help moderate the sometimes heated debates around the theoretical foundations for research on the impact of technological change in organizations. Its objective is to set out a framework within which to better understand where different theoretical foundations are more or less useful for particular questions about social innovation in the context of public administration technological change. This paper will also provide examples to illustrate how these theoretical foundations can be applicable to the study of public sector organizational settings. The hope is that this work will also allow for better scrutiny of when something is a true social innovation, when there is a failure of social innovation, and when something is simply the '#innobasics', or something that government talks about as innovation, when it is actually something that people just come to expect as the most fundamental components of a technological change [START_REF] Pahlka | The CIO Problem, Part 2: Innovation[END_REF]. For example: "Making a website that works well for its users at a reasonable cost in a reasonable timeframe. … That's not innovation. That's just how tech works today. … Of course, what is innovative today becomes tomorrow's basics." [START_REF] Pahlka | The CIO Problem, Part 2: Innovation[END_REF]. Ideally, we would like to analytically distinguish when basic technological expectations masquerade as innovation and when things that are considered basic in the private sector are innovatively deployed in the public sector.

This paper is structured as follows: section 2 sets out five predominant theoretical foundations from the literature, including techno-centric, human-centred, social and material interaction, sociomaterial assemblages, and sociomaterial imbrication. Section 2 concludes with a summary of the characteristics of these foundational theoretical perspectives. Section 3 provides some illustrative examples of how these five theoretical foundations can be productively used to answer important questions, while also setting out their limitations. It will then summarize where and when these theoretical foundations are most effective, as well as what assumptions need to be recognized. Section 4 discusses how these perspectives help illuminate different elements of social innovation in different use cases and what this means for the study of technological change and social innovation overall. Section 5 concludes with some thoughts about the applicability of these perspectives to social innovation in the context of public sector technological change and the opportunities they present for the design of future research.

Foundational Theoretical Perspectives

There are five predominant foundational theoretical perspectives for the study of information technology in organizations and society, each has its own unique characteristics that distinguish it from the others, but each has a focus on either the material, social, or some combination of both. Prior debates about these perspectives often pitted them against each other in an effort to identify a dominant foundation. But it is possible to take a slightly different approach, focusing on the strength of a given perspective for the study of particular aspects of technological change in organizations, while illustrating how competing perspectives are not wrong, but useful in addressing different types of questions [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF]. This approach will be applied here to the five theoretical perspectives, in order to illustrate where these perspectives could be most effectively adopted. The first three perspectives are theoretical foundations which focus either primarily on the material or the social or the interaction between the two separate constructs [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF]. The fourth is a sociomaterial perspective grounded in agential realism, which posits that the material and the social cannot be seen as separate, but only as an assemblage that is revealed through the performativity of practice [START_REF] Mutch | Sociomateriality -Taking the wrong turning? Information and Organization[END_REF][START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work[END_REF]. The fifth is a sociomaterial perspective grounded in critical realism that permits an analytical dualism between the material and the social, while nevertheless recognizing their imbrication [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF].

Techno-centric Perspective

The first perspective is from an empirical realist position that looks at the discrete material impact of information technology on organizational factors. This perspective has discrete entities as its ontological priority [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF]. Under this perspective, technology is seen as either an independent variable impacting directly on organizational characteristics [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF], or as a variable that moderates the relationship between organizational elements and more strategic organizational characteristics [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF]. The main criticisms of this perspective are that the empirical results are mixed and that this may be the result of inadequate theoretical foundations [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF]. In addition, perspectives like this "entail conceptual commitments that generate some distinctive blindspots in dealing with technology in organizational life" [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF]. In particular, an approach that looks at the discrete material impact of information technology on organizational characteristics "suggests that technology is relevant to organizational theorizing only as specific technological events or processes occur" [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF]. Further, this techno-centric perspective "reifies technology, ignores how technology is bound up with historical and cultural influences, and thus produces technologically deterministic claims about the relationship of technology with organizations" [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work[END_REF].

Human-centred Perspective

The second perspective is from an empirical relativist position that looks at how discrete social factors shape technology. This approach has an ontological commitment to social phenomena and tends to prioritize epistemology and how social phenomena shape what we know about, and how we understand, technology [START_REF] Leonardi | What's Under Construction Here? Social Action, Materiality, and Power in Constructivist Studies of Technology and Organizing[END_REF][START_REF] Mackenzie | The social shaping of technology[END_REF]. Under this perspective, interpretivism is adopted to better understand how social factors shape technologies in particular circumstances, as well as how they inform a multidirectional model of technological development [START_REF] Leonardi | What's Under Construction Here? Social Action, Materiality, and Power in Constructivist Studies of Technology and Organizing[END_REF]. Social shaping recognizes the social impact on technology as well as the mutually constituting relationship that exists, where technology does impose some influence on the social through its materiality [START_REF] Mackenzie | The social shaping of technology[END_REF].

The main criticisms of this perspective are that social factors are assumed to be discrete independent entities with inherent characteristics [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF]. Further, social constructivism and social shaping are seen to ignore the consequences of technological choices, focus on 'relevant' social groups to the exclusion of other groups that are impacted by technological choices, and neglect the structural elements of the technologies that are so shaped or constructed [START_REF] Klein | The Social Construction of Technology: Structural Considerations[END_REF]. Further, the material technology "vanishes from view in the preoccupation with the social" [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work[END_REF].

Social and Material Interaction Perspective

The third perspective is from a post-empiricist position that looks at how structure and agents are assumed to be interdependent systems that shape each other through ongoing interaction. This perspective has an ontological commitment to the dynamic interaction between structure and agency [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF] and tends to adopt an interpretive approach [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF]. However, other work that has adopted structuration in the context of technological change recognizes that technologies are constructed and reconstructed in their production and use, but that this process of social construction needs to account for the affordances associated with technology's physical properties [START_REF] Leonardi | When Flexible Routines Meet Flexible Technologies: Affordance, Constraint, and the Imbrication of Human and Material Agencies[END_REF][START_REF] Luna-Reyes | Information systems development as emergent socio-technical change: a practice approach[END_REF].

The main criticisms of this approach are that it assumes a duality and a separation between technology and social factors [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF], that sometimes there is an emphasis on social over technological factors [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF], and that another duality sometimes emerged, where "technologies became phenomena that existed in the 'realm of structure' while technology use existed in the 'realm of action'" [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF]. This manifests as a tension between a form of soft technological determinism [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF] and social practices [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF].

Sociomaterial Assemblages Perspective

The fourth perspective is from an agential realist position that looks at how actors and objects, the social and the material, are constitutively entangled and analytically inseparable [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work[END_REF]. This perspective has an ontological commitment to the inherent inseparability of the sociomaterial assemblage and focuses on methodologies that can help to reveal the performativity of practice [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF]. It has its roots in actor-network theory [START_REF] Latour | Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory[END_REF], relational ontology [START_REF] Kallinikos | The consequences of information: institutional implications of technological change[END_REF][START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF], and phenomenologically-grounded research [START_REF] Suchman | Human-machine reconfigurations plans and situated actions[END_REF]. A sociomaterial perspective grounded in agential realism attempts to overcome the issues associated with perspectives that view the social and the material as distinct [START_REF] Mutch | Sociomateriality -Taking the wrong turning? Information and Organization[END_REF].

The main criticisms of this perspective are that it is conceptually vague, that the focus on performativity of practices ignores issues of power, role, and structure in organizations, and that it leaves out certain characteristics of organization that are important [START_REF] Mutch | Sociomateriality -Taking the wrong turning? Information and Organization[END_REF]. Further, while this perspective can describe a particular practice at a particular time, it is seen to have issues describing how practices are sustained and changed over time [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF]. This perspective also treats all relations as mutually constitutive or codependent, which conceptualizes the social and the material as internally related, though in some cases these entities may be related, but in an external way, where the one does not need the other in order to exist [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF].

Sociomaterial Imbrication Perspective

The fifth perspective is from a critical realist position that looks at how actors and objects, the social and the material, can be imbricated over time, while nevertheless retaining an analytical dualism [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF][START_REF] Mutch | Sociomateriality -Taking the wrong turning? Information and Organization[END_REF]. This perspective has an ontological commitment to sociomaterial agencies and focuses on methodologies that can look at both the realm of structure and the realm of action [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF]. It takes the view that: "What the technology is does not change across space and time, but what it does can and often changes" [START_REF] Leonardi | Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality[END_REF]. It has its roots in Archer's 'morphogenetic' idea that structure predates action, but that structural elaboration postdates action [START_REF] Archer | Realist social theory: the morphogenetic approach[END_REF]. A sociomaterial imbrication perspective grounded in critical realism attempts to overcome the issues associated with sociomateriality grounded in agential realism and provide a platform for the study of how sociomaterial phenomena are reconfigured over time.

The main criticism of this approach is that it represents an essentialist and dualistic worldview, though it would argue that this is purely analytical [START_REF] Hultin | On becoming a sociomaterial researcher: Exploring epistemological practices grounded in a relational, performative ontology[END_REF]. Further, assumptions about the value of studying changes in the relationships between analytically distinct material and social agency over time could be perceived to discredit the value of research that looks into practice-based phenomena at a given point in time [START_REF] Hultin | On becoming a sociomaterial researcher: Exploring epistemological practices grounded in a relational, performative ontology[END_REF].

Comparison of Perspectives

The following table compares the five theoretical perspectives described above. It focuses on the characteristics of each approach rather than their guiding questions and conceptual contributions, which will be discussed and presented at the end of the following section on examples of these perspectives in use. to address different types of questions. This section is intended to motivate diversity in the theoretical foundations for different types of research and encourage researchers to be explicit about how their foundational theoretical perspectives guide their decisions and help shape their unique contributions to knowledge.

Sources of the Examples

The examples used in this section are drawn from the study of the design, development, implementation, adaptation, and use of technologies in public sector child protection services. While the focus on examples from a particular social service sector may not offer a breadth of different use cases, it helps to illustrate how a diverse set of theoretical foundations can be used to design research that can tackle different questions about social innovation within the same sector. These examples are a subset of the potential research designs and questions that can be adopted under each theoretical foundation, but they provide some guidance on the unique affordances of each perspective, which will be presented in a table at the end of this section.

The five examples illustrate each of the five foundational theoretical perspectives. The first is a survey of social workers that looks at the impact of a technological change on social worker perceptions about administrative burden [START_REF] Samuel | Social care professionals overwhelmed by paperwork[END_REF]. The second looks at the influence of two relevant social groups, social workers and information and communication technology (ICT) professionals, on the development of an effective case management information system in Australia [START_REF] Tregeagle | Heads in the Cloud: An Example of Practice-Based Information and Communication Technology in Child Welfare[END_REF]. The third looks at how the social and material can interact to produce changes in the characteristics of information technology over time that allows for re-prioritization in the privileged forms of knowledge within the information system [START_REF] Parton | Changes in the Form of Knowledge in Social Work: From the 'Social' to the 'Informational[END_REF][START_REF] Vogl | The Impact of Information Technology Evolution on the Forms of Knowledge in Public Sector Social Work: Examples from Canada and the UK[END_REF]. The fourth looks at the challenges experienced by social workers from a technology-in-practice perspective when new structured decision making and integrated case management tools that are focused more on accountability and compliance were introduced [START_REF] Gillingham | The Development of Electronic Information Systems for the Future: Practitioners, 'Embodied Structures' and 'Technologies-in-Practice[END_REF]. The fifth looks at electronic documentation from a historical perspective and the resulting novel interface that was developed to handle a heterogeneous bundle of documents that make up the social care record [START_REF] Wastell | Making sense of complex electronic records: Socio-technical design in social care. Advances in Socio-Technical Systems Understanding and Design: A Festschrift in Honour of K[END_REF].

Techno-centric Example

A techno-centric perspective can provide insights into how technology is influencing organizational and social factors. In a period of technological change, a survey of 2,200 social care professionals in the UK found that more than half said that they spent more than 60 per cent of their time on administrative work as opposed to direct client contact, while more than one-fifth spent over 80 per cent of their time on such tasks, and 95 per cent felt 'that social work had become more bureaucratic and less client-focussed over the previous five years' [START_REF] Samuel | Social care professionals overwhelmed by paperwork[END_REF]. Here quantitative methods provided insights into the impact of technological changes on the degree of administrative burden in social work, highlighting how social innovation does not always follow technological change.

While this particular study does not provide details about the specific change that led to a concern by social workers about a shift from direct service to administrative requirements, it does provide some insights into the unintended impacts of technological change and the need for greater depth of understanding when trying to accomplish technologically supported social innovation. Techno-centric approaches can uncover high-level relationships between technological change and individual or organizational level outcomes, but it may not be able to reveal the details of that relationship. It may be able to reveal whether or not social innovation is taking place, but not why.

Human-centred Example

A human-centred perspective can provide insights into how technology is shaped by organizational and social factors. In the context of the development of an ICT solution in Australia, a study looking at the involvement of relevant social groups, including social workers and ICT professionals, finds that socially shaped technology has realized greater successes in adoption and use than similar technologies in other jurisdictions, which had a compliance focus and lacked user-friendliness [START_REF] Tregeagle | Heads in the Cloud: An Example of Practice-Based Information and Communication Technology in Child Welfare[END_REF]. This Australian study took a social constructionist view of technological adoption indicating that there was a close relationship between social workers and IT professionals. Its findings indicated that: "The development of ICT programs for child welfare is a long-term and intensive process requiring the use of extensive resources to understand the social setting for both the underlying social work knowledge and computerization. Extensive resources and skills have been needed to marry both technologies with the service system culture" [START_REF] Tregeagle | Heads in the Cloud: An Example of Practice-Based Information and Communication Technology in Child Welfare[END_REF]. Here qualitative methods provided insights into socially innovative design and how the involvement of relevant social groups in this design and development could lead to more successful information technology adoption. While this study does not provide details about the material characteristics of the technology, nor the experience of the technology in practice, it does provide insights into the social conditions under which successful information technologies can emerge. This type of research grounded in social constructivism can provide insights into the social conditions under which social innovation in child welfare case management system design, development, adoption, and use can be successful.

Social and Material Interaction Example

A social and material interaction perspective can be effective in providing insights into how material features of technology can structure how social work is done and, in turn, how social work can restructure technology to rebalance what knowledge is privileged within an information system. In the context of the forms of knowledge privileged by new information systems in Canada and the UK, qualitative studies looking at the forms of knowledge built into the structure of information systems find that the privileged forms of knowledge can potentially evolve as social groups take actions to restructure the information systems to meet their work-related needs [START_REF] Parton | Changes in the Form of Knowledge in Social Work: From the 'Social' to the 'Informational[END_REF][START_REF] Vogl | The Impact of Information Technology Evolution on the Forms of Knowledge in Public Sector Social Work: Examples from Canada and the UK[END_REF]. Here historical analysis and an interpretive approach were used to provide insights into how information technology could structure what knowledge was privileged and how changes to the technology could restructure the privileged forms of knowledge, in this case from knowledge focused on administrative compliance towards knowledge needed for holistic service delivery. Such knowledge was supported by basic data presentation tools, like dynamic genograms, that were commonly used in the sector prior to technological change and that helped support service provision. While these studies look at structure embedded in information technology and the possibility of a restructuring based on social action, they do not look at the technologies in practice. They can provide insights into a process of interaction between structure and action over time. In particular, these studies can reveal how earlier structures that may look like failed attempts at social innovation can act as the foundation for either basic or socially innovative restructuring through social action.

Sociomaterial Assemblages Example

A sociomaterial assemblage perspective can be effective in providing insights into how technologies-in-practice are performed within organizations. In the context of new structured decision-making tools within a new integrated case management system in Queensland, Australia, and a new centralized case management system in Ontario, Canada, observing the technology in practice revealed failures in design and use, primarily related to a focus on compliance, performance reporting, and accountability, rather than to case management and direct service delivery [START_REF] Gillingham | The Development of Electronic Information Systems for the Future: Practitioners, 'Embodied Structures' and 'Technologies-in-Practice[END_REF][START_REF] Vogl | Artificial Intelligence and Organizational Memory in Government: The Experience of Record Duplication in the Child Welfare Sector in Canada[END_REF]. For example, there were "the attempts of practitioners to 'recode' the experiences and situations of children and parents to fit with the structures in the [integrated case management system] and the [structured decision-making] tools" [START_REF] Gillingham | The Development of Electronic Information Systems for the Future: Practitioners, 'Embodied Structures' and 'Technologies-in-Practice[END_REF]. These studies look at how the performance of the technology-in-practice assemblage allows for a combined focus on the material constraints on how information is collected, and the ways that workers found to resist, exert their agency, and record the information they need, even if this resulted in challenges for other information users in the service system. Here ethnomethodological and phenomenological approaches were used to provide insights into how the material and the social were constitutively entangled through the technologies-in-practice. While these studies do not provide insights into external relations, nor changes in the technological and social assemblage over time, they do provide insights into how technologies that may be perceived to support social innovation, may not achieve that social innovation in practice. They also provide insights into ground-level sociomaterial innovation in response to top-down attempts at social innovation.

Sociomaterial Imbrication Example

A sociomaterial imbrication perspective provides insights into how material and social agencies become imbricated over time. In the context of the failed Integrated Children's System in the UK, which "shows the limitations of a management regime based on standardisation, targets and command-and-control" [START_REF] Wastell | Making sense of complex electronic records: Socio-technical design in social care. Advances in Socio-Technical Systems Understanding and Design: A Festschrift in Honour of K[END_REF], a study finds that subsequent workshops to develop an effective virtual workspace prototype, which involved social workers in user-centred design, demonstrates the benefits of a sociomaterial imbrication perspective when seeking to understand the progress of technology supported social innovation over time [START_REF] Wastell | Making sense of complex electronic records: Socio-technical design in social care. Advances in Socio-Technical Systems Understanding and Design: A Festschrift in Honour of K[END_REF]. This study focuses on how user-centred design offers an alternative design logic for socially innovative technology projects. Here an action research approach that included workshops and a prototype tool was used to provide insights into how the preceding material reality of the failed Integrated Children's System impacted social action and how the imbrication of the social and material could be reconfigured in attempts to progress the structural elaboration of a new system. While this study does not provide details about the technologies in practice, it does provide insights into the imbrication of the social and the material and how material agency that precedes action can be the subject of subsequent structural elaboration, which could lead to progress in social innovation. It demonstrates how the imbrication and reconfiguration of the social and the material over time can lead to sociomaterial innovation, where technology is an inseparable element in the generation and implementation of new ideas about social relationships and social organization.

Comparison of Contributions across Examples

The following table summarizes the guiding questions and potential contributions that each of the five perspectives offer. This allows for a determination of which theoretical foundation to adopt depending on the objectives of research into social innovation.

Discussion

This paper illustrates how the existing foundational theoretical perspectives for research into the study of social and material elements of technological change in organizational settings do not need to conflict, but instead can be adopted relative to different research questions and research design strategies.

This paper began by setting out the five perspectives on the theoretical foundations for the study of social and material phenomena in organizations. It specifically looked at techno-centric, human-centred, social and material interaction, sociomaterial assemblage, and sociomaterial imbrication perspectives, the unique characteristics of each, and their relationships. It then provided a set of examples in the child protection service sector to illustrate how each foundation could help to elucidate a different element of the material and social features of social innovation in the context of technological change. In particular, the example of social worker perspectives on changes in the sector towards a greater administrative focus, helps illustrate how a techno-centric approach can demonstrate the impact of technological change on social or organizational factors. The example of the development of a successful ICT system in Australia helps illustrate the influence of relevant social groups on the shape of technologies. The example of changes in the forms of knowledge structured within different information systems shows the interaction between structure embedded in technology and action over time. The example of structured decision-making and integrated case management tools in Queensland and Ontario, shows the performative aspects of technology-inpractice. The example of the workshops and prototype document management systems in the UK illustrates the promise of the imbrication of the social and the material, such that the way that technology becomes part of social agency can change over time.

Across all of the theoretical foundations it is possible to understand whether something is socially innovative, a failure of social innovation, or is merely the basics. The examples help to illustrate this by showing how, due to the different frames of reference that they prioritize, each of these perspectives can reveal different underlying factors for the success or failure of social innovation. For example, the case of social involvement of relevant social groups in the development of an ICT project in Australia shows an instance of social innovation success, through the long-term and intensive involvement of developers and users in contextually sensitive design. The case of social care professionals' opinions about a technological change indicates a failure in social innovation. Finally, the case of privileged forms of knowledge in Canada and the UK shows how applying basic technological fixes is really just something that should have been done initially. The public sector is unique and the simple transplantation of private sector innovation is not sufficient. Instead, social innovation comes from tailoring existing innovations to the public sector context. Understanding the different but complementary reasons why or why not involves using more than one perspective. The theoretical perspectives that focus on interaction, practice, and imbrication over time, may serve to illustrate how simply adopting what is in the private sector is not innovative, but that taking technologies or design, implementation, and organizational change strategies that are tried and tested and adapting them for a public sector setting is more appropriately the place where we can hope to identify instances of social innovation.

Conclusion

The illustration of different perspectives on the theoretical foundations for the study of technology in social settings such as public sector organizations, can provide insights into the applicability of each foundation to various questions about social innovation. They can also help to reveal different types of factors that can influence social innovation (for example, the materiality of technology, the social reality, the combination of these two, the idiosyncrasies of practices, or sociomaterial change over time). This analysis of the foundational theoretical perspectives also suggests that we should not only think in terms of social innovation, but in terms of sociomaterial innovation, where the social and material, people and technologies, are inextricably linked [START_REF] Klischewski | Will the Government Machine Turn into a Monster[END_REF]. The hope is that the examples and summaries provided here can help researchers of social innovation in the public sector to make informed decisions about the theoretical foundations upon which they choose to build their research questions and designs. Through the adoption of these different perspectives, researchers will be better equipped to identify what constitutes #innobasics, what characterizes failures in social innovation, and where social innovation actually occurs.

Table 1 .

 1 Comparison of the five included theoretical perspectives

		Techno-	Human-	Social and	Sociomaterial	Sociomaterial
		centric	centred	Material Inter-	Assemblages	Imbrication
				action
	Ontol-	Material	Material	Material and	There is only	Material and
	ogy	and social	and social	social are dis-	the fusion of	social are dis-
		are distinct	are distinct	tinct	the social and	tinct, but be-
					material in the	come imbri-
					sociomaterial	cated
	Episte-	Technol-	Social fac-	The social and	There is only a	Separate social
	mology	ogy deter-	tors shape	material are	sociomaterial	and material el-
		mines so-	technology	interdependent	whole (though	ements become
		cial and or-		systems that	arbitrary agen-	imbricated and
		ganiza-		shape each	tial cuts are	reconfigure
		tional char-		other through	sometimes	over time
		acteristics		ongoing inter-	needed for
				action	analysis)
	Materi-	Material	Social con-	Material fea-	There is only	Material fea-
	ality	features of	struction of	tures of tech-	the socio-	tures of tech-
		technology	technology	nology that	material	nology that
				persist across		persist across
				place and time		place and time
				and that struc-
				ture action
	Social	Social and	Social	Social agency	There is only	Imbricated so-
		organiza-	agency		the socio-	cial and mate-
		tional fea-			material	rial agency
		tures
	Unit of	Technolog-	Relevant	Interaction be-	Sociomaterial	Sociomaterial
	Analy-	ical change	social	tween inter-	practice at a	agencies over
	sis		groups sur-	personal com-	given time	time
			rounding	munication,
			technologi-	technology,
			cal devel-	and structure
			opment
	3

Examples of Foundational Theoretical Perspectives in Use In

  this section, examples are provided to illustrate these five different perspectives and how they can be operationalized in practice to elucidate different aspects of the relationships between technology and social innovation. These examples help to demonstrate how each perspective may be appropriate under different circumstances in order

Table 2 .

 2 Comparison of contributions across the five included approaches

		Techno-cen-	Human-cen-	Social and	Socio-	Sociomaterial
		tric	tred	Material In-	material As-	Imbrication
				teraction	semblage
	Ques-	How does	How does	How does the	What can	What can the im-
	tion	technological	the social	interaction	socio-	brication of so-
		change influ-	shaping of a	between the	material	cial and material
		ence social	technology	social and the	practice tell	agency tell us
		innovation?	influence	material influ-	us about so-	about the pro-
			social inno-	ence social in-	cial innova-	gress of social in-
			vation?	novation?	tion?	novation over
						time?
	Con-	The impact of	The influ-	The interac-	The per-	The imbrication
	tribu-	technological	ence of rele-	tion between	formative	of the social and
	tion	change on so-	vant social	structure em-	aspects of	the material, such
		cial or organi-	groups on	bedded in	technology-	that what tech-
		zational fac-	the shape of	technology	in-practice	nology does can
		tors	technolo-	and action		change across
			gies	over time		time

Acknowledgements This research was supported by the Clarendon Fund and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Doctoral Fellowship number 752-2017-0529. Research ethics approval was received from the University of Oxford with reference number SSH OII C1A 18 055.


Joachim Åström
email: joachim.astrom@oru.semartin.karlsson@oru.se

Martin Karlsson

Trust in citizens and forms of political participation: The view of public managers

Keywords: Citizen Participation, E-Participation, Public officials, Public managers, Trust

Like all forms of collaborative governance, new forms of citizen participation include risk-taking and therefore depend on mutual trust between the collaborating actors. While there is a huge body of research on citizens' trust in governments, public officials' trust in citizens has received very little scholarly attention. In order to address this gap, this paper draws on a recent survey of a representative sample of public managers in local Swedish government (N=1430). Do public managers think that citizens are trustworthy? Does trust in citizens impact which forms of citizen participation public managers prefer? Even though public officials are more trusting than the general populous, we show that not every public official do trust citizens. Furthermore, the results show public managers' trust in citizens influences their attitudes towards new forms of participation. Just as citizens' political trust has a positive impact on some forms of participation, but not on others, managers' trust in citizens matters more for some forms of participation than others.

Introduction

With the aim of increasing trust in government, new forms of citizen participation are coming into play in local politics. Democratic innovations [START_REF] Smith | Democratic innovations: Designing institutions for citizen participation[END_REF], co-production of services [START_REF] Alford | Engaging public sector clients: From service-delivery to co-production[END_REF], and participatory planning [START_REF] Innes | Reframing public participation: Strategies for the 21st century[END_REF] are all common approaches for promoting direct citizen participation in policymaking. In recent years, e-participation tools have significantly improved the methodological quality of these initiatives, which has made their supporters believe that e-participation will renew democracy, offer a remedy for political populism, and enhance trust in government.

While some barriers to a more participatory democracy certainly have been removed through technical advancements, others are more lasting. One such enduring barrier is the attitude of public officials [START_REF] Moynihan | Normative and instrumental perspectives on public participation[END_REF][START_REF] Liao | Exploring the antecedents of municipal managers' attitudes towards citizen participation[END_REF]. Even if public officials tend to be in favor of the idea of e-participation, they do not always support e-participation in practice. The gap between policy talk and action is debated today [START_REF] Åström | Participatory urban planning: What would make planners trust the citizens? Urban Planning[END_REF] as much as it was in the 1960s [START_REF] Arnstein | A ladder of citizen participation[END_REF]. Our understanding of the gap between theory and practice is nevertheless far from complete. In this article we argue that new forms of participation, like all forms of collaborative governance, include risk-taking and therefore depend on the existence of mutual trust between the collaborating actors. Previous research has done a great job of investigating trust from the standpoint of citizens' trust in government. However, there is almost no research on what public officials think about their relationship with the public, the extent to which they trust citizens, or why they do or do not trust citizens [START_REF] Yang | Public administrators' trust in citizens: A missing link in citizen involvement efforts[END_REF][START_REF] Moyson | What do public officials think about citizens? The role of public officials' trust and their perceptions of citizens' trustworthiness in interactive governance[END_REF]. If it is true that "trust begets trust, while distrust begets distrust," this is a significant research gap.

When it comes to citizens, we know that political trust has a positive impact on some forms of participation, but not on others. Previous research has shown that distrusting citizens are more likely to engage in non-institutionalized forms of political participation, which are often goal-oriented, issue-specific and situated outside the institutions of the political system. On the other hand, citizens with high levels of political trust are more likely to engage in institutionalized forms of political participation. Public managers' trust in citizens impacts their willingness to invite citizens to participate in various forms of government/democratic processes has yet to be examined. In this context, the aim of this article is to expand our understanding of public managers' trust in citizens in relation to two research questions: (1) Do public managers think that citizens are trustworthy? (2) Does public managers' trust in citizens have an impact of which forms of participation public managers prefer?

We will use a survey that targeted a representative sample of public managers in local government in Sweden (N=1430). The first section presents the theoretical framework, which ends with some hypotheses related to public managers' trust in citizens. After having reviewed the literature and presented the data, this article proceeds with the empirical analysis of the hypotheses, followed by a concluding discussion of its findings and their implications.

Theory

One claim in the literature about citizens' participation is that participation requires political trust. Almond and Verba [8, p. 27] establish that in order to become a participant in politics, citizens require a positive opinion of the political system. Negative attitudes towards or negative judgements of the political system lead to alienation that erodes the effectiveness and legitimacy of the democratic system and will lead to democratic instability over time [8, p. 22 & 230]. Another claim has been that distrust can serve a motivating factor for political participation. When political decision makers or the political system as a whole are perceived to be untrustworthy, citizens feel compelled to intervene [START_REF] Barnes | Political action: Mass participation in five western democracies[END_REF]. More recent research shows that political trust has a positive impact on conventional forms of participation, but not on unconventional [START_REF] Hooghe | A comparative analysis of the relation between political trust and forms of political participation in Europe[END_REF] When it comes to public officials, trust in citizens is required in order to make participation meaningful. As Reed [START_REF] Reed | Organization, trust, and control: A realist analysis[END_REF] argues, trust and control are opposing options for handling risk and can be viewed as two sides of the same analytic coin. Accordingly, we would expect public managers with little trust in their citizens to take more control over decision-making processes in order to make themselves less vulnerable to citizens.

There are plenty of examples of this in the literature [START_REF] Åström | Citizen participation[END_REF]. For instance, it is commonly believed that politically controversial topics should be avoided, while citizens are invited to participate in non-conflictual and non-political issues instead. Another familiar pattern is that citizen participation processes are disconnected from formal decisionmaking processes and that the lack of a facilitating institutional landscape impedes any policy impact. Interpreted under Arnstein's [START_REF] Arnstein | A ladder of citizen participation[END_REF] prominent eight-rung ladder of participation, many of these initiatives are labeled as tokenistic.

While empirical research shows that public officials support the idea of citizen participation, it also indicates that their orientations regarding citizen participation in practice are less attuned to abstract normative goals than to concerns with concrete instrumental costs and benefits [START_REF] Moynihan | Normative and instrumental perspectives on public participation[END_REF][START_REF] Åström | Urban planners, wired for change? Understanding elite support for e-participation[END_REF][START_REF] Liao | Exploring the antecedents of municipal managers' attitudes towards citizen participation[END_REF]. Potential benefits include making the work of government more acceptable to citizens and making decision-making more effective. Potential risks and uncertainties are associated with time, money, and other resources. Additionally, citizen participation may exacerbate conflicts or result in the undue influence of uninformed individuals and therefore become ineffective [START_REF] Yang | Citizen involvement efforts and bureaucratic responsiveness: Participatory values, stakeholder pressures, and administrative practicality[END_REF]. The implementation of participation implies that lower degrees of trust in citizens may lead to reduced risk-taking, less involvement and more control of citizens. In contrast, higher degrees of trust should be expected to increase risk-taking and motivate steps up 'the ladder of participation' [START_REF] Arnstein | A ladder of citizen participation[END_REF].

In order to examine how trusting citizens relates to preferred forms of participation, we will include a stepwise approach including the advantages and disadvantages of participation.

3

Data and measurements

Data

Public managers are largely responsible for designing, implementing, and making use of the results of participatory processes. Hence, they largely determine the outcome of government initiated participatory processes [4 & 5]. In Swedish local government, there are about 31,000 public managers. In order to examine their attitudes towards citizens, a random sample of 3,000 individuals-registered as managers and employed by a Swedish local government-was generate using the occupational register. Statistics Sweden curated the sample and facilitated the data collection by way of a broad survey in 2018. The survey included questions and statements related to twenty-five topics of which one measured public officials' perceived trust in citizens. The total number of responses to the survey reached 1,430, a 48% response rate. Out of the 1,430 city managers in the data set, 32% are men and 68% are women, which illustrates the major changes that have taken place during recent decades when it comes to leadership and gender in Swedish local government. Not long ago, these numbers would have been reversed. About half of the respondents were 55 years of age or older, and the non-response analysis revealed an underrepresentation of managers under the age of 35 (response rate of 24%).

Measurements

Regardless of the underlying perspective (micro or macro), being confident that one's expectations of another will be fulfilled and a willingness to be vulnerable are critical components of most definitions of trust. In the definition given by Rousseau et al. [15, p. 395], "trust is a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of another". As informed by Yang [START_REF] Yang | Public administrators' trust in citizens: A missing link in citizen involvement efforts[END_REF] and Vigoda-Gadot [START_REF] Vigoda-Gadot | Public servants' trust in citizens: An extension of theory and an empirical examination with structural equation modeling (SEM)[END_REF], we further understand trust to be reflected in three dimensions: the perception of competence, benevolence, and integrity. Competence refers to citizens' ability to act on their intentions. Benevolence and integrity address the intentions of the trustee, with benevolence being the intention to act 'in a kind way' toward the trustor and integrity being the underlying moral principles guiding behavior. The main independent variable was measured via six items, which were assessed with the following questions: "Citizens I interact with through my profession are gen-erally… (1) reliable," (2) "sincere and honest in their interactions with the local government," (3) "well aware of local government affairs and current issues," (4) "knowledgeable of how the local government organization works," (5) "committed to changing and improving the municipality," and ( 6) "more concerned about what benefits the municipality as a whole than what benefits them personally," The Likert-type scale ranged from 0 (strongly disagree) to 3 (strongly agree). The Cronbach's alpha was 0.748, demonstrating good reliability of this measure as an independent variable.

Perceived advantages of participation were measured through four survey items each measured on a Likert-type scale ranging from 0 (strongly disagree) to 3 (strongly agree). Managers were asked to what extent they agreed with the following statements: "Citizen participation in local politics will lead to" (1) "better policy decisions," (2) "more political equality," (3) "more satisfied citizens," and ( 4) "more trust in the local government among citizens." The four items were combined to an additive index measuring perceived advantages of citizen participation. Similarly, perceived disadvantages of citizen participation were measured with three items on an identical 0-3 scale. Managers were asked to agree or disagree with the following statements: "Citizen participation in local politics will lead to" (1) "worse policy decisions," (2) "greater political inequality," and (3) "more conflicts in the community." These items were combined to an additive index measuring managers' perceptions of disadvantages of citizen participation.

Finally, the main dependent variables were measured via three variables, measuring the managers' attitudes towards an extended use of (1) citizen initiatives, (2) referenda, and (3) citizen dialogues. The Likert-type scale ranged from 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). All the measurements used are summarized in Table 1 above.

4

Empirical results

Public managers trust in citizens

Previous research has indicated that while most public officials support citizen participation in theory, they remain skeptical about the concrete instrumental costs and benefits of citizen participation [13 & 5]. Engaging citizens in political participation may have the potential benefits of increasing citizens' acceptance of the government and generating more effective decision-making. However, there are also potential risks and uncertainties associated with citizen participation as it may increase the workload of public administration and place an added financial burden on public institutions. Implementing processes for citizen participation requires an allocation of public resources that could be used in other capacities. There is also a possibility that citizen participation could lead to more conflict or become ineffective as uninformed citizens gain influence on public policy.

This implies that a low degree of trust in citizens may lead public managers to avoid the risk-taking associated with citizen participation, fostering fewer advantages of citizen involvement and ultimately less public control over policy-making. In contrast, a high level of government trust in citizens can foster a greater willingness for public managers to accept the risk allowing citizen participation and motivate them to support such practices further up on 'the ladder of participation' [START_REF] Arnstein | A ladder of citizen participation[END_REF].

To further understand the factors influencing public managers' support for citizen participation we therefore find it vital to analyze public managers' level of trust in citizens. Do managers trust citizens? And to what extent? In table 2 below, we present analyses of public managers' trust in citizens when it comes to citizens' integrity, ability, and benevolence. Public managers report positive evaluations of citizens' integrity, perceiving citizens to be reliable, sincere, and honest in their interactions with local government. Around 80% of managers agree that citizens have integrity. Managers' perceptions of citizens' ability and benevolence were less positive. Only a minority agreed that citizens are aware of local government affairs and current issues, and fewer than 1 in 4 agreed that citizens are knowledgeable about how the local government organization works. Turning to benevolence, 45% of the managers agree that citizens are committed to change and improve the municipality, but only 16% percent believe that citizens are more concerned with what benefits the municipality as a whole than with what benefits them personally. Trust in citizens index (high) 48 Comment: N=1359-1381; Scales range between 0 (strongly disagree) to 3 (strongly agree).

Trust and the advantages and disadvantages of citizen participation

Does public managers' trust in citizens influence their attitudes towards citizen participation in politics? Although previous research on this subject is scarce, a study among public administrators in the US suggests a connection between trust and a favorable opinion of citizen participation [START_REF] Yang | Citizen involvement efforts and bureaucratic responsiveness: Participatory values, stakeholder pressures, and administrative practicality[END_REF]. We investigated this relationship by way of biva-riate correlation analyses between the index of public managers' trust in citizens (described above) and managers' perceptions of potential advantages and disadvantages of citizen participation in politics.

Starting with perceived advantages of citizen participation (see table 3 below), we find positive and statistically significant correlations across all items. Public managers with greater trust in citizens are more prone to believe that citizen participation leads to better policy decisions, greater political equality, more satisfied citizens and increased trust in the local government among citizens. Furthermore, we find a positive and statistically significant correlation between an additive index of all items measuring advantages of participation and managers' trust in citizens. However, managers' trust in citizens does not positively correlate with perceived disadvantage of citizen participation. Public managers with weaker trust in citizens are not more disposed to believe that citizen participation risks impediments to the quality of decision making, the degree of political equality or decreased conflict in society. Hence, the perceived risks of citizen participation are not connected to the level of managers' trust in citizens. Potentially such perceptions of disadvantages might be connected to normative views of democracy. For instance, proponents of electoral democracy have often argued that extensive citizen participation outside of elections will lead to decreased political equality [START_REF] Gilljam | Demokratins mekanismer[END_REF].

Trust and attitudes towards different forms of participation

Thus far we have established that public managers' trust in citizens is associated with citizen participation as it influences managers' perceptions of the advantages of citizens' political participation. Public managers act as potential gatekeepers in relation to the processes of citizen participation with decisive influence over whether and how participatory processes are implemented. Therefore, it is important to learn more about how managers' trust in citizens directly shapes their attitudes towards different forms of citizen participation. Are managers who trust citizens more prone to support citizens' participation in politics? And does the influence of trust vary across different forms of participation, as it does among citizens [START_REF] Hooghe | A comparative analysis of the relation between political trust and forms of political participation in Europe[END_REF]?

In table 5 (below), bivariate correlation analyses are presented, investigating the association among trust, perceived advantages and disadvantages of citizen participation and public managers' support for three forms of citizen participation. These forms of participation are citizen dialogues, citizens' right to advocate for issues with the local council, and local referenda. We find positive and statistically significant associations between trust in citizens and support for citizen dialogues as well as for referenda. However, we find no significant association between trust and initiatives.

Perceived advantages of participation are strongly associated with support for citizen dialogues and positively correlated with support for initiatives and referenda. Perceived disadvantages of participation is negatively associated with support for all three forms of citizen participation. The strongest negative association is between perceived disadvantages and support for citizen dialogues. This result might be surprising since referenda form a much more influential and disruptive form of citizen participation. However, the strong associations between the perceived advantages and disadvantage of participation and support for citizen dialogues may well stem from the fact that Swedish public managers have a stronger gatekeeper function in relation to citizen dialogues as compared to the other two forms of participation investigated. Taking the analysis one step further, we consider the potential indirect effect of public managers' trust in citizens on their support of citizen participation. As demonstrated above, trust influences managers' perceptions of the advantages of participation, which in turn influences their support for participation. Hence, in addition to the direct association between trust and the level of support for citizen dialogues and referenda discussed above, it is also clear that managers' trust influences support for participation indirectly-by way of influencing managers' perceptions of the advantages of participation. The direct and indirect associations between managers' trust and their support for different forms of participation are summarized in Figure 1 below. This mediation or path-analysis allows us to better grasp the full scope of the importance of managers' trust in citizens regarding the process of citizen participation. The direct, indirect, and total effects of managers' trust in citizens on their for different forms of citizen participation are described in Table 6 below. The indirect effect is calculated as the product of the association between trust and the perceived advantages and the association between the perceived advantages and political managers' support for the respective forms of participation. The total effect is calculated as the sum of the direct and indirect effects. Only statistically significant associations (p <0.05) are included in these calculations. The analyses presented in Table 6 show that trust in citizens is of non-trivial importance for understanding public managers' attitudes towards citizen participation in politics. Managers who trust citizens more are disposed towards supporting citizen dialogues as well as referenda as compared to less trusting managers. Hence, building trust between citizens and public managers might be a pivotal step for supporting e-participation processes, as has been suggested in case studies [START_REF] Adenskog | Balancing potential and risk: The Living Lab approach in mobile participation research[END_REF].

Conclusions

As Newman et al. [START_REF] Newman | Public participation and collaborative governance[END_REF] reminds us, new forms of participation do not displace old forms of governance; rather, they interact with each other. This creates opposing imperatives for public managers. They should encourage participation from their citizens while ensuring their ability to fulfill their duties as imposed from above. They should engage in long-term building, while also competently completing tasks in the short term. Public managers' relationship with citizens exist in an institutional context where citizen participation has its specific costs, advantages, and risks. In this context, the degree of trust in citizens' integrity, knowledge, and benevolence matters.

While earlier studies have shown public officials to more trusting than people in general, this study shows many public officials do not trust citizens. Furthermore, we have found that trust in citizens is related to the perceived advantages and risks of citizen participation. If the political managers trust their citizens, there is more confidence in potential benefits of participation. If there is distrust in the citizens, the value of participation is questioned. Thus, trusting citizens seems to be key for understanding whether or not public managers think that participation is worth the effort.

Furthermore, the results show that trusting citizens influences public managers' attitudes towards new forms of participation. Just like citizens' political trust has a positive impact on some forms of participation, but not on others, managers' trust in citizens matters more for some forms of participation than others. Somewhat surprisingly, citizen dialogues show the greatest impact from perceived advantages, risks and trust in citizens. At first glance at least, this seems contradictory to the idea that trust and control are opposing forces for handling risk. Regarding referenda, more control over decisions is given to citizens than in dialogues. However, the normative view of direct democracy versus representative democracy is more important in relation to referenda. One potential explanation for the pattern is that normative issues are less salient in relation to dialogues, which makes instrumental factors more important in shaping managers' attitudes towards participation.

The literature on new forms of participation predominately considers the drivers and barriers towards e-participation in normative terms while recognizing the role of public managers in facilitating change [4 & 5]. Our examination indicates that we should make more effort to understand how the perceptions of the instrumental costs, benefits and risks associated with citizens' political participation is affected by public officials' trust in citizens. Knowledge about public officials' trust in citizens could have important policy implications. If we know what institutional arrangements influence public officials' trust in citizens, it might be possible to address these factors through policy measures. New forms of participation provide a great opportunity for experimenting with trust-building arrangements; however, past research and development activities have typically had a one-sided focus, trying to find mechanisms that close the political distance between citizens and governments. This study reveals that we also need to aim for institutional arrangements that increase public managers' trust in citizens.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Direct and indirect influence of public managers' trust in citizens on their support for different forms of participation.

Table 1 .

 1 Operationalizations and measurements.

	Concept		Operationalization	Variable		Scale
	Trust in citizens		Assesses how the re-	Additive	Index	0-18
			spondents perceive	based on six items.
			citizens' integrity,	Scale ranging from 0	α: 0.748
			knowledge, and be-	(strongly disagree)
			nevolence	to 3 (strongly agree)
	Referenda		Measures the extent	Single item. Scale	0-4
			to which respondents	ranging from 0 (do
			think that local gov-	not agree) to 4
			ernment should ex-	(strongly agree)
			tend the use of refer-
			enda
	Initiative		Measures the extent	Single item. Scale	0-4
			to which respondents	ranging from 0 (do
			think that local gov-	not agree) to 4
			ernment should ex-	(strongly agree)
			pand citizen initia-
			tives
	Citizen dialogues		Measures the extent	Single item. Scale	0-4
			to which respondents	ranging from 0 (do
			think that local gov-	not agree) to 4
			ernment should ex-	(strongly agree)
			pand citizen dia-
			logues
	Advantages of par-	Assesses the re-	Index variable based	0-12
	ticipation		spondents' view of	on four items. Scale
			advantages of citizen	ranging from 0 (do	α: 0.842
			participation	not agree) to 3
				(strongly agree)
	Disadvantages	of	Assesses the re-	Index variable based	0-9
	participation		spondents' view of	on three items. Scale
			disadvantages of cit-	ranging from 0 (do	α: 0.602
			izen participation	not agree) to 3
				(strongly agree)

Table 2 .

 2 Public managers' trust in citizens (Given in percentage that agree with the survey items)

	Citizens I interact with in my work are generally . . .
	1._ Reliable	83
	2. _Sincere and honest in their interactions with local government	79
	3. _Aware of local government affairs and current issues	39
	4. _Knowledgeable about how the local government organization	21
	works
	5. _Committed to changing and improving the municipality	45
	6. _More concerned about what benefits the municipality as a whole	16
	than what benefits them personally

Table 3 .

 3 Association between public managers' trust in citizens and perceived advantages of citizen participation

	Pearson correlation	Sig.	N

Table 4 .

 4 Association between public managers' trust in citizens and perceived disadvantages of citizen participation

		Pearson correlation	Sig.	N
	Worse decisions	-0.038	0.174	1314
	Greater political inequality	-0.043	0.122	1314
	More conflicts in society	-0.012	0.657	1309
	Index	-0.042	0.134	1299

Table 5 .

 5 Association between trust in citizens and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of citizens' participation and attitudes towards

	Citizen dialogues	Initiatives	Referenda

Table 6 .

 6 Direct, indirect, and total effects of political managers' trust in citizens on their support for political participation.

		Citizen dialogues	Initiatives	Referenda
	Direct effect	0.110	-	0.070
	Indirect effect	(0.210 x 0.430) =	-	(0.210 x 0.131) =
		0.090		0.028
	Total effect	0.200	-	0.098