Building Trust in Collaborative Governance

One of the feasible ways to enable the realization of established collaborative governance agenda is to ensure that the stakeholders trust each other and are committed to building trust over time. Building trust positions stakeholders to deal with previous or existing antagonism toward each other in either individual or organizational capacities and to be more engaged in the various aspects of collaborative governance toward purposeful ends. Stakeholders’ intentional commitment to building trust fosters constructive engagement during the collaborative process and an overall willingness to work assiduously toward achieving the goals and objectives of collaborative governance. No doubt, attempts to build trust among stakeholders in consonance with expectations would be time-consuming and somewhat challenging, but the viability of collaborative governance is contingent on it. Thus, building trust as a collaborative process variable creates the needed synergy among stakeholders in collaborative governance to achieve the desired outcomes collectively. This chapter focuses on building trust in collaborative governance and identifies associated elements and cases for practical and conceptual purposes to promote knowledge and understanding.