Cooperation without trust?

In a recent Public Administration Review sympo sium on collaboration, 9 out of 12 articles dis cussed, to various degrees, the importance of trust. Are public administration scholars misplacing their trust in trust? In a recent panel on trust at the Midwest Political Science Association conference, two practitioners, scheduled to share experience on how good city management improves citizen trust, were genuinely disturbed by the views expressed by other academics on the panel that trust does not matter. Are public managers misdirecting resources when they work to improve trust?