| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores how environmental policy projects affect political trust among policy opponents. It does this by conducting semi-structured interviews with policy opponents who live within proximity of such a project, more specifically, the completed, and planned, wind turbines on Haramsøya and Bjerkreim respectively. Participants’ answers are then analyzed and discussed in relation to four different factors, namely procedural fairness, whereas just and fair processes are associated with high trust, whilst unfair processes are associated with low trust; institutional performance, which sees citizens as able to assess institutions’ performance and that good and poor results affects trust accordingly; citizen participation where those who disagree with a policy seeks to oppose it, and that participation might effect trust positively, or poorly; and polarization, which related to increased hostility and distrust towards opposing groups . Various stages of policy implementation found in each of these two cases is also taken into consideration, whereas Haramsøya is in the output stage, while Bjerkreim is in the input phase. The thesis identifies all the factors as influencing political trust, and that the first factor, procedural fairness, is a source for the other factors. Procedural fairness is the first among the factors that becomes relevant during policy implementation of wind power, and sees most participants unhappy with the secretive, abusive, and unfair process. Next is institutional performance which, to some degree, is dependent on procedural fairness. Here, the actions, or inactions, of certain institutions have weakened participants’ trust in them. The next factor, citizen participation, shows that most participants found their efforts ignored by authorities and decision-makers; however, their participation managed to spread news of the unfairly perceived process to those outside these communities. This factor is also found to be dependent on procedural fairness. Finally, polarization sees the biggest difference between participants in each case, due to the stages of policy implementation, where those on Haramsøya have grown more skeptical and distrusting towards supporters of the wind power policy. All these factors have the potential to weaken Norwegian politicians’ and decision-makers’ reputation through the actions of policy opponents, and must therefore be taken into consideration by these actors. | eng |