When digital trust collapses: an exploratory comparative framework for citizen involvement in digital governance

Digital participation platforms do not automatically generate meaningful citizen involvement. This article develops the Quantum Probability and Governance (QP-Gov) framework to explain when latent civic willingness collapses into consequential action. Drawing on a comparative qualitative analysis of South Korea, Estonia, Finland, Taiwan, and the Netherlands, we argue that participation is most likely when three conditions align: consequential transparency, trust coherence, and institutional responsiveness. Using platform rules, feedback mechanisms, and traced policy outcomes, we show that digital capacity alone does not predict participatory legitimacy. High-performing cases institutionalize visible pathways from citizen input to governmental action, whereas low-performing cases provide procedural openness without credible consequence. The article presents an exploratory socio-technical framework to explain why digital participation becomes symbolic, episodic, or routinized across advanced digital states.