Democratic theorists assumed political agents would be knaves needing institutional constraint.

Evidence

On some accounts, John Locke, an early democrat of the modern era, put trust and democracy together. He supposes that governors are to act on trust. He was already, however, an implicit advocate of wariness toward political leaders. He suggests that if leaders violate the tacit trust in them, then they should be overthrown. In the later era of relatively stable democracy, the supposition is not that we should be ever prepared to overthrow our leaders but rather that we should be ever vigilant to see that individuals within that government are acting in our interest. Hume (1985 [1739–40], 42–43) supposes that government institutions should be designed so that they work well even if staffed by knaves—or, rather, that the power of governmental position is corrupting enough to makes knaves of many government agents. Madison (1961 , 322–23; see further chapter 7) more directly supposes that government will be staffed by knaves. Hence he proposes that institutions give their agents little power by instituting “opposite and rival interests” to limit the role of each officer. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 506

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends the reader’s Hardin/Luhmann integration: Locke-to-Madison institutional design is the ‘institutions fill in where trust fails’ move that later connects to Saramago’s doctor’s wife as the sole institutional guarantor.