Distrust-based institutional design can actively corrupt honest officials.

Evidence

But it is equally true that if we design institutions on the worst-case assumption that people are all corrupt, then the institutions may not work well in face of virtue: as we shall see later, for example, the institutions may actively serve to corrupt the uncorrupt! — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 950

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an essay: when surveillance-heavy management breeds exactly the distrust the manager assumes — a workplace/civic translation of republican institutional design.
• XREF: Ties to Brennan and Buchanan’s public-choice worst-case reasoning and Mandeville’s ‘knaves’ constitution. — connects to: Assuming officials are inherently corrupt may itself breed the corruption it seeks to prevent. — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 63; Institutions designed for worst-case knaves may actively corrupt virtuous people. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 950