Distrust flows from assessing incentives, but trust in government rarely can

Evidence

Madison’s response to this overwhelming problem of contrary incentives was to design governmental institutions that would be too weak to overwhelm the public and to build in many devices for internal opposition between agencies and agents of government. Although the government he designed has evolved into the most powerful government ever seen, it is still hamstrung by internal forces against its controlling citizens in many ways. We may almost all agree in principle on, for example, the protection of civil liberties, but we know that we might be tempted by our own interests, personal mores, or religious values to override our abstract principled beliefs in particular instances. We therefore want to tie our hands in advance against such abuses—but even more, of course, we want to tie the hands of others in advance. Any account of trust in government as based on the truster’s assessment of the trusted’s incentive to be trustworthy is likely to be specious. Yet we can easily give an account of distrust in government as based on the distrusted’s incentive to be untrustworthy at least occasionally, sometimes in major ways. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 763