Distrusting government openly is a distinctively modern democratic innovation

Evidence

On the selfinterest view of government as forever at risk of having its power used by its officeholders for their own advantage and against the interests of the broader citizenry, it is commonly supposed that we should openly distrust government. This is, of course, a view that has arisen primarily in the context of democratic thought, especially in the era of modern representative government, rather than in earlier political philosophy that typically justified obedience to rulers whose claim to rule was other than the acquiescence of the ruled. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 504

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: when exactly did ‘disobey or scrutinize the ruler’ replace ‘obey the ruler’ as the default political stance, and what institutional forms did this take?
• XREF: connects to: Mistrust is democratic, delegitimation assaults democracy — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 86; Mistrust of government is a healthy, intended feature of democratic design. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 84