Functional authority trust rests on accepting information from an untraceable chain, not a person.

Evidence

In this form, authority also has need of trust that communicates the truth. This differentiates it from other forms of takeover by alien sets of assumptions coming, for example, from power. The advance made by one who trusts consists here in the uncritical use of information which others have drawn up – accordingly he commits himself to the danger that the information may prove false, or not what he anticipated. On the other hand, the object of trust in the case of functional authority, as with money, is basically abstract and thus intangible. It is often the case that one has an authentic sender, but he is only the last link in a long chain of information-processing. Does one trust the chemist, or his assistant, or the doctor, or is it medicine, science or technology? — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 218

Categorization

• XREF: This maps almost perfectly onto Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ — trusting abstract expert systems rather than known individuals — which the reader’s thesis pairs with Luhmann.
• DEFINE: Defines ‘functional authority’ trust as uncritical, abstract, chain-based reliance as opposed to interpersonal facework.