Governments work when citizens do not actively distrust them.

Evidence

A claim that is worthy of investigation is whether a government that depends on extensive reciprocal participation by citizens requires trust to work well. Largely for empirical reasons, I argue that even such a claim cannot be sustained—or, rather, it cannot be sustained if what we mean by trust when we speak of trust in government is conceptually the same as what we mean when we speak of trust in another individual. Often, all that is needed for government to work is for citizens not actively to distrust it. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 715

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Crucial calibration for the Saramago reading: the wife’s rule rests on citizens not actively distrusting her clear authority, not on genuine mutual trust.

Related

• Governments can function without citizen trust; non-distrust suffices. (similarity 0.88)
• Ungrounded faith in government benefits the powerful, not the faithful (similarity 0.83)
• Stable open government with countervailing institutions is needed to stimulate trustworthiness (similarity 0.83)
• Governments cannot satisfy the encapsulated-interest account of trust. (similarity 0.83)
• Government being trustworthy matters more than the public trusting it. (similarity 0.81)
• Citizens cannot trust government because they lack knowledge of its trustworthiness (similarity 0.81)
• Distrust flows from assessing incentives, but trust in government rarely can (similarity 0.81)
• Mistrust of government is a healthy, intended feature of democratic design. (similarity 0.80)
• Trust in government is really quasi-trust or confidence, not trust (similarity 0.80)
• Past government abuse justifies wary distrust of any officials (similarity 0.80)
• Trusting a government is not analogous to trusting another person. (similarity 0.79)
• Anarchy can engender trust while effective government destroys it (similarity 0.79)
• Institutionalized government stabilizes citizens’ inductive expectations, not strong trust (similarity 0.79)
• Distrust of power holders needs no theory but trust of them does (similarity 0.79)
• Distrust of government rests on logical inference about incentives, not induction (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Distrust of government is easier to ground rationally than trust #qualifies (0.85) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 761
• Citizens cannot trust government because they lack knowledge of its trustworthiness #contradicts (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 780
• Past government abuse justifies wary distrust of any officials #complicates (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 758
• Systems that need distrust must also neutralize it to survive. #qualifies (0.80) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 276
• Endemic distrust of government is best cured by weakening government itself #complicates (0.75) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 764
• Trust and distrust can be institutionally interlocked without undermining each other #qualifies (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 321
• Cohesion and trust check government power, not merely establish social order #expands (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2076