Identity and beliefs can be a product rather than a cause of institutional commitment

Evidence

Suppose her greater involvement in the church leads her into its activities against abortion—not because she is necessarily hostile to abortion but because, by identifying herself with the church’s antiabortion movement, she identifies herself more closely with the church and with her friends in the faith. She relocates herself in the world of Catholic political activism not because she shares the activist agenda but rather because she wants stronger connection to the church to keep her safer from the secular world of declining American Catholicism. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 238

Categorization

• XREF: This reverses the natural assumption that beliefs drive activism: here activism is chosen first to manufacture stronger belief, echoing a theme in the chapter on sacrifice and commitment. — connects to: The message-in-the-bottle stance separated institute insiders from academic-careerists — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1153; Expressed need is capped by applicants’ beliefs about what agencies offer — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 675; A standard of identity can serve as a private anticompetitive weapon — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1517 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Illustrates Hardin’s core definition of trust as encapsulated interest routed through constructed incentives.