Institutions and third-party guarantors supply the knowledge trust requires

Evidence

In addition, institutions can be the source of the knowledge requisite for trusting someone (Coleman 1990, chapter 5). In a sense, institutions certify many of those with whom we interact. Of course, individuals can do the same for us. Hence institutions often play for us the role of intermediaries in trust for our relationships with others. Individuals can also play that role, as is the case when you trust someone who vouches for me more than you could trust me. James Coleman supposes that such third-party guarantors of trustworthiness are especially important in commercial relations but rare in noneconomic systems (Coleman 1990, 186–88). — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 512

Categorization

• XREF: The wife in Saramago’s Blindness becomes precisely this third-party guarantor — the sighted intermediary in a world where monitoring collapsed. Directly feeds the reader’s core analytical thesis.