Institutions enable cooperation specifically where distrust is justified.

Evidence

Our problem in many contexts is that relevant people do not trust or even distrust certain others, often for good reason. Clearly, outright distrust is well founded in many important contexts, contexts in which we would like nevertheless to be able to organize cooperation. In those contexts we therefore would benefit from having institutional or other arrangements to enable us to cooperate in the absence of trust. In many such contexts in an actual society there may therefore be good reason to escape from the need for relying on others’ trustworthiness to handle various issues. A central value of contract and even criminal law is to reduce the likelihood of severe losses from cheating, such as the lieutenant colonel’s loss of 4,500 rubles. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 507

Categorization

• XREF: Anchors the reader’s Saramago integration: when blindness collapses monitoring, institutions must replace trust — but the wife’s sight is the only ‘institution’ left, explaining why Hobbesian order returns.
• QUESTION: The 4,500-ruble lieutenant colonel example is referenced but unexplained here — what is the Trifonov anecdote? Worth locating in Hardin’s source.