Power asymmetry blocks trust because the weaker party cannot credibly threaten exit

Evidence

There are inherent problems in trusting another who has great power over one’s prospects. In an iterated exchange between two relatively equal partners, both stand to lose more or less equally from the default of the other. If a much more powerful partner defaults, however, she might be able to exact benefits without reciprocating. Moreover, she might be able to dump partners willy-nilly and replace them with others, while they cannot dump her with such blissful unconcern because there may be few or no others who can play her role. Hence as in the discussion of endgame effects, the weaker party to an unequal trusting relationship is at threat of seeing the interaction terminated at any time but is most likely not in a position actually to terminate it. In general, therefore, the weaker party cannot trust the more powerful much at all. Inequalities of power therefore commonly block the possibility of trust. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 481

Categorization

• XREF: Core to the Hardin reading purpose: explains why Saramago’s Hobbesian collapse is unsurprising — the doctor’s wife alone holds power (sight) and everyone else cannot terminate her role, so no one can trust anyone. — connects to: Bridging echo chambers fails without cross-partisan trust — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 62; Conspiratorial accusations against a party rise the longer it holds power — Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, American Conspiracy Theories, 734
• QUESTION: Does this claim that asymmetric power blocks trust also predict the wife’s authority in Blindness — she has all the power, so by Hardin’s logic the blind cannot trust her either, yet in the novel they effectively do.