Sanction-based trust rests on anticipating the partner’s calculation, not on its occurrence

Evidence

We had in fact already noticed that the legal situation and the possibility of sanctions in the event of a breach of trust offer some support to someone considering whether to trust. They allow the circumstances to be foreseen under which the trusted person will have the good sense to make decisions. It is not decisive, in this regard, whether or not the partner will in the end actually make a complete calculation with reference to law and sanctions to suit himself. The argument does not directly rest upon this calculation, but upon the truster’s ability to anticipate it. In this context it operates tacitly, without poisoning the relationship with the threat of sanctions and thus putting paid to emergent trust. It is possible that with such a supposition the truster does not do justice to a partner who either has not yet considered a breach of trust or indeed would never consider it. The truster may also go astray in assuming that the prospect of sanctions would intimidate the partner. It is on this account that the calculation is not carried out jointly, and does not become the object of communications between the partners. The structure of the trust relationship requires that such calculation should remain latent, evolving in its generalizing fashion covertly, purely as a reassuring consideration. In his overt behaviour the truster must show himself ‘utterly trustworthy’, lest he himself sow the seed from which later reciprocal distrust may grow, thereby producing exactly the result which he is trying to avoid. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 178

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s thesis: Stevens’s deference to Darlington is exactly the ‘latent, covert, reassuring’ calculation that must remain unspoken — the institutional trust structure requires the truster to perform utter trustworthiness.
• DEFINE: Clarifies the mechanism by which law/sanctions support trust: via the truster’s anticipation, kept latent to avoid poisoning the relationship.