Sanctions support trust only while the threat remains unspoken and latent

Evidence

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. … 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

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly bears on Stevens’s deference: he never challenges Darlington openly, keeping the threat of sanction latent — exactly the mechanism Luhmann describes, yielding ethical abdication.
• DEFINE: Defines the latent function of sanctions vs. their manifest function — key to distinguishing Luhmann’s trust theory from rational-choice theories.

Related

• Sanction-based trust rests on anticipating the partner’s calculation, not on its occurrence (similarity 0.88)
• Waiving sanction rights risks being blamed for one’s own trust (similarity 0.81)
• Trust rests on the truster’s power to sanction breach through future influence (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Sanctions carry a latent function of shaping guilt attribution and social standing #expands (0.60) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 182