Social order produces the conditions that generate trust, not vice versa

Evidence

Can we successfully live together without trust? Put somewhat differently, is trust necessary for maintaining social order? One might presume to answer this question by putting societies in a two-by-two matrix of the possible combinations of high and low trust on one side and high and low social order on the other. Suppose there were no cases of low trust and high social order. Unfortunately, this fact would not settle the issue because social order provides the background conditions that facilitate trust by creating the conditions for stable ongoing relationships and backing them with law to block the risk of massive losses from wrongly trusting someone. That is, social order produces the conditions for trust and therefore must commonly produce trust. Moreover, as argued in chapter 1, levels of trust are likely to vary across different domains, and therefore, one might suppose, social order could also vary. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 785

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the Saramago integration: order must precede the trust that sustains it — the wife’s enforcement creates the background conditions under which cooperation becomes rational. — connects to: Social trust is an outcome and byproduct of social capital — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 41; Widespread mutual trust alone makes large-scale non-domination freedom possible — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 1300; the MOC “The Violence That Builds: How Modern Order Is Forged, Not Broken, by Force”
• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the intuitive trust→order direction: order’s institutions are causally prior, making trust an effect rather than a precondition of stable society.