The institutions that police trust are themselves trustees subject to the same agency problems.

Evidence

Ironically, the public and private guardians of trust also stand in a trust relationship with those whom they hope to reassure. Guardians of trust are agents. They perform social-control roles for principals who have conferred trust on others (or who consider doing so) and they act to collectivize and spread the risk of these trust relationships through insurance-like schemes. As agents, guardians hold the same precarious relationships with their principals as do those trustees they now oversee: guardians frequently have greater expertise than their principals and are therefore relatively immune from principals’ assessments of their role competence. They require a considerable amount of discretionary power (that can also be exercised for self-interest). The physical and social distances that necessarily separate guardians from principals minimize the opportunities for the latter to scrutinize role performance. And insurancelike arrangements provided by these trustees of trust often constitute futures transactions that offer few intrinsic guarantees that future promises or obligations will be met. — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 111

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the ‘trustees of trust’ / guardians-as-agents recursion — a precise definitional move worth keeping.
• XREF: Echoes the infinite regress of oversight — who watches the watchers — which parallels the need for a final, trusted witness in the Raskolnikov analysis. — connects to: Guardians of trust are themselves trustees requiring ever-higher-order oversight — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 127; Guardians of trust are themselves positioned to abuse the trust placed in them. — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 112; Escalating trust guardianship distorts the original agency purpose — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 128

Related

• Escalating trust guardianship distorts the original agency purpose (similarity 0.90)
• Institutional trust guardians offer advance protection against future agent misconduct. (similarity 0.89)
• Guardians of trust are themselves trustees requiring ever-higher-order oversight (similarity 0.88)
• Mechanisms for controlling impersonal trust themselves create new opportunities for abuse (similarity 0.87)
• Guardians of trust are themselves positioned to abuse the trust placed in them. (similarity 0.87)
• Trust institutions vary dramatically in the guardianship they receive (similarity 0.86)
• Even honest guardians may not actually deliver the protection principals assume. (similarity 0.86)
• Trusted agents face a dense lattice of institutional surveillance. (similarity 0.85)
• Third-party trust guardians create new opportunities for exploitation. (similarity 0.82)
• The same features enabling trust also enable agent abuse. (similarity 0.82)
• Trust control is a specialized occupation that sidelines ordinary actors (similarity 0.81)
• Controlling trust creates new opportunities for abuse in an inflationary spiral. (similarity 0.80)
• Guardians of trust are themselves wide open to bribery and cooptation. (similarity 0.80)
• Impersonal trust emerges where principals lose direct power to regulate agents. (similarity 0.80)
• The very mechanisms that enable trust also enable its abuse. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Guardians of trust are themselves trustees requiring ever-higher-order oversight #expands (0.95) — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 127
• Guardians of trust are themselves positioned to abuse the trust placed in them. #expands (0.92) — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 112
• Escalating trust guardianship distorts the original agency purpose #expands (0.85) — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 128