Trust can be deliberately dismantled as an instrument of power

Evidence

Anthony Pagden, focusing on Spanish rule in eighteenth-century Naples, describes the ways in which trust can be intentionally destroyed for the purpose of domination. Ernest Gellner - drawing on the Islamic world and the Soviet Union —- argues that anarchy, the absence of a centralized authority, can be productive rather than destructive of trust and cohesion. My paper on the mafia indicates how a society based on mutual distrust can develop into a stable social structure and reproduce itself over a long period. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 92

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Saramago’s ‘Blindness’ collapse and Luhmann’s claim that absence of a central authority can still produce social cohesion — Gellner’s point contradicts the simple thesis that anarchy degenerates into Hobbesian predation unless observability is total.
• QUESTION: Pagden’s Spanish Naples case — how does one deliberately destroy trust for domination, and what mechanism does that share with, or invert, Hardin’s observability thesis?