Trust in government is really quasi-trust or confidence, not trust

Evidence

To give an account of trust in government on analogy with trust in individuals requires two classes of argument. First, we must give an account of the trustworthiness of government agents. Second, we must account for the knowledge citizens are likely to have of such trustworthiness. In the second account, the central problem is the translation of individual-to-individual relationships to individual-to-group or individual-to-institution relationships. What is called trust in government may in fact be something short of trust as we experience it in interpersonal relations. This is confidence, or what we might call quasi trust. It is based on reasons for believing government agents to be trustworthy, reasons that do not involve direct relationships with the quasi trusting citizen. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 703

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines quasi trust as confidence in government grounded in reasons not requiring direct citizen-agent relationships.
• XREF: Connects directly to Luhmann’s distinction between trust (familiarity-based) and confidence (system-based) that the reader is integrating. — connects to: Trusting a government is not analogous to trusting another person.; Trust in government is trust in capacity, unlike interpersonal trust; Survey ‘trust in government’ reduces to confidence, not interpersonal trust (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 703

Broader Connections

• Survey ‘trust in government’ reduces to confidence, not interpersonal trust #corroborates (0.95)
• Trust differs from confidence in that trust acknowledges alternatives and risks, confidence does not. #expands (0.90) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 81
• Trust in government is trust in capacity, unlike interpersonal trust #expands (0.85)