Trust in government is trust in capacity, unlike interpersonal trust

Evidence

In speaking of government, John Dunn (1988, 90) supposes we should choose Bernard Barber’s (1983) trust in capacity, rather than trust in good intentions, in large-scale politics. (Throughout this book, I assume that both elements must be met for trust, although, as noted at the outset, I have not constantly addressed the potential problems of lack of capacity.) This “trust in capacity” is a substantially different meaning from the usual sense of “trust” in interpersonal relations, where it includes concern with both competence and intentions. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 773

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines ‘trust in capacity’ as distinct from interpersonal trust — a key analytical distinction for the reader’s integration.
• XREF: This capacity-vs-intentions distinction parallels the doctor’s wife in Blindness whom the blind trust for her capacity to provide, not her intentions toward them.

Related

• Trust in large-scale government should focus on capacity, not intentions. (similarity 0.92)
• Trust in government is really quasi-trust or confidence, not trust (similarity 0.86)
• Ungrounded faith in government benefits the powerful, not the faithful (similarity 0.86)
• Trusting a government is not analogous to trusting another person. (similarity 0.84)
• Governments cannot satisfy the encapsulated-interest account of trust. (similarity 0.84)
• Survey ‘trust in government’ reduces to confidence, not interpersonal trust (similarity 0.83)
• Declining trust in government reflects trustworthiness, not citizen psychology (similarity 0.82)
• Government being trustworthy matters more than the public trusting it. (similarity 0.81)
• Treating trust as central to politics does not require naive credulity (similarity 0.81)
• Trusting institutions typically means inductive expectation, not concern for one’s interests (similarity 0.81)
• Political ideologies conflate trust in intentions with trust in competence (similarity 0.80)
• Declining governmental trust is a trustworthiness problem, not a trust problem (similarity 0.80)
• Trust in officials can mean merely inductive expectation, losing positive valence (similarity 0.80)
• Trust requires presumptive knowledge that most citizens lack about officials. (similarity 0.79)
• Trust in government is not a major working factor in modern society (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Trust in practical capacity outweighs trust in politicians’ good intentions #corroborates (0.85) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1263
• Survey ‘trust in government’ reduces to confidence, not interpersonal trust #corroborates (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 777
• Trust in rulers is a realistic assessment of irreversibility, not psychic compulsion #corroborates (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1231
• Confidence and trust are not zero-sum but mutually required by complex societies #corroborates (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1387