Trust rests on the truster’s power to sanction breach through future influence

Evidence

Whoever is confronted with the question of trust, and does not know the future actions of the other party, can focus his attention instead on motivational structures. On the one hand, he will find it worthwhile to ask himself with what prospects for gain and loss his partner can reckon if he is trusted. Could there be especially large rewards for him if he broke trust? On the other hand, significance attaches to the possibility he (i.e. the potential truster) possesses of exercising influence (at a cost to be taken into account) upon the fate of his partner. In fact, such potential influence may be taken into account in the partner’s calculation of his gains and losses, and to this extent this set of considerations carries most weight. Through his future influence the truster can sanction a breach of trust; he can also, when such a possibility is to be envisaged, reckon on his partner also reckoning with it, while he ponders a breach of trust, and thereby being restrained. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 172

Categorization

• XREF: Sanction-via-future-influence is the trust-side counterpart to Luhmann’s theory of power as communication medium — and maps onto how Darlington’s household constraints Stevens’s options, making trust the only rationally available stance. — connects to: Agency design that empowers allied interest groups entrenches policy by mobilizing their future influence. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 356
• QUESTION: How does sanction-based trust interact with a power imbalance where the subordinate cannot actually influence the superior? Stevens trusting Darlington has no reciprocal sanction power.