Toward a Critical Theory of Trust

Introduction

In times of political crisis, marked by the success of authoritarian populist movements and parties around the world, research on trust is becoming increasingly important, guided by the assumption that levels of trust are an indicator of the democratic and cooperative quality of social and political life, and that democratic crises are crises of trust. ¹ As Patti Lenard argues, “trust is the fundamental, foundational quality of an effective, well-functioning democracy.” ²

At the same time, the role played by the notion of trust in current research as well as in political practice calls for critical discussion. David Miller, for example, argues that democratic states have the right to control their borders and the future composition of their citizenry, limiting their cultural diversity. He calls his approach “realist” because it relies on findings in social science indicating that “people are less likely to trust those whom they perceive as ‘different.’” ³ Furthermore, he states that there “is evidence that cultural division among the members of a political community may reduce both interpersonal trust and trust in political institutions.” ⁴ Indeed, Miller seems to be on safe ground in making these claims. For example, a recent meta-analytic review of 87 empirical studies showed “a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust across all studies.” ⁵

Views of the social and political implications of the conditions of trust such as these are not confined to the social sciences. They become part of political and legal practice when, for example, political authorities attempt to limit cultural heterogeneity through immigration control or by policies that reduce the visibility of cultural and religious differences. To cite an example to which I will return, in 2020, the German Constitutional Court ruled that “from the point of view of an objective observer,” a judge wearing a Muslim headscarf could impair “trust in the neutrality and impartiality of the courts.” ⁶

In light of these far-reaching political implications of the dominant interpretations of trust, it may be time for a critical theory of trust. At least this is what I argue in what follows. In my view, the mainstream of trust research in philosophy and the social sciences has been guided by a questionable paradigm—what I call the “communitarian paradigm.” It locates trust primarily in close communal contexts of cultural homogeneity and the absence of social conflict. This is conceptually questionable and leads to major problems in understanding the trust dynamics of modern, pluralistic, and conflict-ridden societies. This paradigm also leads to normative conclusions that should be questioned on grounds of democratic justice.

To indicate briefly the course of the argument, section II highlights the problems of the communitarian paradigm and the conceptual fallacies on which it rests. Section III lays the groundwork for a critical theory of trust that avoids these fallacies. Section IV goes on to present a normative argument for distinguishing fully justified trust from partially justified as well as from unjustified trust. Then, section V defends the thesis that justified political trust often arises in and because of conflict, given certain conditions.

Throughout, I elaborate on the core idea of viewing social and political relations, including trust relations, as relations of justification. ⁷ According to this view, understanding the processes of trust formation—justified or unjustified—requires reflecting on the justificatory quality of the relationship between the truster and the trusted. Section VI concludes with an outlook on a reflexive, critical theory of trust as part of a theory of democratic justice.

Two Fallacies About Trust

For the sake of conceptual clarity, let us begin with the following definition of trust: Trust is a practical attitude characterized by the positive expectation on the part of A that B will be motivated and competent to act (or function, if we are talking about an institution) in a way that is conducive to (or at least not detrimental to) A’s interests (of relevance to the trust relation), without A being able to know whether B will act (or function) accordingly, and without A being able to control B’s motivations and behavior (or functioning). Based on this initial definition, let us address some of the mistaken ways of thinking about trust.

The first mistake often made when thinking about trust is what I call the fallacy of positive evaluation: This is the general assumption that trust is a moral or political value ⁸ and that trusting or trustworthy behavior is a virtue. ⁹ This fallacy occurs when one focuses on certain positive relations of trust and generalizes them to define the entire concept. This is unwarranted because some forms of trust may be unfounded—even dangerous—and thus of no value to the trusting person. Additionally, they may serve immoral ends and thus have no general moral or political value. Consider the community of trust that supports and is supported by a fascist leader, or the trust among a criminal gang. Trust is normatively valuable only if it is properly justified, ¹⁰ and the same holds for trustworthiness. ¹¹ This raises the question of what a proper justification for trust implies. I will address this question in the next section.

In many studies in the social sciences and philosophy, one encounters a second fallacy, namely, the assumption of a communitarian standard. This implies that the paradigmatic context in which trust develops and is successfully practiced is one of familiarity, of close personal ties to others, or of homogeneous communities with low levels of conflict. In his influential essay and subsequent book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam locates “thick” forms of trust in “dense social networks” and communities of face-to-face interaction. ¹² According to this perspective, “thinner,” more generalized or institutionalized forms of trust can only emerge if they are nourished by sources of shared identity, familiarity, or other forms of substantive commonality. ¹³ “Thick” ¹⁴ forms of trust are the paradigmatic model, and “thin” forms are measured by this standard. As noted previously, many empirical studies share this communitarian assumption, arguing that it is common among many different populations. ¹⁵

In her seminal article, “Trust and Antitrust,” ¹⁶ Annette Baier also locates trust in personal, moral relationships of goodwill and accepted vulnerability to the actions of others, and she situates trust in caring rather than contractual relationships. This is consistent with the mainstream view in philosophical research on trust, which argues, as Stephen Darwall does, ¹⁷ that trust is a non-deontic “second-personal attitude of the heart” that has its place in personal relationships and special attachments. ¹⁸ From this perspective, generalized trust relationships are of a different, seemingly more “alienated” nature.

However, recalling our initial definition, it is questionable whether “thick” forms of community also lead to “thick” forms of trust. This seems to be a mistaken inference. In contexts of close familiarity, the degree of knowing what others will (probably) do, and the ability to control their motivations and actions, is higher; thus, while reliance on (and confidence in) others is higher, trust seems less necessary and involved. Trust implies the risk of failure because those who are trusted remain free agents who could act differently (as I will explain in more detail later). The higher the risk is, the more trust of a substantive kind is needed. Thus, thick forms of community require and exhibit thinner trust (i.e., a trust that is easier to give)—and are characterized by thicker forms of reliance. Reliance ¹⁹ can be defined as the practical attitude of assuming that one knows what others will do (or, in the extreme, how something will work, e.g., a machine ²⁰ ) and that one can control, at least to some extent, what they will do (or how something will function). ²¹

From this brief discussion of the two fallacies in theorizing trust, I conclude that we should be skeptical of the communitarian paradigm on conceptual grounds alone. So let us take a closer look at the concept of trust.

Trust: Concept, Conceptions, and Value

To avoid the mistake of generalizing particular notions of trust by taking a part for the whole, it is advisable to distinguish between the concept of trust (singular) and different conceptions of trust (plural). This distinction was introduced by Rawls in relation to the notion of justice. ²² For my purposes, I propose redefining the distinction compared to how Rawls used it. ²³ While Rawls distinguishes a normative core concept of justice from other, more specific conceptions that interpret the core definitional components of the concept in different ways, I propose to regard the concept of trust as normatively neutral. This is necessary for several reasons.

First, as argued previously, trust itself is not an independent value. In my terminology, the concept of trust is “normatively dependent”—that is, it requires other normative resources in order to count as a value. ²⁴ Trust is only good if it is well-founded—that is, only if it is properly justified, judged by standards of evaluation that are not internal to the concept itself. All too often, authors assume that trust is a positive quality of relationships. ²⁵ But as the many examples of unfounded or malicious trust show—whether based on false assumptions and thus exploitable, or driven by hatred or authoritarian motives—this is not the case. We should not confuse trust in general with justified trust, for trust that is unfounded is still trust.

We should note that there are two ways to analyze the notion of normatively justified trust. The first analyzes justified trust as dependent on the reasons and motives of the truster and whether the trusted is willing to act in a way that the truster deems trustworthy, thus confirming the trust. Let us call this particular or partial justification. This allows for idiosyncratic or immoral justifications, such as in Mafia situations, where the boss “trusts” others to act as he demands. ²⁶ The second analyzes justified trust more impartially by asking what, in a given context, is a good, general, and generalizable justification for trust—such as a commitment to fairness on the part of all involved or a particular form of moral commitment on the part of the trusted to act in a trustworthy way. Let us call this a generalizable or impartial justification. I also call this “fully justified trust.”

A second reason for using the distinction between concept and conception is that a normatively neutral core definition of trust allows for a better analysis of the various contexts in which we encounter social dynamics of trust and in which conceptions of justified trust emerge. It allows for conceptual distinctions between different types of trust, such as personal trust between friends and political or economic trust. Such conceptions may be characterized by particular expectations and motivations, some moral, some not. By distinguishing such conceptions and contexts of trust, the concept/conceptions framework ensures that we are still talking about the same phenomenon. The point of the distinction is to capture a term’s essential defining features in the (narrow) concept, enabling us to distinguish specific conceptions that interpret those features in concrete, substantive ways.

The core concept states that, as a practical attitude, trust is A’s positive expectation that B will be motivated and competent to act (or function, in the case of an institution) in a way that is conducive (or at least not detrimental) to A’s (relevant) interests, without A being able to know whether B will act (or function) accordingly or being able to control B’s motivations and behavior (or functioning).

Hence, trust relationships are fragile social bonds because the success of the trusting relationship cannot be controlled by the truster. Trust can only be “given” (like a gift, as the German expression “Vertrauen schenken” suggests), “won,” “earned,” or “lost.” It presupposes a positive assumption about, or a certain faith in, the behavior of (free) others. However, it also acknowledges that others are unpredictable and might behave differently, especially when they have incentives to do so. Georg Simmel ²⁷ calls trust a hypothesis of future behavior that seems certain enough to motivate action, while Niklas Luhmann ²⁸ emphasizes the attempt to reduce the complexity of an uncertain future. Trust necessarily involves the risk of disappointment and depends on confirmation for its continuation; stable trust relationships are reiterative and should be understood as part of a circular process. When things go well, trust is a learning process (learning when to trust and when not to trust).

At the core of the concept of trust, we find certain notions of conflict and uncertainty. We speak of trust only when those who trust are aware of a possible conflict regarding how and why to act—that is, of the possibility of disappointment. Thus, a form of “primordial” or “primal” trust in which the thought of this possibility does not even arise is not a form of trust in my sense; trust presupposes that the trusting agents have experienced a relevant kind of difference from others that makes trust risky.

In contrast to proposals in the literature that view trust as either a one-place (A trusts), ²⁹ two-place (A trusts B), ³⁰ or three-place (A trusts B with regard to X) ³¹ relationship, I propose the following four-place ³² definition of a relation of trust:

Noumenal Trust

The point that one should not confuse the existence of trust with the existence of justified trust has often been made. ⁵⁴ However, as previously noted, this requires a nuanced analysis. We should not assume that trust seen as justified in a particularistic way is fully justified trust. To be sure, the former version of trust may be based on reasons that both A and B consider good, so they may share those reasons; however, those reasons may be immoral. We fail to understand the dynamics of social and political trust if we do not recognize that chauvinistic, racist, sexist, nationalistic, or other exclusionary and discriminatory forms of trust are regarded as justified by agents who hold such views. Therefore, a high level of trust in government is normatively good only if that government deserves that kind of trust in a principled way and not through the partial lens of what may be a majority, who, for example, regard an aggressive war or an act of terrorism as an act of anti-fascist liberation. Conceptually speaking, however, such forms of authoritarian trust are also forms of trust. ⁵⁵

As argued above, to analyze the normative justification of trust relations, we must resort to specific standards of justification relevant to the required contexts. At the same time, we must maintain a critical distance toward such contextual norms in order to aim at full justification. The general, context-transcendent standard for this points to a basic normative quality of trust relations as relations of justification: the recognition of A, B, and others concerned as (roughly) equal subjects of justification, as agents with a basic right to justification, understood as the right of normative equals to question the reasons that others have for expecting us to act in a certain way or their reasons for acting in a certain way. ⁵⁶ Trust is a relationship between agents who have reasons to trust and to be trustworthy; therefore, a relation of trust always presupposes a relation of reasons—in the case of fully justified trust, good reasons between persons respecting each other as equals. Trust is fully justifiable when the right to justification is mutually and generally accepted, which excludes certain forms of betrayal, instrumentalization, and discrimination and exclusion. Mutual respect as agents with a right to justification establishes a basic platform of trust on which more specific forms of trust can emerge. Essentially, it is the basis for rational trust, since it implies reciprocal recognition as reason-using and reason-giving rational beings of equal standing. That is why I call it “noumenal trust,” indicating that it is trust between agents who use and respect their faculty of practical reason. Without this kind of trust and recognition—that the other is to be respected as responding to reasons—no fully justifiable form of trust could emerge.

In the literature on trust, various attempts have been made to define what Onora O’Neill calls the “reasonable” placement of trust, ⁵⁷ linking it to the recognition of principled autonomy. Annette Baier proposes what she calls the “expressibility test” for evaluating the moral quality of trust relations. This test applies to the reasons of A as well as B and implies that a trust relationship is morally decent if “its continuation need not rely on successful threats held over the trusted, or on her successful cover-up of breaches of trust.” ⁵⁸ Baier rightly argues that in all contexts—relationships of love and care, as well as professional relationships—trust requires the possibility (not the actuality) of transparency and mutual justification of expectations and actions. There are no hidden motivations on the part of A or B; justified trust is based on reasons that can be openly communicated. Thus, “knowledge of each party’s reasons for confident reliance on the other to continue the relationship could in principle also be entrusted.” ⁵⁹

However, Baier does not discuss the difference between particularized, partial forms of such intersubjective justification and a more comprehensive, critical form that appeals to a wider public. I call the latter generalized or full justification. Mark Warren suggests a model for the latter in the political context with his “publicity test,” which states that “a trust relationship is legitimate just to the extent that it could be justified to all those affected by its externalities” ⁶⁰ —that is, “the reasons for the relationship should be available and justifiable to those affected.” ⁶¹ It is important to emphasize that (not only in political contexts) the justifiability of a trust relationship rises, stands, or falls with the quality of the justificatory relationship between A and B: the secure standing of A and B as justificatory partners and the quality of the reasons for (or against) trust and for (or against) acting in a trustworthy way. In other words, the ultimate basis of justified trust is noumenal trust in the capacity of reason in others—reason understood as the capacity to seek and act for justifiable reasons. ⁶²

The relation of trust has been shown to be one of justification, and justified trust exists when the quality of this relationship is high. We could call this a reflexive account of justified trust. However, this does not mean that a successful trust relationship must be explicitly highly reflexive about the reasons that motivate people; what is essential is that it could withstand the test of explicit public justification. This is why the right to justification, as a (moral) basic right, is foundational for fully justified trust.

Political Trust and Conflict

If this approach to assessing the quality of trust is sound, then we have taken an important step toward understanding the relationship between trust and conflict. As argued previously, trust relations establish cooperation with the conscious risk of failure. At the same time, trust assumes a degree of certainty amidst uncertainty; that is, it requires a sufficient level of justification for the trust situation to arise. Trust reckons with conflict and the possibility of failure or betrayal. Thus, it requires justificatory relationships that reduce this risk to some extent and work alongside and within conflict. Often, in my view, these relationships arise in conflicts as parties seek ways to establish them in the face of actual or potential conflict. Generally speaking, justifiable trust arises in conflict when agents establish and experience a cooperative justificatory relationship with those with whom they disagree, perhaps strongly. This experience is often made possible by mediation and institutional framing, ⁶³ where trust in such frameworks, as frameworks of mutual justification, transforms conflicting parties into trusting conflict partners, at least to some extent.

The notion of conflict that I use is deliberately broad. It refers to a positional difference in interests regarding an important social or political issue. ⁶⁴ Conflicts can be triggered by differences over specific goals or over the means to achieve them; they can also reflect differences in interest over relatively or absolutely valued goods or disputes about general values and identities. ⁶⁵ The latter, also referred to as “indivisible” conflicts, are often considered difficult to resolve or mediate. In contrast, differences over material interests are considered “divisible” conflicts and thus are viewed as easier to address. ⁶⁶ However, many conflicts have both divisible and indivisible aspects, and participants’ perceptions of their interests can change during a conflict. ⁶⁷

But how can trust—defined as A’s positive expectation that B will be motivated and competent to act in a way that is conducive to (or at least not detrimental to) A’s interests—develop when the conflict is a conflict of interests? The key to understanding this lies in a separation of interests. Those involved in a conflict come to understand that certain interests, let us call them first-order interests, will remain contested and possibly be frustrated, but they also realize that certain higher-order interests will be secured through, say, a fair procedure of engagement in conflict.

This separation of interests enables the development of higher-order trust. In political contexts, Mark Warren refers to this as “second-order trust” in institutions “that channel political conflict into the democratic media of public discourse and voting.” ⁶⁸ Crucial here is that a relation of justification arises and persists in conflict—and is often established precisely because of and through conflict. These relations have several trust-building qualities: They secure agents a basic standing (thus providing security and voice), and, in cases of (fully) justified trust, provide venues of justification that channel conflicts in a fair and transparent way that can lead to compromises and new forms of understanding, if all goes well. ⁶⁹ This can also take the form of agreeing to disagree.

For trust to emerge in conflicts, the parties must conclude that others do not seek to dominate them—that is, that others continue to respect them as agents with equal rights to justification. For this to occur alongside the aforementioned separation of interests, a twofold form of communication must arise. On a first level, conflicting interests are expressed and fought for, while on a second level, a justificatory bond emerges that is recognized by the conflicting parties and that assures them that the conflict at hand is not all-encompassing—in other words, that it does not call into question or destroy the possibility of a common, cooperative life. The higher-order interest in this remains satisfied and secured. In this sense, productive conflicts can have socializing and rationalizing functions: They open up forms of cooperation within conflict, and the participants learn that disagreement and respect can coexist. They learn what they disagree about and what they can count on. The history of the development of forms of toleration is an example of such a learning process. ⁷⁰

Fully justified relationships of trust emerge and persist in situations of conflict when the right to justification (in a broad sense) is respected, despite and in light of the conflict. Consider all the institutional forms in which this occurs, such as basic legal rights to assert one’s rights in court, as well as in political processes and political mechanisms that seek to institutionalize conflict and establish fair terms of justification. Such trust does not require a “natural” or “identity-based” unity or bond, ⁷¹ but rather, a bond of mutual justification and communication in and about conflict. Conflicts reveal the meaning of such bonds. ⁷² This kind of trust is necessary for a democracy because, without it, people who lose out in debates and decisions would stop trusting their fellow citizens and the democratic system.

An important positive effect of social and political conflict is the establishment of forms of securing rights to justification that protect against various forms of domination and enable formerly excluded groups to exercise political power. ⁷³ Trust in conflict is fully justified when political life opens the doors to such processes of conflictual improvement and progress; ⁷⁴ merely partially justified forms of trust (and mistrust) develop where groups respond, for example, by defending social privileges. ⁷⁵ While fully justified political trust does not presuppose a fully just society, it does require a certain secure platform of democratic justice and political forms of conflict that opens the way for legal, political, and social improvement. Democratically justified trust cannot develop where others are not seen as (roughly equal) agents of justification but as mere instruments and where alienation prevails. ⁷⁶

For productive democratic processes to unfold, ideologically tainted uses of the concept of trust—such as that of the German Federal Constitutional Court in 2020 mentioned previously—must be overcome. The court considered it possible that, “from the point of view of an objective observer, the wearing of an Islamic headscarf during proceedings by a judge or public prosecutor can be seen to adversely affect ideological and religious neutrality and be attributed to the state,” which in turn could impair “trust in the neutrality and impartiality of the courts.” ⁷⁷ Thus, the Court concluded that bans by state authorities could be justified, even if they were not mandatory.

In my view, the court’s decision assumes a negative attitude on the part of the population as the view of an “objective observer” and advocates a one-sided understanding of state neutrality that favors those religious identities that are “invisible” in a conventional sense. The (socially widespread) prejudicial presumption that a visible Muslim identity is incompatible with a high legal office is thus given a normative weight that can override fundamental rights to non-discrimination—in this case, the freedom to practice one’s religion and to choose one’s profession. This presumption is given this power regardless of a person’s actual conduct in office or their qualifications. In other words, the court transforms a social prejudice into a normative reason and disregards the possibility that trust could be fostered in innovative ways through citizens’ experiences with a judge who is recognizable as a Muslim. Initially, they may view such a person with skepticism (whether as atheists, Christians, or feminists). However, they may come to recognize not only that religious believers, in this case Muslims, can interpret the law of a secular state appropriately—which should be an unbiased assumption anyway—but also that state neutrality, properly understood, should mean not denying such persons the right to hold judicial office across the board on the basis of social prejudice against a certain group.

This calls for a revised interpretation of the concept of state neutrality based on the principle of non-discrimination. ⁷⁸ It also requires the development and practice of a form of toleration based on fundamental rights, which includes the right to freely choose one’s profession according to one’s qualifications, independently of one’s ethical or religious identity. ⁷⁹ In this sense, conventional views about who can be a trustworthy public servant are overcome, and new ones emerge. Toleration then consists in respecting others as legal and political equals as a principle of democratic justice, even if one objects to their cultural or religious beliefs and practices.

This practice of tolerant respect for others as normative equals inherently involves a willingness to trust them. Typically, partial social trust develops along the lines of stereotypes and conventions, such as those just mentioned. However, through learning from conflict, it can evolve and transcend these conventions toward more justified forms of trust. As the republican constitution of Germany suggests, courts should open up and encourage such paths of progress. Neither such institutions nor science should mistake a sociological fact for a normative truth. That includes the science of trust research.

(Not) Trusting Trust

The perspective on trust that I propose can be described as a form of pragmatic constructivism, which seeks to explain how trust can arise in conflict. It stresses the epistemic components of conflict, such as identifying areas of disagreement and agreement, the experiential basis for developing trust, including initially surprising and then repeated experiences of shared interests despite conflicting interests, and the processual and progressive nature of creating new forms of legal, political, and social life that emerge from conflict and establish new plateaus of justification. The notion of institutions that is relevant here focuses on their trust-building components, such as establishing bonds or threads of justification within conflict—whether in legal proceedings or in democratic life more generally. These threads of justification that create trust are not defined a priori and fixed; institutional procedures can be redefined and changed to facilitate trust.

However, for critical theorists of trust, it would be a mistake to focus only on the cases of fully justified trust arising in conflict. There are (at least) two important alternatives. One is the production of distrust, which arises in various ways when there is doubt about the trust or the trustworthiness of agents. Such distrust may be justified or unjustified. ⁸⁰ The other alternative is the rise of particularistic trust, which threatens or destroys the possibility of developing generally justified trust. Some of these forms are authoritarian in nature ⁸¹ and possibly nationalist, sexist, or racist. In any case, they are exclusionary and lack respect for the right to justification of certain groups. Ultimately, these communities of trust are regressive, fighting against basic principles of respect and reasonable justification. ⁸² Where such partially justified communities of trust exist, those who are excluded have every right to be suspicious and resistant. The admonition to those engaged in such emancipatory struggles not to destroy a society’s “culture of trust” and to accept its conventional rules and forms of governance becomes oppressive and ideological, ⁸³ as in the previous case. Integration and cooperation through conflict, if justifiable, presuppose the justificatory equality of those involved. Conflict directed against exclusionary relations of trust may be necessary to establish the conditions for truly justified trust to emerge. ⁸⁴ Sometimes we must trust those who fight.