GIVEN the preceding argument, which defined trust as a function of the agency of the social actor existing beyond systemically defined role expec- tations, and bearing in mind the growing body of work on “trust”* in eco- nomic and political theory, which views trust as a form of social capital that makes the creation of economic prosperity possible, it would seem impera- tive to bring our own understanding of trust to bear on more established usages and definitions, if only to test its viability and usefulness in under- standing the development of modern politics and society.1 To appreciate
whether this is indeed the case, the role of trust as an “important lubricant of the social system”—to use Kenneth Arrow’s expression (and recalling Alan Silver’s understanding of “sociability” with Adam Smith)—must be further specified.2 A number of recent comparative studies have stressed
just how central trust is to the structure of that associational life based on cooperation that makes economic development, if not civil society, possi- ble at all.
This was, for example, the focus of Robert Putnam’s recent and influen- tial analysis of different areas in Italy as well as of Francis Fukuyama’s recent analysis of economic growth in different nation-states.3The results
of these studies are surprisingly similar, the differences in the cases studied notwithstanding. Putnam has shown that where civil life and civic engage- ment are strong, citizens
are engaged by public issues, but not by personalistic or patron-client politics. Inhabitants trust one another to act fairly and to obey the law. Leaders in these regions are relatively honest. They believe in popular government, and they are predisposed to compromise with their political adversaries. Both citizens and leaders here find equality congenial. Social and political networks are organized horizontally, not hierarchically. The community values solidarity, civic engage- ment, cooperation and honesty. Government works.”4
* Quotation marks are used here to distinguish the accepted usage of trust in political economy from the definition we have been proposing. The aim of this chapter is, in fact, to bring these two usages together and to provide a specificity to the use of trust not often recognized in current writings on this subject. Within a few pages these distinctions in the usage of the term will be clarified. I have refrained, however, from cluttering all references to trust in established writings with quotation marks assuming the reader will easily distinguish between the different meanings attributed to the term.
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Opposed to these are those uncivic regions characterized by incivisme where
few people aspire to partake in deliberations about the commonweal, and few such opportunities present themselves. Political participation is triggered by per- sonal dependency or private greed, not by collective purpose. Engagement in social and cultural associations is meager. Private piety stands in for public pur- pose. Corruption is widely regarded as the norm, even by politicians themselves, and they are cynical about democratic principles. Compromise has only negative overtones. Laws (almost everyone agrees) are made to be broken, but fearing others’ lawlessness, people demand stronger discipline. Trapped in these inter- locking vicious circles, nearly everyone feels powerless, exploited, and unhappy. All things considered, it is hardly surprising that representative government here is less effective than in more civic communities.5
The difference between these two regions, ultimately, is accounted for by the presence or absence of civic traditions of mutual association and trust—as developed after the unification of Italy and rooted in norms that go back centuries. Trust, norms of reciprocity, and networks of civic en- gagement and association are all presented as crucial foci of social capi- tal; as symbolic media of exchange with real, practical value in enabling the operation and efficacy of the political (and economic) systems. In many ways Putnam’s analyses presents a latter-day validation (and theo- retical elucidation) of Banfield’s study of amoral familism among the Montegranessi in southern Italy. In that study Banfield showed how soci- eties so characterized were lacking in group or community interests, pol- iticians were corrupt with few checks on their actions, the law was disre- garded because there was no fear of punishment; therefore collective agreements were impossible to negotiate as was the possibility of orga- nizing collective action.6There too the root of these evils was in the ina-
bility of the social actors to subject themselves to a discipline of the group, which in this case meant establishing the institutions of an ex- tended family and networks thereof (the reasons for this failure are not our concern here).7
In a very different set of contexts but with strikingly similar con- clusions stands Fukuyama’s study of trust as the “art of association” and its role in the creation of economic prosperity. For Fukuyama trust is
the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest and cooperative behavior, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of other members of that community. Those norms can be about deep “value” questions like the nature of God or justice, but they also encompass secular norms like professional standards
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and codes of behavior. That is, we trust a doctor not to do us deliberate injury because we expect him or her to live by the Hippocratic oath and the standards of the medical profession.8
It is this trust which creates a moral community among social actors by providing a form of social capital that can only be acquired and utilized by the group as a whole and which allows for the existence of generalized trust among its members (as opposed to individual capital which can be acquired by individuals and used for the pursuit of private goods, such as education, training, etc.). Fukuyama sees this form of capital as differentially distrib- uted among countries with different capacities for association (Japan and Germany, for example, would be high and the contemporary U.S.A. low) and in different degrees within the same society (Middletown, U.S.A., i.e., Muncie, Indiana, would be high and inner-city ghettos like Harlem, low). Most of Fukuyama’s analysis stresses the role of communal solidarity, as exemplified most saliently in the Japanese corporation or kaisha, in the engendering of economic growth and prosperity through the establishment of mutual commitments to the collective endeavor (thus allowing for the maintenance of low transaction costs and in essence doing away with Olson’s “free-rider” dilemma as individual interests are reinterpreted as being “strongly identified . . . with that of the group”—recall here Taylor’s strong evaluations).9The case of Japan is presented as the paradigm case of
this type of collective organization and is then duly contrasted with other southeast Asian countries as well as with those in Europe and with the United States.
In many ways Fukuyama’s analysis points to conclusions very similar to those of Putnam, but also to important divergences which will have to be dealt with. But the broader point is the same in both, i.e., the high correla- tion between communal ties and a well-functioning social order (for Putnam, defined more in political terms and for Fukuyama, more in eco- nomic ones). The divergences as we shall see, are tied to the different forms of community which played a role in the different societies. Here, however, I wish to focus our attention on the analytic point involved in both studies: the way trust is used as essentially a form of social solidarity. In Fukuyama’s terms:
As a general rule, trust arises when a community shares a set of moral values in such a way as to create expectations of regular and honest behavior. To some extent, the particular character of those values is less important than the fact that they are shared: both Presbyterians and Buddhists, for example, would likely find they had a great deal in common with their co-religionists and therefore form a moral basis for mutual trust. . . . In general, the more demand- ing the values of the community’s ethical system are and the higher are the
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qualifications for entry into the community, the greater is the degree of solidarity and mutual trust among those on the inside. Thus Mormons and Jehovah’s Wit- nesses, who have relatively high standards for community membership like tem- perance and tithing, would feel stronger mutual bonds than, for example, con- temporary Methodists or Episcopalians, who allow virtually anyone into their communities.10
Trust then is identified with social solidarity as well as with something that arises when expectations of regular behavior are created. In the very am- bivalence of this definition we can, I believe, see the different elements of associational life, the foundations of social solidarity, that we have at- tempted to argue above: on the one hand, simple confidence in the system of role expectations (expectations of regular behavior) and on the other, the fact that these expectations themselves are induced by a shared or common identity (i.e., by the familiarity of strong evaluations)—in the above quote evinced by the commitment to a shared religious tradition, and, of major importance to the study as whole, to those of shared kinship, as is the case in Japan.
The sources of this social solidarity, as we know, can be very different. The civic solidarity of northern Italy is of a very different nature than the kinship-based solidarity of Japan. In both cases what trust qua social capi- tal means is the existence of strong bonds of association. These bonds, expressed as confidence in alter’s adhering to the “rules of the game” are rooted in a combination of confidence in the system together with the abil- ity to impute strong evaluations to alter’s intentions (i.e., familiarity). This familiarity of strong evaluations may, as in the case of Japan, be rooted in the continuation of a very particular type of kinship system into the modern industrial era, and this has been the exception and not the rule (witness not only the trajectory of Western European development but Fukuyama’s own astute remarks on the Chinese kinship system). Such familiarity, as Putnam’s study of modern Italy makes clear, may also be based on the establishment of a civic consciousness, that is, on strong evaluations based on a shared tradition of civic engagement rather than a generalized sib affinity. This point is, I believe, implicit in Fukuyama’s own dictum on Mormons and Methodists. The very “demanding values” of the communal ethical system make it possible to impute shared strong evaluations to one another in a manner impossible to more open (liberal-individualist per- haps) communities. Japanese, Mormons, and the good citizens of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy all share the capacity to impute strong evaluations to one another and through this action to overcome the process of social differentiation that defines the modern division of labor. The dif- ference between the strong evaluations of the first and third communities is
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the difference between what, in the Western context, was seen as the forms of mechanical and organic solidarity respectively.
If we take the Mormons as representative of a solidarity based on adher- ence to strong religious codes of conduct, we may see “them” (or rather that type) as an intermediary case in the development of Western models of solidarity; this was precisely Weber’s point in his study of The Protes-
tant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, where the trust necessary for the
establishment of market relations was occasioned by shared adherence to a rather rigid code of conduct. As Ernest Gellner has noted: “Protestant- ism in Europe made its adherents loyal to the norms of their calling, irrespective of advantage. (They did not think that other-worldly advan- tage could be bought, and did not wish to buy advantage in this world.) This made them individually and unconditionally trustworthy and thus, according to the theory [of Max Weber] they made the modern world possible.”11
In all cases we are essentially dealing with a form of what economists term “externality,” a good or commodity that enables further production of articles of worth that cannot in itself be traded on an open market. We are positing a “self-reinforcing” mode of behavior that obviates the neces- sity of any third-party enforcer to contracts.12It is this very property of
what the above-noted authors have termed “trust” that makes of it such a potent “system lubricant.” And as we have noted, the more system devel- ops and its roles differentiate, the more this lubricant must come into play for the system to continue functioning.
However, what is at work here is not trust as we have been laboriously trying to differentiate it from confidence or familiarity, but, in fact, famili- arity itself (as a mode of solidarity). This becomes clear when we recall the connection of familiarity to Taylor’s strong evaluations. For what made of strong evaluations strong evaluations is precisely that the identity of the actor is bound up with them. It is not an external preference orienta- tion (such as eating a chocolate eclair or mowing the lawn, which can be subjected to a rational calculation of costs-benefits and returns, i.e., losing a pound versus gaining a pound and the quality of my sports life which may ensue) but one bound up with my very sense of self. Strong evalua- tions are such strong self-reinforcing mechanisms because the very iden- tity of the social actor is tied to them. This too is why familiarity, based on kinship or shared circumstances or shared religious beliefs, is such a strong provider of associational life: because the collective good that is posited as of equal (or sometimes greater) worth than the individual’s in- terests is not seen as an external preference (and so given to rational calcu- lations) but as a constitutive part of the self.13This insight of how a sense
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by the external conditions of social interaction has been the focus of a fascinating philosophical inquiry by Bernard Harrison who reminds us that:
Morality is rooted more deeply in us than either social conditioning or nervous sensibility could root it, because its imperatives spring from the formal condi-
tions [my emphasis] for the existence of types of relationships into which individ-
ual human beings must enter with one another, because such relationships provide an essential framework around which the personalities and goals of indi- viduals organize themselves.14
Having said this, we must note that the familiarity of shared strong eval- uations, whether based on the ties of kinship or shared religious belief or any shared set of strong ideological commitments, provides what is essen- tially a form of solidarity, that is, a form or type of unconditionality: a mode of interaction not based on the ad hoc, one-shot-only workings of market exchange; “relations between actors which are not based on the direct, conditional, but on the indirect, long-range, give-and-take of ser- vices or resources and on the setting up of “titles” or entitlement to such resources or services.”15This symbolic credit is precisely what stands be-
hind the lubricatory metaphor of Kenneth Arrow and is what is at the root of all types of social capital (recall too the workings of iterated Prisoner Dilemma games in terms of this symbolic credit).16Crucially, social capital
(what Fukuyama and others have mostly called trust) is in essence no more than the forms of associational life based on different types of confidence in the workings of the system and its institutional arrangements. The social capital (i.e., confidence) itself rests on different types of unconditionalities, which is precisely what is provided for by the different terms of solidarity in its different forms. This relationship between the different terms may be represented as follows:
SOCIAL CAPITAL = Associational Life = Confidence (rests on)
UNCONDITIONALITIES = Principles of Generalized Exchange = Solidarity
The bases of society’s unconditionalities may be very different and here is where the element of trust—at least as we have been defining it, as a rather unique type of interactional matrix—comes into play. For while the famili- arity of shared strong evaluations may be based on kinship (as in premod- ern societies) or on shared religious belief (Weber’s Protestants and Fukuyama’s Jehovah’s Witnesses) or on the very existence of dense social networks (what may be termed familiarity simpliciter), it may also be
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based on that particular type of conscience collective that values the auton- omy and integrity of the individual actor. All are different forms of general- ized exchange, different bases of solidarity. The latter was of course that basis of solidarity that Durkheim posited in modern organic society. It is only in this latter form of solidarity, only within this latter principle of generalized exchange, that those particular forms of risk may emerge (i.e., those occasioned by the agency of the other) for which trust is a solution. Trust then emerges only in the later form of familiarity, as a necessary component of a very particular type of solidarity that we identify with mod- ern social formations. The emergence of trust as an aspect of modern forms of solidarity is of a very different order than the simple existence of princi- ples of generalized exchange upon which confidence in any social system must be based.
Generalized exchange, we recall, is to be distinguished from “specific” or market exchange in that, as opposed to the latter, it provides the “condi- tions of solidarity, the “precontractual” elements of social interaction which include the obligation to engage in social interaction and to uphold one’s obligations; or in other words, generalized exchange, if successful, helps to establish the conditions of basic trust and solidarity in society, to uphold what Durkheim has called the precontractual elements of social life”17(note again the habit to conflate trust with the principles of general-
ized exchange itself). The existence of generalized exchange was perhaps first noted by Marcell Mauss in his famous study of The Gift and has been developed in different ways within different anthropological traditions as distinctions between “general” and “specific” exchange (in the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss) or “generalized” and “balanced” reciprocity (in the works of Marshall Sahlins).18In both these authors what is contrasted is the
direct, immediate, and balanced reciprocity of items transacted (symbolic or material) as against a reciprocity that does not demand an immediate return or exchange of such items. In the latter case, a form of symbolic credit is granted to the receiver who benefits from the “trust” of the other partner to the interaction to offer a return in goods received at a later date. In this sense, and perhaps to stretch a point, every exchange partakes sym- bolically of the character of a gift in that reciprocity is not immediately expected.19