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4 public culture and trust Earlier chapters suggested that trust is central to democratic political activity , and that even if a political community can sustain a certain degree of distrust for some time, distrust is by and large inimical to democracy. We now turn to an assessment of the source of trust in democratic political communities . Although there is disagreement among political theorists on this point, many do agree that shared norms and values play an essential role in sustaining democratic communities—the sum total of these shared norms and values is frequently termed the “public culture” of a democracy. This chapter offers a qualified defense of the public culture argument, namely, the argument that liberal democracies function well primarily when its institutions are supported by a public culture of the right type. In chapter 3, we saw that trust is not merely an important feature of democratic success, but that it is also a necessary feature of democratic survival. Here I shall argue the following: a public culture, properly articulated, can be a genuine and meaningful source of the trust that plays a critical role in sustaining liberal democratic social and political institutions over time. Typically, it is merely assumed without question that a public culture is a source of trust, and this assumption opens the argument to a range of objections to which it appears not to have the resources to respond. A careful evaluation of the reasons why a public culture can give rise to trust makes it less vulnerable to critics who prefer to equate the public culture with homogenizing and marginalizing tendencies . That said, a preliminary caveat is in order: a public culture, while being an important source of trust, is not the sole source of trust; moreover, not all public cultures are able to serve as a source for trust. The chapter aims, therefore , not simply to account for why a public culture can underpin trust relations , but also to offer an account of the features it must possess in order to 76 || trust, democracy, and multicultural challenges do so; in offering this account, I shall also shed light on why and when public cultures fail to act as a source of trust. The chapter begins with an outline of the public culture argument, and why we might think that public culture can serve as a source of trust. Two general critiques are then refuted. The first critique suggests that democracies do not require a public culture in order to function effectively; all that is required is a shared commitment to liberal institutions. The second critique suggests that a public culture is too thin to underpin democratic politics; for those who launch this critique, public culture is merely a community of sentiment , and sentiment alone is insufficient to explain why citizens are obligated to one another. I then evaluate a more sustained attack on the public culture argument, according to which public cultures are not, and cannot be, a reliable source of trust. It shall become clear that this latter critique fails, even if it does suggest that the public culture argument needs a restatement, and this restatement will occupy the second half of the chapter. The Public Culture Argument For many liberal democratic theorists, one important feature of the state is that its members share a range of characteristics, among them a set of beliefs and values that are reflected in what is generally called a shared public, or political, culture. Specifically, a public culture refers to “a set of understandings about how a group of people is to conduct its life together.”1 Often the set of understandings includes an ethical component, as Francis Fukuyama has emphasized: we can think of a public culture as composed of, or as producing, “inherited ethical habits” among members.2 When people have a public culture—when people share a set of understandings about how their collectivelifewillprogress —theywilllikelyfeelboundtogethernotbecausephysical or material necessity demands it, but rather because they share a “dense web of customs, practices, and understandings.”3 This view of public culture has been accused of being unreasonably thick, demanding, and homogenizing, but there are three distinctive features of the public culture that should assuage these criticisms: it does not require uniformity of all beliefs, it is publicly determined and expressed, as a result of which it is fluid rather than static over time. In the next section I will offer an account of why the public culture can give rise to trust; here my first...

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