Trust, Democracy, and Multicultural Challenges

Chapter 2: Trust as a Foundational Democratic Value

2 trust as a foundational democratic value The thesis of my book is that trust is important to social and political communities , in particular to the cooperation and reciprocity that typically underpin communities when they function for the good of their members. The previous chapter examined the methodologies employed by social scientists who are concerned with the concept and phenomenon of trust. These methodologies make connections between the existence of trust and the smooth functioning of communities both large and small: they typically find that the more trust is present, the more likely it is that members will cooperate with one another , and therefore the more smoothly these communities will run. But these studies tackle the role of trust in political relations only indirectly , and in particular, only in democratic political relations. As such, no argument is made that clearly places trust (or the lack of trust) at the center of democratic politics, even if the research is concerned to provide insights for social and political relations in democratic communities more generally. The objective in this chapter is therefore to provide a systematic argument for placing trust at the heart of democratic politics. I suggest that the voluntary compliance required in order for democratic institutions to function, and for citizens to implement and abide by democratically determined legislation, depends on trust. Democratic theorists generally agree that voluntary compliance with democratically established rules is central to democratic efficacy. The purpose of the chapter is to illustrate that trust is at the heart of collective voluntary compliance, by suggesting that it is central to the three basic features of a democratic system of governance: power transition, representative government,andminorityprotection.Anyattempttobuildamorerobust, egalitarian democracy will depend at least on the effective functioning of these three features. trust as a foundational democratic value || 39 Trust and Voluntary Compliance There is more than one explanation for citizens’ apparent willingness to abide by shared rules. On one view, states generate a set of regulations, and there are punishments of various severities associated with breaking these regulations that serve as incentives to abide by the sometimes inconvenient or disagreeable regulations. States with powerful police forces and militaries can afford to institute unpopular legislation with the knowledge that they have the resources to enforce compliance aggressively; these states can, therefore, operate without widespread trust. A stronger version of this view emphasizes that widespread trust is not only unnecessary, but is also in some ways problematic for the efficient running of a state system. On this Hobbesian view, trust is a liability rather than an asset, since widespread trust allows for rampant free riding in such a way that some citizens are suckered into extending trust to untrustworthy cocitizens and, in particular, to untrustworthy political actors. Coercive institutions, therefore, uniquely serve to combat free riding, and without coercive institutions to protect citizens from one another’s untrustworthiness, widespread (but naïve and misplaced) trust will quickly be undermined. Coercive power in a democracy is limited in its capacity to secure compliance , however, and so democratic authorities must rely on the willingness of (most) citizens to defer to their decisions under most circumstances. As is well known, decisions made by democratic institutions (and legislators) are difficult to enforce. In order for democratic decisions to regulate the behavior of citizens and to govern their interactions, citizens must voluntarily comply with them.1 If citizens withdraw their compliance, democratic authorities in general would be hard pressed to coerce them (aggressively) into doing so. While it is true that democratically-made laws cannot be thought of entirely as obligations that are voluntarily incurred, and while it is likewise true that violation of these laws is subject to punishment, it remains the case that in order for a democracy to work effectively, citizens must consistently choose againstfree riding onthewillingcompliance ofothers,especially “insituations where they are fairly certain of escaping detection.”2 There are two questions that arise here. First, why would citizens agree to abide by democratically made decisions? Second, what is needed in order for citizenstoabidebythem?Thefirstisnotthemainconcernhere,thoughwecan see that in general democratic decisions are imbued with a certain kind of legitimacy .Theoristsattributethislegitimacytovariousaspectsofdemocracy:its 40 || trust, democracy, and multicultural challenges fair procedures, its beneficial outcomes, its fundamental acceptance of the equality of all people. Thus, one very important reason why democracies are successful over time is that the decisions made within democratic institutions are perceived to be legitimate, and this perception is...