Cooperation Without Trust?

9. Trust in Transition

166 Chapter 9 Trust in Transition W E HAVE noted that cooperation built on trust relations and established within one context or for one particular purpose does not necessarily translate into cooperation in other contexts or for other purposes. Networks of trust can easily become networks of distrust ; those within the network are trusted and those without distrusted. In this chapter, we synthesize these claims and attempt some general statements about the processes that take place when individuals cannot, with confidence, turn to the state or well-defined organizations to protect them. We illustrate the limits of building or relying on trust relations as the basis for creating well-ordered societies. We observe, once again, that the recognition of the pervasiveness of distrust may be a better assumption than the importance of trust for constructing the organizations and institutions that enable us to cooperate. The problem of cooperation is particularly acute in large-scale transitions in the polity, economy, and society that destroy or transform institutions , organizations, social networks, and even personal relationships. The high instability that accompanies transitions undermines many of the bases for reliable expectations about the behavior of others. There is reduced certainty about who is likely to be trustworthy or with whom one can cooperate productively. Trust relations themselves are in transition. We do not systematically analyze every kind of transition. Nor do we provide a typology of transitions and their effects on trust relations, trustworthiness , reliability, and cooperation. Rather, our intention is to show how our conceptual apparatus can contribute to understanding the conditions under which interpersonal trust leads to or obstructs cooperation during and in the aftermath of transitions.1 By doing so, we clarify the importance of alternatives to trust and trustworthiness, and we highlight the relatively small role that trust relations play in social, political, and economic life. In this chapter, we focus on three of the devices that can produce trust relations, trustworthiness, and alternative bases for cooperation: embed- dedness in ongoing and dense personal relations; social networks; and organizations and institutions with means to ensure the reliability of those with whom individuals would like to trade, collaborate, or safely interact. Transitions revise expectations about the likely behavior of others because they increase uncertainty and alter the settings in which people interact, hold each other accountable, and build reputations. Transitions typically transform the tasks and expertise that are required and therefore necessitate revisions in judgments of competence. When they discredit old values or bring new values into play, they also require revised judgments of motivations. Perhaps most importantly, transitions alter power relationships, which affect not only cognitive appraisals of who is trustworthy or reliable but also access to resources and information. Thus, transitions significantly modify what people know or believe about each other, and therefore their perceptions of who is trustworthy or reliable. Transitions include a wide range of phenomena. Even the governmental shifts that occur regularly in parliamentary and presidential democracies or the ups and downs of the stock market might count as transitions, for they assuredly produce uncertainties. Our focus here, however, is on two kinds of transitions; both are characterized by the obliteration of many, if not most, past bases of stable expectations about the interests, motivations, and competence of those once trusted or considered reliable. The first is extensive migration experienced by an identi fiable group within the larger society. The second is a regime shift that involves societywide change. Migration is an important case because it allows us to consider the role played by trust relations or alternative devices when people move to a new economic and political context. Regime shifts, both economic and political , permit analysis of the breakdown and reconstruction of institutions and other arrangements for promoting cooperation. Both kinds of transition also raise issues about when trust is constructive and when it is detrimental to harmonious intergroup relations, widespread exchange, and productive cooperation. Migration and regime shifts exemplify a wide range of large-scale problems for which many policymakers and social analysts have advocated trust-building. We suggest that the role of trust relations is limited. Indeed, trust relations are often a barrier to the integration of different groups into a society, the development of effective markets, state-building, and widespread and productive cooperation. Massive migrations tend to transform family and community structures and change power and status hierarchies. They nearly always require adaptation to new economic and governmental institutions. Given that the nature and guarantees of trustworthiness change, individuals...