Abstract
Even before trust became a buzzword, theoretical developments were made, which have instigated the development of two forms of trust which are described as personal trust and system trust/confidence. However, this distinction remained rather secondary in the overall literature. There is an overall lack on the historical developments of these forms of trust, their internal logic and how they interlink, overlap, or work against each other. The paper aims to advance these three aspects: first through a historical overview of the semantic of this distinction, followed by a theoretical reconstruction of the historical material and third by demonstrating how these theoretical concepts can be applied to political crises (Revolutions of 1989), thus revealing their logic and mutual interlocking.
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Notes
This approach is therefore different from Desportes (2006), who only raises linguistic questions.
“With fear the Christianization has to begin, fear has to accompany it, fear has to complete the sanctification” (Ljunggren 1921: 158, translation by the author).
That combination is during the Scholastic a common version (see Jaeger and Eughien 1957: 239, footnote 2).
http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/collat2.html [13. November 2008] “Tertia pars perfectionis timoris Domini consistit in perfecta fiduciae firmitate; quia timor Domini est firmitatis et fiduciae turris”. St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio: Conferences on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Conference II: On the gift of the fear of the Lord, Paragraph 21.
“Ad tertium discendum quod fiducia, sicut dictum est, importat quemdam modum spei: est enim fiducia spes roborata ex aliqua firma opinione/Confidence, as has been stated, implies some form of hope: for confidence is hope strengthened by a firm supposition” (Thomas 2006: 2a2ae. 123–140, 129, 6, 3).
Locke rarely uses the word contract; compact and agreement are more common.
In the case of political power, see Locke (2002: 136).
A notion of trust develops, which is closely related to time, in particular to the future of social relations. The future is, however, not secured through normative or religious patterns but through open endeavour (no knowledge exists to determine the future). It is under these conditions that trust and risk become partners (see Simmel 2004: 480).
Whilst it is a commonly held view that the general confidence in the economy is low, this should not reflect on general principles of economy at large, rather on the localised markets and specific profit seeking strategies.
Conditionality is here used in the sense of limiting or constraining as a general structuring (see Ashby 1968). In relation to language, it is important to note that conditioning refers to a specific tradition of system learning deriving from behaviourism and not to a state or legal application, like an unconditional surrender. This paper deals with the term conditioning in the sense of structuring contingent situations.
Luhmann speaks therefore of confidence than system trust in his later oeuvre (see Luhmann 1988).
Another more recent case, which would also be of interest, is the economic crises and financial turbulences in 2008 (see Tonkiss 2009, Earle 2009). A group of individual banks were drawn into the spotlight. They did, however, not cause a collapse of confidence in the economy but events led to undermining the trust in banks, in particular between them.
The paper focuses mainly on Poland, GDR, and Hungary. Other countries such as China or Romania are mentioned as well, but to a lesser extent. It also only addresses the role of trust before 1989 (for role of trust in post-communist nation-states, see Marková 2004; Mishler and Rose 2005; Sapsford and Abbott 2006). The conference ‘Trust/Distrust in the Soviet Union’ at the UCL in February 2012, did not address the changes in the 1980s. Perhaps, the upcoming conference ‘Trust and Distrust in the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union, 1956–1991’ at the UCL in September 2012, will provide a different perspective.
Sztompka is surely one of the key authors in the area of trust with regard to Eastern Europe. However, his research is mainly concerned with the creation of honesty and trust in post-socialist nation-states and not how trust contributed to their collapse. He simply claims that pre-1989 there was distrust on all levels of society (see Sztompka 1996b). This picture results from an overemphasis on system trust and not enough attention being paid to the personal networks and similar structures in which personal trust is based.
It also does not recognise the different outcomes in China after the counterinsurgency of the student revolt.
Former uprisings in the GDR, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic had been suppressed militarily.
For the importance of trust in relation to the Church and the state in other East European countries see Mureşan 2006.
In China, the university and some intellectuals performed a similar role (see Francis 1989; Gu 1998). The universities and intellectuals were mainly based in the urban centres which caused a rather limited spreading of trustful networks especially to the remote rural areas of China. The political centre or the higher levels of the government still enjoyed trust, whereby the lower levels were distrusted. Therefore, some of the dissatisfaction arose at levels which were not the ones criticised by the student’s revolt (see Li 2004). Thereby spill-over effects were limited.
In Hungary the development was rather different. In many of the East European countries there appeared a so called second sphere alongside economics, politics, culture, publicity, and so on. The political liberalisation during the 1950 s in Hungary meant that in later years this sphere was probably the most developed within the former socialist countries. These spheres were mainly organised through patron/client networks of mutual trust. The Elite and the general public could establish a sense of general trust, and a more liberal form of economic, political, cultural, etc., actions could be practised. More and more of the institutional decision-making mechanisms were hoisted into the sphere of these patron/client networks. When the political system struggled in the 1980 s and then collapsed, the transformation could rely very much on these networks. The high inclusion of the members of the networks excluded others and the implementation of other social structures. This contributed to forms of nationalistic (family semantics) commitment and intolerance (see Seligman and Füzer 1994). This difference and focus, whether to trust or to have confidence, seems to be a problem in the work of Robert Putnam (1992). Therefore, he does not consider in a sufficient way that there is no lack of trust in south Italy. On the contrary, those thick networks of trustees undermine the institutional structures and as a proof of trustworthiness, they are avoided. Also, the higher levels of administration are left as an out-group because they are viewed as untrustworthy. Putnam does not recognise, due to the missing separation into trust and confidence, that trust can cause forms of social sclerosis.
Such networks are the main sources for overcoming the barriers to participation (see Klandermans 1987: 527).
The networks of personal trust not only contributed to an erosion of confidence but also prevented errors of the system from being transformed into issues of self-confidence, i.e., it is their fault and not mine (see de Vries et al. 2003).
That has similarities to a panic which is caused by the overcoming of specific thresholds. Like it is known from a mass panic, one only runs when 20 run but someone else runs not before 100 run. If one of these barriers are breached a mass panic starts. Thus, a panic is not a linear accumulation but marked by a crossing of such border step by step. With more trust, more people feel secure to speak up and when more speak up others feel secure to join them and so on (see Mayntz 1988).
For example, this caused an increase in political interest and the voter turn-out during the elections in 1974 (see McLeod et al. 1977).
This personal reference seems to be of great importance in developing trust. There are a few people, who might possess a great reputation. Their expertise and handling of problems (the structuring of contingent issues) leads to the formation of personal trust, e.g., your doctor treating your health problems. The impressions of this modus operandi in its daily business might help to anchor the embedding of confidence. As a result, there is no need to be treated by the same doctor to solve your problems but you can be treated by any doctor (see Rehman et al. 2005).
Not until the Reagan administration was this form of personal trust really refreshed (see Citrin and Green 1986: 446).
Deborah Welch Larson reports another similar case in which distrust can create the conditions for trust, the Soviet and US negotiations about nuclear weapons (see Larson 2004: 37).
Here processes of mediation and self-regulation are addressed (see Arnold and Kay 1995).
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Acknowledgments
For helpful comments on previous versions of this article, I would like to thank Christel Lane, Göran Therborn, Frens Kroeger, Claus Offe, Martin Endreß, and two anonymous reviewers. All mistakes and omissions are of course my own.
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Dr. Christian Morgner is lecturer in sociology at University of Lucerne (CH). He held visiting scholarships and positions at various universities, including the University of Cambridge, Sotheby’s Institute London, Yale University, and EHESS, Paris. He has published on issues of global communication, sociological, theory, political sociology, and culture/arts. He currently works on a project about the globalisation of the arts and on political interactions.
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Morgner, C. Trust and Confidence: History, Theory and Socio-Political Implications. Hum Stud 36, 509–532 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-013-9281-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-013-9281-1