Two Concepts of Trust

Debates around political trust, notwithstanding ostensible disagreements, have converged on a conceptualization that is more psychological and economic than political. By contrast, classic debates in the history of political thought featured an agency-centered approach revolving around two concepts of trust, the discretionary and the accountable. Exploring the dynamic tension between discretion and accountability and restoring the latter to its historic significance for democratic theory would remedy some defects of the recent literature on trust. In particular, some rational-choice studies, though bearing important criticisms of alternative accounts of trust, have settled on vague and potentially self-defeating prescriptions for psychologically distrusting and institutionally disempowering government.