Conceptualising shallow trusting in international relations: the dynamism of everyday practices in global south climate governance

Questions of trust and mistrust have always been at the heart of the conduct of international relations, yet existing scholarship tends to assume a need to move towards an idealised endpoint of ‘deeper trust’ and largely overlooks the dynamism of everyday practices of trusting in Global South contexts characterised by complex reliance. This creates important empirical and conceptual blind spots. We develop a practice-centred account of trusting and introduce the concept of shallow trusting to capture how cooperation is sustained in relations of structural asymmetry. Drawing on 17 key informant interviews with practitioners in Malawi, we identify three co-constitutive practices of trusting: committing, identifying, and sensemaking. We show how these practices are enacted in limited ways and shaped by power relations, making collective action possible even when actors do not share intentions, identities, or understandings. Our conceptualisation challenges prevailing assumptions in climate governance and calls for a rethinking of donor-Global South interactions in addressing urgent global challenges.