ABSTRACT This paper develops a two‐tiered account of office trust, the distinctive form of trust arising among officeholders within institutions. Shifting from typical accounts that emphasize interpersonal relationships or public trust in institutions, it examines trust internally, among institutional role occupants. I argue that office trust cannot be reduced to personal trust nor to mere reliance on formal obligations or rules. Rather, it emerges when officeholders perceive their roles as constitutively interrelated, and presume colleagues act from a pro officio attitude, a disposition oriented toward fulfilling responsibilities according to the institution's raison d’être . I distinguish between minimal office trust, which involves only this presumptive stance, and robust office trust, which additionally requires trustees to explicitly regard their being entrusted as a reason for action. Office trust, especially in its robust form, supports discretionary judgment and institutional adaptability precisely where rules are incomplete or silent.
Michele Bocchiola (Wed,) studied this question.