Kevin Vallier: Must politics be war? Restoring our trust in the open society. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2019, 243p, USD 90.00 (hardback)

Excerpt

Trust has long been a focus of attention in branches of philosophy, political science, psychology, and economics including public choice. A thin concept of trust involves little more that behavioral predictability, thicker conceptions may involve appropriate motivation or be embedded in social institutions. We may be said to have trust in particular individuals, specific institutions, or a more generalized social and political trust. Trust is widely taken to play a key role in the operation of a wide range of practices and institutions. Self-reporting survey evidence collected in many countries over many years suggests that although measures of social and political trust are relatively high and stable in many countries, the level of social trust in the US is now relatively low and has been generally falling over recent decades The accumulated experimental evidence from trust games sometimes runs counter to the self-reporting data, but points to trust and trustworthiness well beyond that which might be expected from narrowly self-interested individuals. …