Social Traps and the Problem of Trust

Rothstein, Bo

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511490323

Cited by 531 publications

(399 citation statements)

References 142 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

351

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In empirical research, studies have shown that social capital, defined as generalized trust in other people and access to social networks, is determined by the quality of the governmental institutions rather than the other way around (Delhey and Newton 2005;Rothstein 2005). Moreover, it has been demonstrated that democracy in terms of the equal access to power (political equality) is not sufficient for good governance.…”

Section: Post-decision Functions and Normative Political Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, output impartiality is shown to be one of the most important factors for explaining good governance (Rothstein andTeorell 2008, 2012). Empirical scholars have found that impartial and effective executive institutions matter more than representational institutions for how satisfied citizens are with their democratic government (Dahlberg and Holmberg 2014).…”

Section: Post-decision Functions and Normative Political Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Political Legitimacy of Global Governance and the Proper Role of Civil Society Actors

Erman

2017

Res Publica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, two claims are made. The main claim is that a fruitful approach for theorizing the political legitimacy of global governance and the proper normative role of civil society actors is the so-called 'function-sensitive' approach. The underlying idea of this approach is that the demands of legitimacy may vary depending on function and the relationship between functions. Within this functionsensitive framework, six functions in global governance are analyzed and six principles of legitimacy defended, together constituting a minimalist account of political legitimacy. This account suggests that civil society actors may strengthen political legitimacy by performing five of these functions under certain conditions and insofar as the proposed normative political principles are fulfilled: problem identification, agenda-setting, implementation, enforcement and monitoring, and evaluation. The second claim is critical and is chiselled out against the backdrop of this function-sensitive account, through which I demonstrate that much vagueness and confusion with regard to the proper role of civil society actors for strengthening the political legitimacy of global governance could be traced to the so-called 'transmission belt' model, which has gained popularity in international political theory. This model depicts civil society as a transmission belt between the public sphere and decision-making loci, where it is assumed that civil society actors contribute to the strengthening of political legitimacy by transmitting peoples' preferences, beliefs, and opinions from the former to the latter space by indirectly or directly influencing the decision-making. It is argued that this picture is misleading and generates erroneous prescriptions of how civil society actors should act to increase political legitimacy.

show abstract

Section: Post-decision Functions and Normative Political Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Post-decision Functions and Normative Political Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Legitimacy of Global Governance and the Proper Role of Civil Society Actors

Erman

2017

Res Publica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Personal trust towards relatives and friends may still be important in every day personal interactions, but society is no longer based on personal relations held together by personal trust. Generalized or extended trust among strangers is the adequate form of trust in a depersonalized society of strangers (Uslaner, 2002;Rothstein, 2005;Reiser, 1999). Some authors present this form of trust as moralistic since it is not based primarily on personal experiences, but can be considered as "the belief that others share your fundamental moral values and therefore should be treated as you would wish to be treated by them" (Uslaner, 2002: 18).…”

Section: IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

Friendship, Trust, and Politics: Shifting Meanings of a Complex Relationship in Democracies

Hayoz¹

2016

RSR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In modern society, friendship seems to be relegated to the private realm. When friendship enters the public space, it is usually associated with corruption. This is particularly the case when speaking about friends in politics, where friendship is part of informal politics which is focused on accessing or keeping political power. This relational aspect of political friendship must be distinguished from a more structural and institutional aspect of political friendship, which political philosophy presents in terms of civic friendship. This is the very meaning of the political, where a public space exists with the conditions that must be guaranteed for conflictual political communication or collective political action. In this sense, the idea and the theory of civic friendship points to the relational and organizational aspects of collective action, as well as to those shared norms that are expressed and negotiated in the public sphere. No serious sociological theory can ignore the fact that, nowadays, democracies in many regions of the world are put into question because it is no longer clear where the boundaries of trust, and therefore of citizenship are, or what holds people together, particularly in the context of globalization and immigration. In relation with the theories of trust, civic friendship is civil society, the civic and political culture about the practices and expectations in society about how to live, how to work together, how to communicate politically in order to influence politics, or how to change things. Finally, the political theory of friendship is also a warning against the abuse of power and the reintroduction of unity and enemies in a society based on the differences and multiplicity of perspectives.

show abstract

“…Persson, Rothstein & Teorell 2012). The same logic undergirds Acemoglu and Robinson's (2012) This leads to an even more difficult problem that has been labeled as a second-order collective action problem (Lichbach 1997;Ostrom 1998;Rothstein 2005). "All" the agents may well understand that they would stand to gain from establishing inclusive political and economic institutions, but they have little reason to cooperate unless they trust that most other agents would not defect in the very process of creating the institutions meant to facilitate cooperative behavior.…”

mentioning

confidence: 90%