Trust Matters: Cross-Disciplinary Essays

This book examines the role of trust in public life. It seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of certain fundamental concepts in political and legal theory, such as the concepts of authority, power, social practice, the rule of law, and justice by furnishing and sharpening our concepts of trust and trustworthiness.

Bringing together contributors from across the social, cognitive, historical, and political sciences, the book opens up inquiries into central concepts in legal theory as well as new approaches and methodologies. The interdisciplinary contributions analyse the notions of trust, trustworthiness, and distrust and apply them to address a variety of problems and questions.

Foreword
Timothy Endicott, University of Oxford, UK
1. Introduction: The Virtue of Trust1
Raquel Barradas de Freitas, University of Oxford, UK


PART I
FORMALISING TRUST
2. Clearing the Jungle: Conceptualising Trust and Trustworthiness
Paul C Bauer, Manheim Centre for European Social Research, Germany
3. Who are We Trusting? A Category-Based Formalisation of Trust
Sergio Lo Iacono, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and Martina Testori, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
4. The Double-Edged Sword of Cooperation: The Vulnerability of Trusting and Trustworthy Behaviour
Burak Sonmez, London School of Economics, UK

PART II
THE VALUE OF TRUST
5. How Should We Relate to Each Other Politically? Love and Trust as Relational Ethics in the Political Realm
Max Harris, University of Oxford, UK
6. Democratic Politics and the Circles of Trust
Chiara Destri, Sciences Po, Paris, France
7. Trust in the Relationship between Indigenous People and the Canadian State
Annalise Acorn, University of Alberta, Canada
8. Public Trust(s)
Achas K Burin, University of Oxford, UK
9. On Voluntary Associations and New Avenues for Research on Social Trust
Neli Demireva, University of Essex, UK

PART III
TRUST, EVIDENCE, AUTHORITY AND THE LAW
10. Trust, Trustworthiness and Credibility in Relation to Testimonial Evidence at Common Law
William Twining, University College London, UK
11. Fabricating Authenticity: Trust and Trustworthiness in the History of Culture, from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Giuliano Mori, University of Milan, Italy
12. The Legal Significance of Theories of Public Trust in Science: An Illustration from Italy
Federico Brandmayr, Yale University, USA
13. Why Should Citizens Trust EU Regulatory Expertise? Legal Warrants, Science and Politics in EU Food Governance
Marta Morvillo, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
14. On the EU Legal Principle of Mutual Trust
Birgit Aasa, European University Institute, Italy

Raquel Barradas de Freitas is Research Lecturer in Law at Balliol College, Oxford.
Sergio Lo Iacono is Post-Doctoral Researcher in Social and Behavioural Sciences at Utrecht University.