 |
|
Trust
Program Description
1995 was a big year for the concept of trust. Robert Putnam published an article entitled “Bowling Alone” in the Journal of Democracy, lamenting the decline of social connectedness and trust in America and warning of the serious consequences this trend could have for participatory democracy. And in his book Trust, Francis Fukuyama argued that trust between individuals is essential to a healthy economy. Research by these and other scholars suggested that social cooperation depends not only on formal institutions such as contracts and laws, but also on trust between individuals. To encourage research in this emerging field and to clarify the social, political, and economic implications of trust, RSF launched the Trust Initiative in November of 1995.
The Trust Initiative
supported an extensive effort to develop what was still an inchoate field of
research in the mid nineties. At the outset of the program, it was an open
question how trust should even be conceptualized. Is trust a state of mind, a
way of behaving, or a relationship between people? Some theorists claimed that
trust is a social virtue that cannot be reduced to strategic self-interest;
others argued that trusting another person is ultimately a rational calculation
based on information about that person and the incentives they face.
And there were major theoretical and methodological questions to be answered: What are the sources of trust? What role does trust play in supporting institutions such as the market economy or representative government? Is trust between friends analogous to the "trust" a government might be said to inspire in its citizens? Is more trust necessarily a good thing, and when is it unwarranted, naive, and harmful? How can we best measure trust, and what kinds of evidence do we need to discriminate between rival theories?
In the first year of the initiative, RSF established the Trust Working Group to promote interdisciplinary discussions on basic issues in the study of trust. Led by Karen Cook (Stanford), Russell Hardin (NYU), and Margaret Levi (University of Washington), the working group organized over a dozen conferences and workshops at Russell Sage and around the world, bringing together philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, historians, economists and psychologists. The working group also developed a highly successful series of books based on research funded through the Trust Initiative. Eleven of these books have been published so far, covering topics as diverse as democratic institutions in Latin America, taxi drivers in New York and Belfast, schools, international relations, the criminal justice system, and the evolutionary origins of trust. Another volume is in press, and eight more additions to the series are currently being considered or developed.
To strengthen the empirical basis of the field, RSF issued a request for proposals in 1999 for research on trust in specific social contexts, concentrating on solid measurement and explicit hypothesis testing. Altogether the foundation supported 48 research proposals. RSF also hosted 11 visiting scholars studying trust.
The initiative was brought to an official close in November of 2005, and RSF does not expect to make any new awards for investigator-initiated research on trust. However, RSF may occasionally consider additional trust-related book proposals of exceptional merit.