Network and Community Dynamics of Working Trust: A Comparative Panel Study of Institutional Leaders, 1995-2002

Effective communities are typically assumed to involve rich networks of trusting relationships that enable the community to sustain cooperation and achieve mutual goals. But such rich social ties are rarely, if ever, found in today’s urban communities. Nonetheless, sociologist Robert Sampson believes that trust is still vital in sustaining cooperative behavior in modern cities. The trust he has in mind, however, is not face-to-face trust among neighbors or generalized willingness to trust measured in social surveys, but rather a working trust among community leaders that enables the principle institutions within a community to mobilize their resources in the interest of a common good.

Sampson has interviewed over 1000 community leaders in 30 Chicago communities; first in 1995 and again in 2002. The leaders – from educational, business, religious, law enforcement, political, and community development organizations – were asked about working trust between community leaders, perceived trust in the reliability of organizations in each community, and generalized trust in other people, as well as their network ties with other community leaders and with power brokers outside of the community. Now, with support from the Foundation, he will analyze the data and report his findings in a book to be published by the Foundation. He will probe how different kinds of trust are related to the structure of networks among community leaders, and how poverty, segregation, and diversity affect trusting. In addition, Sampson will probe the question of whether variations in trust influence concrete outcomes for communities, such as crime levels and economic development.