A taxi driver’s life is dangerous work. Picking up a bad customer can leave the driver in a vulnerable position, and erring even once can prove fatal. To protect themselves, taxi drivers must quickly and accurately assess the trustworthiness of complete strangers. In Streetwise, Diego Gambetta and Heather Hamill take this predicament as a prototypical example of many trust decisions, where people must act on limited information and judge another person’s trustworthiness based on signs that may or may not be honest indicators of that person’s character or intent. Gambetta and Hamill analyze the behavior of cabbies in two cities where driving a taxi is especially perilous: New York City, where drivers have been the targets of frequent and violent robberies, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, a divided metropolis where drivers have been swept up in the region’s sectarian violence.

Based on in-depth ethnographic research, Streetwise lets drivers describe in their own words how they seek to determine the threat posed by each potential passenger. The drivers’ decisions about whom to trust are treated in conjunction with the “sign-management” strategies of their prospective passengers—both genuine passengers who try to persuade drivers of their trustworthiness and the villains who mimic them. As the theory that guides this research suggests, drivers look for signs that correlate closely with trustworthiness but are difficult for an impostor to mimic. A smile, a business suit, or a skullcap alone do not reassure drivers, as any criminal could easily wear them. Only if attached to other signs—a middle-aged woman, a business address, or a synagogue—are they persuasive. Drivers are adept at deciphering deceitful signals, but trickery is occasionally undetectable, so they must adopt defensive strategies to minimize their exposure to harm. In Belfast, where drivers are locals and often have histories of paramilitary involvement, “macho” posturing often serves to deter would-be criminals, while New York cabbies, mostly immigrants who view themselves as outsiders, try simply to minimize the damage from attacks by appeasing robbers and carrying only small amounts of cash.

For most people, erring in a trust decision leads to a broken heart or a few dollars lost. For cab drivers, such an error could mean losing their lives. The way drivers negotiate these high stakes offers us vivid insight into how to determine another person’s trustworthiness. Written with clarity and color, Streetwise invites the reader to ride shotgun with cabbies as they grapple with a question of relevance to us all: which signs of trustworthiness can we really trust?

DIEGO GAMBETTA is Official Fellow of Nuffield College and professor of sociology at the University of Oxford.

HEATHER HAMILL is lecturer in sociology at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St. Cross College.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

"The Russell Sage project on trust has been one of the most intellectually fecund enterprises anywhere in the social sciences over the last five years. This latest compendium of the fruits of that project is a wonderfully rich introduction to the research frontiers in the rapidly evolving study of trust, ranging across approaches as diverse as political philosophy, anthropological field work, microeconomic theory, and comparative survey research."
-ROBERT D. PUTNAM, Harvard University

"Drawing insights from a variety of social science disciplines, each essay in Trust in Society is a gem in its own right, but together, the package of chapters underscores how much we know about the dynamics of trust, and yet, how much there is to learn. It is rare for a book to stimulate a scholarly agenda for further theorizing and research, while at the same time, to provide so many leads for public policy and practice. I recommend this book to my fellow theorists, to researchers in search of important new lines of inquiry, and to policymakers.Trust in Society has something for all."
-JONATHAN H. TURNER, University of California, Riverside

"Trust in Society brings together a broad set of scholars from multiple disciplines, all of whom have something insightful to say about trust. Trust plays a crucial role in all social relationships as varying as those of incorporating immigrants in a society, building trust among members of corporate team, or creating a viable congregation. Readers from all disciplines will find many chapters that they can immediately use in their own research and in teaching graduate and undergraduate students."
-ELINOR OSTROM, Indiana University 

Trust plays a pervasive role in social affairs, even sustaining acts of cooperation among strangers who have no control over each other's actions. But the full importance of trust is rarely acknowledged until it begins to break down, threatening the stability of social relationships once taken for granted. Trust in Society uses the tools of experimental psychology, sociology, political science, and economics to shed light on the many functions trust performs in social and political life. The authors discuss different ways of conceptualizing trust and investigate the empirical effects of trust in a variety of social settings, from the local and personal to the national and institutional.

Drawing on experimental findings, this book examines how people decide whom to trust, and how a person proves his own trustworthiness to others. Placing trust in a person can be seen as a strategic act, a moral response, or even an expression of social solidarity. People often assume that strangers are trustworthy on the basis of crude social affinities, such as a shared race, religion, or hometown. Likewise, new immigrants are often able to draw heavily upon the trust of prior arrivals—frequently kin—to obtain work and start-up capital.

Trust in Society explains how trust is fostered among members of voluntary associations—such as soccer clubs, choirs, and church groups—and asks whether this trust spills over into other civic activities of wider benefit to society. The book also scrutinizes the relationship between trust and formal regulatory institutions, such as the law, that either substitute for trust when it is absent, or protect people from the worst consequences of trust when it is misplaced. Moreover, psychological research reveals how compliance with the law depends more on public trust in the motives of the police and courts than on fear of punishment.

The contributors to this volume demonstrate the growing analytical sophistication of trust research and its wide-ranging explanatory power. In the interests of analytical rigor, the social sciences all too often assume that people act as atomistic individuals without regard to the interests of others. Trust in Society demonstrates how we can think rigorously and analytically about the many aspects of social life that cannot be explained in those terms.

KAREN S. COOK is the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology at Stanford University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Michael Bacharach, Jean Ensminger, Diego Gambetta, Robert Gibbons, Russell Hardin, Carol A. Heimer, Jack Knight, Roderick M. Kramer, Gerry Mackie, David M. Messick, Gary Miller, Victor Nee, Jimy Sanders, Dietlind Stolle, Tom R. Tyler, Toshio Yamagishi.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

"As a primer in quantitative political research, this book is without peer. As an analysis of local politics in Mexico and Argentina, it has rarely been equaled. This book should be read by every social scientist. It is a classic example of what the discipline of political science can and should be."
-CHOICE

"This is an excellent contribution to the literature on trust and democracy. The empirical focus of the previous literature on this subject has been almost exclusively on the advanced industrial democracies. Matthew R. Cleary and Susan C. Stokes fruitfully analyze this relationship in the very different context of Argentina and Mexico. They debunk the argument that interpersonal trust helps build solid democracies and persuasively argue that democracy hinges more on institutional trust. Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism has fascinating new data and makes important theoretical contributions."
-SCOTT MAINWARING, Eugene Conley Professor of Political Science and director, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame

"I was long skeptical that anyone would prick the trust balloon that has been flying high over democratic theory. But Matthew R. Cleary and Susan C. Stokes have done so with verve and data, teaching us why the experience of democracy leads attentive citizens to expect venal politicians. Democratic life according to this perceptive study is sustained by rational skepticism rather than interpersonal trust."
-DAVID LAITIN, James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science, Stanford University

Some theorists claim that democracy cannot work without trust. According to this argument, democracy fails unless citizens trust that their governing institutions are serving their best interests. Similarly, some assert that democracy works best when people trust one another and have confidence that politicians will look after citizen interests. Questioning such claims, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism, by Matthew Cleary and Susan Stokes, suggests that skepticism, not trust, is the hallmark of political culture in well-functioning democracies.

Drawing on extensive research in two developing democracies, Argentina and Mexico, Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism shows that in regions of each country with healthy democracies, people do not trust one another more than those living in regions where democracy functions less well, nor do they display more personal trust in governments or politicians. Instead, the defining features of the healthiest democracies are skepticism of government and a belief that politicians act in their constituents' best interest only when it is personally advantageous for them to do so. In contrast to scholars who lament what they see as a breakdown in civic life, Cleary and Stokes find that people residing in healthy democracies do not participate more in civic organizations than others, but in fact, tend to retreat from civic life in favor of private pursuits. The authors conclude that governments are most efficient and responsive when they know that institutions such as the press or an independent judiciary will hold them accountable for their actions.

The question of how much citizens should trust politicians and governments has consumed political theorists since America's founding. In Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism, Matthew Cleary and Susan Stokes test the relationship between trust and the quality of governance, showing that it is not trust, but vigilance and skepticism that provide the foundation for well-functioning democracies.

MATTHEW R. CLEARY is assistant professor of political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

SUSAN C. STOKES is professor of political science at Yale University.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

"A significant contribution to the issue of trust in the state. The value of this book is that it presents a true dialogue, with all the major conflicting perspectives represented. It will certainly attract the attention of social scientists in a variety of disciplines who are working on some aspect of 'institutional theory."
GARY MILLER, Washington University in St. Louis

"Interest in the issue of trust has grown substantially in recent years, so this is a timely book that should receive a lot of attention across the social sciences. A very important collection of well-crafted essays."
-ELINOR OSTROM, Indiana University

An effective democratic society depends on the confidence citizens place in their government. Payment of taxes, acceptance of legislative and judicial decisions, compliance with social service programs, and support of military objectives are but some examples of the need for public cooperation with state demands. At the same time, voters expect their officials to behave ethically and responsibly. To those seeking to understand—and to improve—this mutual responsiveness, Trust and Governance provides a wide-ranging inquiry into the role of trust in civic life.

Trust and Governance asks several important questions: Is trust really essential to good governance, or are strong laws more important? What leads people either to trust or to distrust government, and what makes officials decide to be trustworthy? Can too much trust render the public vulnerable to government corruption, and if so what safeguards are necessary? In approaching these questions, the contributors draw upon an abundance of historical and current resources to offer a variety of perspectives on the role of trust in government. For some, trust between citizens and government is a rational compact based on a fair exchange of information and the public's ability to evaluate government performance. Levi and Daunton each examine how the establishment of clear goals and accountability procedures within government agencies facilitates greater public commitment, evidence that a strong government can itself be a source of trust. Conversely, Jennings and Peel offer two cases in which loss of citizen confidence resulted from the administration of seemingly unresponsive, punitive social service programs.

Other contributors to Trust and Governance view trust as a social bonding, wherein the public's emotional investment in government becomes more important than their ability to measure its performance. The sense of being trusted by voters can itself be a powerful incentive for elected officials to behave ethically, as Blackburn, Brennan, and Pettit each demonstrate. Other authors explore how a sense of communal identity and shared values make citizens more likely to eschew their own self-interest and favor the government as a source of collective good. Underlying many of these essays is the assumption that regulatory institutions are necessary to protect citizens from the worst effects of misplaced trust. Trust and Governance offers evidence that the jurisdictional level at which people and government interact—be it federal, state, or local—is fundamental to whether trust is rationally or socially based. Although social trust is more prevalent at the local level, both forms of trust may be essential to a healthy society.

Enriched by perspectives from political science, sociology, psychology, economics, history, and philosophy, Trust and Governance opens a new dialogue on the role of trust in the vital relationship between citizenry and government.

VALERIE BRAITHWAITE is associate director of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. She is also coordinator of the Trust Strand of the Reshaping Australian Institutions Project in the Research School of Social Sciences.

MARGARET LEVI is professor of political science and Harry Bridges Chair in Labor Studies, University of Washington, Seattle. She is also director of the University of Washington Center for Labor Studies.

CONTRIBUTORS: William T. Bianco,  Simon Blackburn,  John Braithwaite, Geofrrey Brennan, Martin Daunton, Russell Hardin,  M. Kent Jennings,  Mark Peel, Philip Pettit, John T. Scholz, Tom R. Tyler, Susan H. Whiting.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation's Series on Trust

"It is uncontested that cooperation varies with the ambient level of trust. What is less widely appreciated is that a great deal of cooperation is explained not by the generalized level of trust but by the bilateral efforts of the parties to a contract who perceive that their mutual interests will be served by crafting cost-effective mechanisms in support of ongoing relations. Such intentional efforts to support cooperation are referred to as 'credible commitments' by economists and as an 'encapsulated interest in trust' by the authors of this book. Because, moreover, these supports are provided in cost-effective degree, they will vary predictably among transactions, depending on the needs. Karen S. Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi demonstrate that such an approach to cooperation deepens our understanding of ongoing relations across a wide variety of social science phenomena. This book should be, and I am confident will be, widely read."
-OLIVER E. WILLIAMSON, Professor of the Graduate School and Edgar F. Kaiser Professor Emeritus of Business, Economics, and Law, Walter A. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

"Over the last decade, Professors Cook, Levi, and Hardin have masterminded one of the most productive collective scholarly endeavors in recent decades, exploring the contours and consequences of trust and trustworthiness in our collective lives. In this magisterial volume, they synthesize these contributions into a coherent and comprehensive account of this central concept. All subsequent investigations of trust will need to come to grips with this work, and all of us are in their debt."
-ROBERT D. PUTNAM, professor of public policy, Harvard University

"Is trust the central pillar of social order? Karen S. Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi respond in the negative. They argue that effective and reliable institutions are the essential foundations of contemporary complex societies rather than interpersonal trust. Their analysis is worth a careful reading by all scholars and citizens concerned with the sustainability of modern societies."
-ELINOR OSTROM, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Government, Indiana University

"Cooperation Without Trust? makes the provocative case that 'trust' is overrated. Working from a well-articulated definition of trust as a property of interpersonal relations, the authors challenge the notion that coordinating activities within complex societies requires high levels of trust and, indeed, suggest that, under certain circumstances, interpersonal trust can hinder large-scale coordination. They illustrate their points across a range of empirical settings, describing many modes of informal and institutional coordination that, they argue, make interpersonal trust increasingly expendable. This is a book of great clarity, imagination, and scope, speaking to scholars in fields as diverse as institutional economics, political organization, and social control. It belongs on a small shelf of essential readings on the classic question of social order in complex societies."
-PAUL DIMAGGIO, professor of sociology, Princeton University

Some social theorists claim that trust is necessary for the smooth functioning of a democratic society. Yet many recent surveys suggest that trust is on the wane in the United States. Does this foreshadow trouble for the nation? In Cooperation Without Trust? Karen Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi argue that a society can function well in the absence of trust. Though trust is a useful element in many kinds of relationships, they contend that mutually beneficial cooperative relationships can take place without it.

Cooperation Without Trust? employs a wide range of examples illustrating how parties use mechanisms other than trust to secure cooperation. Concerns about one’s reputation, for example, could keep a person in a small community from breaching agreements. State enforcement of contracts ensures that business partners need not trust one another in order to trade. Similarly, monitoring worker behavior permits an employer to vest great responsibility in an employee without necessarily trusting that person. Cook, Hardin, and Levi discuss other mechanisms for facilitating cooperation absent trust, such as the self-regulation of professional societies, management compensation schemes, and social capital networks. In fact, the authors argue that a lack of trust—or even outright distrust—may in many circumstances be more beneficial in creating cooperation. Lack of trust motivates people to reduce risks and establish institutions that promote cooperation. A stout distrust of government prompted America’s founding fathers to establish a system in which leaders are highly accountable to their constituents, and in which checks and balances keep the behavior of government officials in line with the public will. Such institutional mechanisms are generally more dependable in securing cooperation than simple faith in the trustworthiness of others.

Cooperation Without Trust? suggests that trust may be a complement to governing institutions, not a substitute for them. Whether or not the decline in trust documented by social surveys actually indicates an erosion of trust in everyday situations, this book argues that society is not in peril. Even if we were a less trusting society, that would not mean we are a less functional one.

KAREN S. COOK is the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology and senior associate dean of social sciences at Stanford University.

RUSSELL HARDIN is professor of politics at New York University.

MARGARET LEVI is Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust
 

“A central problem in economics, psychology, and sociology is the problem of trust. Trust is also the central problem of e-commerce. eTrust brings together social psychologists and communications scholars to capitalize on this insight and address the problem of trust in online settings with a combination of experimental methods and analyses of data from actual online systems (in some cases combining the two in innovative ways). The results illuminate our understanding of trust as a general phenomenon at the same time they cast new light upon e-commerce and bring valuable theoretical tools to students of the Internet.”
—PAUL DIMAGGIO, professor of sociology, Princeton University 

“Karen Cook and her coeditors have brought together a distinguished, international group of scholars to address a crucial issue of contemporary times: how do individuals form trusting relationships when using the Internet? This is an important and readable set of studies that build and extend prior work on trust based on face-to-face relationships.”
—ELINOR OSTROM, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, Indiana University

There is one thing that moves online consumers to click “add to cart,” that allows sellers to accept certain forms of online payment, and that makes online product reviews meaningful: trust. Without trust, online interactions can’t advance. But how is trust among strangers established on the Internet? What role does reputation play in the formation of online trust? In eTrust, editors Karen Cook, Chris Snijders, Vincent Buskens, and Coye Cheshire explore the unmapped territory where trust, reputation, and online relationships intersect, with major implications for online commerce and social networking.

eTrust uses experimental studies and field research to examine how trust in anonymous online exchanges can create or diminish cooperation between people. The first part of the volume looks at how feedback affects online auctions using trust experiments. Gary Bolton and Axel Ockenfels find that the availability of feedback leads to more trust among one-time buyers, while Davide Barrera and Vincent Buskens demonstrate that, in investment transactions, the buyer’s own experience guides decision making about future transactions with sellers. The field studies in Part II of the book examine the degree to which reputation facilitates trust in online exchanges. Andreas Diekmann, Ben Jann, and David Wyder identify a “reputation premium” in mobile phone auctions, which not only drives future transactions between buyers and sellers but also payment modes and starting bids. Chris Snijders and Jeroen Weesie shift focus to the market for online programmers, where tough competition among programmers allows buyers to shop around. The book’s third section reveals how the quality and quantity of available information influences actual marketplace participants. Sonja Utz finds that even when unforeseen accidents hinder transactions—lost packages, computer crashes—the seller is still less likely to overcome repercussions from the negative feedback of dissatisfied buyers.

So much of our lives are becoming enmeshed with the Internet, where ordinary social cues and reputational networks that support trust in the real world simply don’t apply. eTrust breaks new ground by articulating the conditions under which trust can evolve and grow online, providing both theoretical and practical insights for anyone interested in how online relationships influence our decisions.

KAREN S. COOK is Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology and the current chair of the sociology department at Stanford University.

CHRIS SNIJDERS is professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

VINCENT BUSKENS is associate professor in the Department of Sociology/ICS at Utrecht University.

COYE CHESHIRE is assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.

CONTRIBUTORS: Vincent Buskens, Coye Cheshire, Karen S. Cook, Chris Snijders, Judd Antin, Brandy Aven, Davide Barrera, Gary E. Bolton, Andreas Diekmann, Alexandra Gerbasi, Ben Jann, Tapan Khopkar, Azi Lev-On, Masafumi Matsuda, Uwe Matzat, Axel Ockenfels, Paul Resnick, Hiroyuki Takahashi, Yukihiro Usui, Sonja Utz, Jeroen Weesie, David Wyder, Toshio Yamagishi, and Noriaki Yoshikai.


A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

“This collection of essays from diverse scholars will become a standard reference book for those interested in the conditions generating trust and the effects of trust in interpersonal relations, groups, networks, organizations, and institutional systems. Taken together, the essays provide new explanatory insights on the properties and dynamics of trust at the micro, meso, and macro levels of social reality. Theoretical insights are illustrated with data collected by a range of methodologies and in a wide range of settings. Whom Can We Trust? is a book that will appeal to researchers and theorists within academia, but equally significant, it is a book that will prove useful to policy makers and applied social scientists dealing with real-world problems. Thus, for anyone interested in the mechanisms underpinning social relations and patterns of social organization, this book is a ‘must-read.’”
—Jonathan H. Turner, University of California, Riverside

“Whom Can We Trust? continues the highly successful Russell Sage Foundation series of volumes on trust. The central contribution of this volume is an examination of the factors facilitating trust-based cooperation. The chapters draw upon both laboratory and field research findings to provide a rich set of insights into the variety of social and institutional frameworks through which groups, organizations, and societies enable people to act based upon trust in others. This volume is relevant to everyone interested in the concept of trust but will be especially valuable to those whose focus is upon how to encourage cooperation in social settings.”
—Tom R. Tyler, New York University

Conventional wisdom holds that trust is essential for cooperation between individuals and institutions—such as community organizations, banks, and local governments. Not necessarily so, according to editors Karen Cook, Margaret Levi, and Russell Hardin. Cooperation thrives under a variety of circum-stances. Whom Can We Trust? examines the conditions that promote or constrain trust and advances our understanding of how cooperation really works.

From interpersonal and intergroup relations to large-scale organizations, Whom Can We Trust? uses empirical research to show that the need for trust and trustworthiness as prerequisites to cooperation varies widely. Part I addresses the sources of group-based trust. One chapter focuses on the assumption—versus the reality—of trust among coethnics in Uganda. Another examines the effects of social-network position on trust and trustworthiness in urban Ghana and rural Kenya. And a third demonstrates how cooperation evolves in groups where reciprocity is the social norm. Part II asks whether there is a causal relationship between institutions and feelings of trust in individuals. What does—and doesn’t—promote trust between doctors and patients in a managed-care setting? How do poverty and mistrust figure into the relations between inner city residents and their local leaders? Part III reveals how institutions and networks create environments for trust and cooperation. Chapters in this section look at trust as credit-worthiness and the history of borrowing and lending in the Anglo-American commercial world; the influence of the perceived legitimacy of local courts in the Philippines on the trust relations between citizens and the government; and the key role of skepticism, not necessarily trust, in a well-developed democratic society.

Whom Can We Trust? unravels the intertwined functions of trust and cooperation in diverse cultural, economic, and social settings. The book provides a bold new way of thinking about how trust develops, the real limitations of trust, and when trust may not even be necessary for forging cooperation.

KAREN S. COOK is Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology and the current chair of the sociology department at Stanford University.

MARGARET LEVI is Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle.

RUSSELL HARDIN is professor of politics at New York University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Abigail Barr, Bruce G. Carruthers,  Matthew R. Cleary,  Jean Enminger,  Henry Farrell,  Margaret Foddy,  Corina Graif,  James Habyarimana,  Philip T. Hoffman, Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey C. Johnson,  Roderick Kramer,  Stefanie Mullborn,  Gabriella R. Montinola,  Elinor Ostrom,  Daniel N. Posner,  Gilles Postel-Vinay,  Jean-Laureant Rosenthal,  Robert J. Sampson,  Irena Stepanikova,  Susan C. Stokes,  David Thom,  James Walker,  Jeremy M. Weinstein,  Toshio Yamagishi.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

"John Brehm and Scott Gates are two of the only political scientists working today who actually take an interest in how government organizations work and how to improve their performance. They also bring enormous talent and empirical sophistication to their efforts. The result in Teaching, Tasks, and Trust is a delight to read-good social science that addresses practical questions of the performance of government organizations."
-STEVE KELMAN, Albert J. Weatherhead III and Richard W. Weatherhead Professor of Public Management, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

"The dominant paradigm in the study of bureaucracy holds that the manager's job is to design incentives to shape the self-interested response of subordinates. Swimming against the tide, John Brehm and Scott Gates show that there is a lot more to it than that. Teaching, Tasks, and Trust demonstrates that there are a number of subtle but fundamental tasks that are key to successful management, including 'providing political cover' for subordinates in order to build trust. These are lessons that should (but probably won't) change the way management is taught in business or public policy schools."
-GARY MILLER, professor of political science, Washington University in St. Louis

The mere word “bureaucracy” brings to mind images of endless lines, piles of paperwork, and frustrating battles over rules and red tape. But some bureaucracies are clearly more efficient and responsive than others. Why? In Teaching, Tasks, and Trust, distinguished political scientists John Brehm and Scott Gates show that a good part of the answer may be found in the roles that middle managers play in teaching and supporting the front-line employees who make a bureaucracy work.

Brehm and Gates employ a range of sophisticated modeling and statistical methods in their analysis of employees in federal agencies, police departments, and social service centers. Looking directly at what front-line workers say about their supervisors, they find that employees who feel they have received adequate training have a clearer understanding of the agency’s mission, which leads to improved efficiency within their departments. Quality training translates to trust – employees who feel supported and well-trained for the job are more likely to trust their supervisors than those who report being subject to constant monitoring and a strict hierarchy. Managers who “stand up” for employees—to media, government, and other agency officials—are particularly effective in cultivating the trust of their workers. And trust, the authors find, motivates superior job performance and commitment to the agency’s mission. Employees who trust their supervisors report that they work harder, put in longer hours, and are less likely to break rules. The authors extend these findings to show that once supervisors grain trust, they enjoy greater latitude in influencing how employees allocate their time while working.

Brehm and Gates show how these three executive roles are interrelated—training and protection for employees gives rise to trust, which provides supervisors with the leverage to stimulate improved performance among their workers. This new model—which frames supervisors as teachers and protectors instead of taskmasters—has widespread implications for training a new generation of leaders and creating more efficient organizations.

Bureaucracies are notorious for inefficiency, but mid-level supervisors, who are often regarded as powerless, retain tremendous power to build a more productive workforce. Teaching, Tasks, and Trust provides a fascinating glimpse into a bureaucratic world operating below the radar of the public eye—a world we rarely see while waiting in line or filling out paperwork.

JOHN BREHM is professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

SCOTT GATES is research professor at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, and professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust