Trust in a Polarized Age Lib/E

by Kevin Vallier

Americans today don't trust each other and their institutions as much as they once did. The collapse of social and political trust has arguably fueled our increasingly ferocious ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. But is today's decline in trust inevitable or avoidable? Are we caught in a downward spiral that must end in institutional decay or even civil war, or can we restore trust through our shared social institutions?

In Trust in a Polarized Age , political philosopher Kevin Vallier offers a powerful counter-narrative to the prevailing sense of hopelessness that dogs the American political landscape. In an unapologetic defense of liberalism that synthesizes political philosophy and empirical trust research, Vallier restores faith in our power to reduce polarization and rebuild social and political trust. The solution is to strengthen liberal democratic political and economic institutions--high-quality governance, procedural fairness, markets, social welfare programs, freedom of association, and democracy. These institutions not only create trust, they do so justly , by recognizing and respecting our basic human rights.

Liberal institutions have safeguarded trust through the most tumultuous periods of our history. If we heed the arguments and data in this book, trust could return.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Political Science

Audio CD

First published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Otto Lehto · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In his insightful book, Trust in a Polarized Age, Kevin Vallier (2021) convincingly shows that the legitimacy and sustainability of liberal democratic institutions are dependent upon the maintenance of social and institutional trust. This insight, I believe, has value beyond the illustrious halls of post-Rawlsian, post-Gausian thought. Indeed, while I remain skeptical towards some of the premises of public reason liberalism, I am convinced that any liberal democratic political philosopher who takes the trust literature seriously and who has made their (pragmatic or principled) peace with redistribution has good reasons to sympathize with the general outlines of the institutional palette that emerges out of his book. (...)

A core insight of public reason liberalism is that even people who have deep and intractable disagreements may come to agree on a basic rights structure. Vallier has convincingly shown that this may include, among other things, a system of universal, simple, and nondiscriminatory social insurance. His Hayekian institutional recommendation for a welfare state of law is appealing to many liberal scholars who care about agreement-in-diversity. The contemporary literature on basic income experiments lends credence to the contention that “we should probably want to err on the side of universal welfare programs to help the poor and marginalized” (p. 143). Ample evidence, both empirical and theoretical, demonstrates the beneficial effects of minimally conditional programs like Social Security and Bolsa Família and fully unconditional programs like Universal Basic Income and the Negative Income Tax. However, whether public reason liberals should prefer conditionality or unconditionality remains unresolved. (...) Conditional benefits may be easier than UBI to justify to a public whose members have strong moral and economic objections to people freeriding off the labour of others. Economically speaking, they often require lower taxes than a full-blown UBI. (However,) unconditional programs have some distinct advantages as well. Some people may have strong reasons in favour of unconditional benefits that are able to effectively support the real freedom of the recipients, strengthen the rule of law, revitalize bottom-up civil society engagements, and eliminate contentious partisan struggles over the scope of “acceptable” conditionalities. The data from the Finnish, Canadian, and other basic income studies seem to suggest that unconditional programs might produce beneficial effects on institutional trust, faith in the future, and other crucial socioeconomic metrics that are similar to or greater than those of conditional programs. Giving people “free money” may correlate with elevated levels of social and institutional trust. Picking a program like Brazilian Bolsa Família or the U.S. Social Security may be a good starting point for building public convergence. However, unconditional programs may end up appealing equally well, or even better, to multiple diverse viewpoints. I therefore tentatively agree with Buchanan and Congleton’s (1998, p. 151) assessment of conditional and means-tested benefits as a “false god” that even the most intransigent sceptic groups, including libertarians and conservatives, should be persuadable, under some empirical assumptions, to abandon, without having to change their basic principles. However, maintaining an open mind is a virtue in this complex and dynamic world. A full and final judgment remains as elusive as ever."

(Excerpt from my review article "Institutional Trust, the Open Society, and the Welfare State," Cosmos&taxis, VOLUME 11, ISSUE 9 + 10, pp. 14-29)

[Jeffrey Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavy on the logos, moderate on the ethos, too mild on the pathos for my tastes.

A worthwhile look into the many social and political phenomena that correlate with trust, alongside some likely contributors for what fosters this key virtue. Vallier offers a rather thorough defense of public reason liberalism and how liberal rights practices might offer a way forward for a liberal, democratic order—specifically the US—to renew its most foundational institutions.

[Jan Bos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating depth, but so theoretical I had trouble finishing the book.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very verbose an academic, what your warranty about.