Social Traps and the Problem of Trust

Extract

Social Traps and the Problem of Trust. By Bo Rothstein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 256p. $80.00 cloth, $30.99 paper.

How do you get from Moscow to Stockholm? That is, how do you create efficient, honest government like that of Sweden as opposed to the incompetence and corruption found in Russia? This question drives Bo Rothstein into an analysis of the causes of social traps—situations where actors cannot cooperate due to mutual distrust, even if cooperation is mutually beneficial. Eliminating social traps requires generalized trust, that is, social capital. How does one engender trust? Robert Putnam, both in Making Democracy Work (1993) and Bowling Alone (2001), argues that social capital is created through civil society, a process that bubbles up through history and culture. Rothstein takes this view to task for not analytically distinguishing between associations (a behavior) and trust (a belief), for it is really the belief that needs to be generated. Trust, in his view, need not evolve organically from below; it can be generated from above by establishing efficient political institutions. If public officials are corrupt, citizens will infer that people in general are dishonest and behave dishonestly themselves. Thus, social traps are sprung. The reverse is also true: Honest governance begets social trust.