There are forces that permeate our lives so deeply we cease to notice them. Air. Language. Trust. Every morning, getting into a car or a bus, we silently trust thousands of strangers: the people who designed the roads, calibrated the traffic lights, built the bridges, and are driving toward us without crossing into our lane. Walking into a shop, we almost automatically assume the product matches the label. Depositing money in a bank account, we expect it to still be there tomorrow. The entire architecture of modern society rests on precisely this invisible but absolutely real material: trust.
Philosophers, sociologists, and economists have long debated the nature of trust. Is it an innate instinct or a social construct — rational calculation or an emotional impulse? But on one point the debate is almost impossible: the importance of trust is enormous. Where it is high, societies become more resilient, wealthier, and freer. Where it has been destroyed, life becomes harder, more expensive, and more dangerous — in the most literal sense.
What Is Trust?
Trust is the willingness to accept vulnerability in the face of uncertainty. In trusting, we relinquish full control and accept risk: another person, institution, or system may behave quite differently from what we expect. And yet it is precisely this vulnerability that paradoxically makes us stronger. It allows people to cooperate, to build, to create, to move beyond individual survival.
The political scientist Robert Putnam, in his foundational work Making Democracy Work (1993), distinguished two types of trust: particularised trust — trust toward one’s own people, relatives, friends, members of a close group — and generalised trust, that is, trust toward strangers and society at large. It is generalised trust that becomes the social cement without which neither developed democracy nor a modern economy can exist. In a world where it is impossible to verify everyone and everything, trust is what allows us to act rather than being paralysed by endless, helpless caution. Without trust, quite literally, every interaction would require costly verification, protracted negotiation, and endless guarantees — which would still not be accepted as one hundred percent certain.
Trust and Social Capital
In his book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (1995), Francis Fukuyama demonstrated that countries with high levels of interpersonal trust have historically been able to create large and effective organisations. Conversely, low-trust societies tended to rely on family-based business structures and struggled to achieve complex cooperation.
Putnam developed this argument by analysing the differences between northern and southern Italy. Despite comparable formal institutions, the northern regions — with their dense networks of civic associations, sports clubs, and choral societies — showed far higher levels of governmental effectiveness and economic development than the southern territories, where social bonds were confined within family clans. The logic ran as follows: civic engagement generates trust, trust triggers cooperation, and cooperation produces prosperity.
Trust and Democracy
Democracy does not function without trust — indeed, it functions least of all without it. Elections make sense only when citizens believe in the honesty of the process. Courts are effective institutions only when they are trusted as independent arbiters. Parliament works only when society is convinced that legislators represent the interests of voters rather than exclusively their own.
The collapse of institutional trust is one of the most destructive processes in contemporary politics. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, the average global trust level in governments stood at around 51 percent; in NGOs at 59 percent; in business at 62 percent; and in the media at only 46 percent. In a number of countries, trust in state institutions has nearly halved over the past two decades. When people cease to trust institutions, they begin searching for substitutes: charismatic leaders, populist movements, radical ideologies. The history of the twentieth century demonstrated too convincingly that it is precisely on the rubble of trust that authoritarianism most readily takes root.
The link between social trust and people’s physical wellbeing has long been confirmed by epidemiological research. As early as 1995, Ichiro Kawachi demonstrated that American states with higher levels of interpersonal trust had noticeably lower mortality rates. The COVID‑19 pandemic made this dependence almost tangible: studies published in The Lancet and other medical journals showed that countries with high institutional trust were far more successful in achieving vaccination rates and compliance with restrictive measures.
The Russian Philosophical Tradition on Trust
Western sociology and economics began to take trust seriously as an analytical category comparatively late — only toward the end of the twentieth century. The Russian philosophical tradition had approached this subject much earlier, however: through the ideas of sobornost, the moral law, communal life, and personal responsibility.
Alexei Khomyakov, one of the founders of Slavophilism, developed in his writings of the first half of the nineteenth century the concept of sobornost (sobornost' — a key concept of Russian Orthodox theology and Slavophile thought, often translated as 'conciliarity' or 'communal unity'; it refers to the free unity of people in truth and love, based not on external compulsion but on mutual trust and shared spiritual rootedness) — the free unity of people in truth and love, grounded not in external compulsion but in mutual trust and shared spiritual identity. Khomyakov contrasted sobornost with Western individualism: where the West constructs bonds through contract and law, the Russian tradition seeks the organic mutual trust of the community. In a sense, contemporary sociologists who speak of 'generalised trust' as the foundation of social capital are merely rediscovering a thought Khomyakov formulated long before them.
Vladimir Solovyev approached the problem of trust through moral philosophy. In The Justification of the Good (1897) he insisted that social order cannot be built on law and compulsion alone — its foundation must be moral trust between people, growing from recognition of the dignity of each person. Relationships built exclusively on calculation and self-protection he regarded as a sign of the degradation of civic life.
Pyotr Kropotkin, in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), offered perhaps the view closest to contemporary science. He argued that mutual aid and cooperation — not competition alone — are the most powerful drivers of evolution and historical progress. Medieval guilds, peasant communes, and cooperative artels appear in his work as systems in which collective trust generates economic effectiveness unachievable by individuals. It is remarkable how closely these ideas anticipated the later conclusions of evolutionary game theory.
Nikolai Berdyaev posed the question still more sharply: trust is possible only where there is freedom. Compelled unity — state collectivism or a community imposed from above — does not create genuine trust, only its simulation. Today this thought reads almost as a challenging commentary on sociological data: interpersonal trust in post-Soviet Russia has been chronically low partly because decades of Soviet collectivism destroyed organic networks of trust, replacing them with surveillance, control, and fear. The Soviet person was trained not to trust — neighbour, colleague, state. And that mistrust was passed further down the historical chain as an innate cultural code.
Alexander Chayanov occupies a special place in this tradition. In his theory of the peasant economy he showed that the Russian artel (artel' — a traditional Russian cooperative work association, common in crafts, trade, and construction) and cooperative operated on principles that modern economics would call relational contracts. Participants acted not so much on the basis of formal agreements and hard sanctions as through reputation and mutual accountability within the community. This is precisely why such economic forms were often resilient: transaction costs within the trust circle were incomparably lower than in dealings with outsiders.
The Old Believers: A Living Model of the Trust Economy
The Russian Old Believers (Staroobryadtsy — Russian Orthodox Christians who maintained the pre-Nikonian liturgical practices after the 1666−1667 Church Council and were subsequently persecuted by the state and official church) are perhaps the best-documented example in Russian history of religiously rooted intra-group trust being converted into economic advantage. After the schism of 1666−1667 the Old Believers found themselves a persecuted minority — denied access to state service, restricted in their rights, and subjected to a double poll tax under Peter I. Yet by the mid-nineteenth century they controlled, by various estimates, between 60 and 75 percent of the textile industry of central Russia, as well as a significant share of trade and finance. The Morozovs, Ryabushinskys, Guchkovs, Konovalovs, and Soldatyonkovs — the greatest industrial and merchant dynasties of pre-reform and post-reform Russia — all came from Old Believer backgrounds.
The mechanism was simple and yet profound. The Old Believer community was built on absolute mutual accountability: every member was known to the others, reputation was his principal capital, and expulsion from the community meant not only religious but economic catastrophe. In conditions where state courts were hostile or inaccessible, the Old Believers developed their own dispute-resolution mechanisms through the authority of community elders. Contracts between members were honoured without notaries or bailiffs — because to break one’s word before a brother in faith meant losing everything.
Economic historians — notably Vladimir Kerov in his monograph on confessional factors in the formation of the Old Believer business mentality — have shown that Old Believer entrepreneurship rested on several trust mechanisms. First, compulsory mutual aid: a successful community member was obliged to support a newcomer. Second, informational transparency: a merchant’s reputation was an open book to every member of the network. Third, a long-term time horizon: an orientation toward otherworldly reward and reputation in eternity made short-term fraud irrational even from the standpoint of cold calculation.
The German sociologist Max Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, described a similar mechanism for Protestant sects in Europe and America: membership of a strict religious community served as a signal of reliability to business partners — even to strangers. Russian Old Belief operated by the same logic, and in the Russian conditions of the nineteenth century produced comparable, and in some respects superior, results.
For contemporary economic theory, the Old Believer experience is a natural experiment demonstrating that intra-group trust, supported by strong norms and reputation mechanisms, can dramatically reduce transaction costs and secure competitive advantage even under conditions of systematic state discrimination. Paradoxically, it was precisely the persecutions that reinforced Old Believer trust: external threat coheres a community and makes internal norms inviolable. Alexander Auzan, in describing the 'trust trap' of contemporary Russia, is in effect pointing to what Russia lacks: such communities with inviolable internal norms and genuine reputational mechanisms — but no longer confessional ones; civic and institutional ones instead.
Trust in Crisis
The contemporary world is experiencing a crisis of trust — and this is no metaphor. Social media has fragmented the information space into bubbles where everyone inhabits their own version of reality. Deepfakes undermine the very possibility of trusting one’s own eyes. Political polarisation turns fellow citizens into suspects. According to the Pew Research Center, the share of Americans who agree that 'most people can be trusted' fell from roughly 46 percent in the early 1970s to around 30 percent in the 2020s. And the paradox is this: by demanding ever-greater transparency and accountability, society frequently receives not a growth in trust but an expanding bureaucracy, a diffusion of responsibility — and a new spiral of mistrust. Trust is not created by decree. It grows out of practice — from consistent, honest, and competent action.
Trust as an Economic Resource
Western economists long ignored trust because it fitted poorly into the model of the rational agent. But it eventually became clear that ignoring it was impossible. Trust directly affects productivity, investment, transaction costs, and growth rates. Douglass North developed transaction cost theory — the theory of the costs that participants in economic relationships incur beyond the direct price of a good or service: costs of searching for information, negotiating, concluding contracts, monitoring performance, and litigation. In a low-trust society these costs become colossal. According to various researchers, in low-social-trust economies transaction costs may absorb between 25 and 45 percent of GDP.
One of the most-cited studies in this field remains the paper by Stephen Knack and Philip Keefer, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1997. Analysing data from 29 countries in the World Values Survey, they found a robust relationship between the level of interpersonal trust and economic growth rates. Their calculations showed that an increase of 10 percentage points in the trust index is associated with an acceleration of GDP growth of approximately 0.8 percentage points per year. Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales showed in 2004, using data from Italian regions, that where social capital and trust are higher, financial markets function more efficiently, households make greater use of cashless instruments, and investment is more active.
The Scandinavian countries provide an equally telling example. According to the World Values Survey 2022, the share of residents who agree that 'most people can be trusted' stands at around 74 percent in Denmark, around 73 percent in Norway, and around 68 percent in Sweden. These are precisely the countries that consistently appear at the top of rankings for GDP per capita, quality of life, and competitiveness. The correlation is too persistent to be coincidental.
The Financial System and Trust
The financial system is one of the most vivid examples of how trust becomes economic value. When Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, the immediate consequence was not simply the bankruptcy of one bank but the instant evaporation of trust. The interbank market virtually froze: banks stopped lending to each other even overnight, because no one knew who would be next. The result was the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Direct losses to global GDP in 2009 alone were estimated at approximately two trillion dollars.
There is also a less obvious but well-documented channel through which trust affects the economy: the cost of borrowed capital. Research by Luigi Guiso and colleagues showed that in Italian regions with higher social trust, companies borrow at lower interest rates. The yield differential between German bonds and the government debt of eurozone peripheral countries at the height of the sovereign debt crisis of 2011−2012 exceeded 5−7 percentage points. That was the price of trust and mistrust.
Trust Within Organisations: Labour Productivity
Trust operates not only at the level of countries and markets but also within organisations. Paul Zak, in research published in Harvard Business Review in 2017, showed that employees of high-trust companies experience 74 percent less stress, demonstrate 50 percent higher productivity, and are approximately 40 percent less likely to leave. According to Gallup estimates, low employee engagement costs the global economy approximately 8.8 trillion dollars per year — around 9 percent of global GDP. A significant part of this enormous sum is connected to the deficit of trust in the working environment.
Corruption as Anti-Trust
Corruption is institutionalised mistrust. When an official takes a bribe, they violate not only the law. They destroy the very belief that rules are the same for everyone, that justice can be obtained without money, that effort and competence matter at all. According to IMF estimates, corruption costs the global economy approximately two trillion dollars annually. But direct losses are only part of the story. Improvements in the perceived integrity of institutions are linked to growth in investment attractiveness and capital inflows. The difference between countries with high and low corruption indices is therefore not merely a difference in reputation but a difference in the cost of development.
The Digital Economy and the New Trust
The twenty-first century has introduced a new form of economic dependence on trust: the platform economy. Airbnb, Uber, and marketplaces exist only because millions of people are prepared to admit strangers into their homes, get into a car with someone they have never met, or buy goods from a seller on the other side of the world. The mechanism that makes this possible is reputational systems: ratings, reviews, identity verification. This is, in essence, technologically organised trust. Airbnb, valued at 47 billion dollars at its 2020 IPO, can be understood as a vast infrastructure of trust between strangers.
Alexander Auzan: The Trust Trap
Among Russian economists who have most consistently studied trust in the context of contemporary Russia, Alexander Auzan occupies a special place. His works — from The Economy of Everything (Ekonomika vsego) to Cultural Codes of the Economy (Kulturnye kody ekonomiki) — attempt to combine rigorous economic analysis with cultural studies and social psychology, in order to answer the painful question: why does the Russian economy repeatedly fail to realise its own potential?
Auzan’s central thesis is blunt and clear: Russia suffers not so much from a shortage of resources or formal institutions as from a critically low level of social trust, which makes reforms either impossible or prohibitively expensive. He describes Russia’s situation as a 'trust trap': low trust generates high transaction costs, high costs push business into the shadow economy, and the shadow economy undermines trust in formal institutions — completing the circle. According to estimates Auzan has cited in public lectures, the share of the shadow economy in Russia held at 30−40 percent of GDP for a long time.
Drawing on cross-cultural research from the World Values Survey, Auzan demonstrates that Russia consistently belongs among societies with high 'survival values' and low 'self-expression values'. This means an orientation toward security, caution, and risk-avoidance — at the expense of initiative, trust in strangers, and readiness for open cooperation. Auzan does not regard this as an immutable fate, but emphasises that such cultural codes change slowly — over generational timescales, not electoral cycles.
Auzan has repeatedly spoken of the concrete economic costs of mistrust. Where a routine transaction in Denmark or Germany takes weeks and costs a fraction of a percent of its value, in Russia it may stretch over months and cost many times more — due to multi-level counterparty checks, risk insurance, and comprehensive legal support at every stage. This is no longer abstract cultural analysis but the bare price of mistrust.
Another important concept of Auzan’s is personalised trust as a specifically Russian norm. People are willing to trust someone they know — a friend, a relative, a 'familiar' entrepreneur or official — but not an institution, a procedure, or a stranger. This model can function at small scale but barely allows the construction of large, complex, impersonal systems: corporations, developed financial markets, innovation ecosystems. The result is an economy that risks fragmenting into a network of local 'feudal domains' rather than consolidating into a unified competitive market.
Auzan’s position is not fatalistic, however. He emphasises that trust can be produced through institutions — but only if those institutions are genuinely independent and genuinely function. A court that delivers predictable rulings according to law produces trust. A court that acts on a phone call produces mistrust — even if it formally preserves every outward attribute. A regulator that protects consumers strengthens trust in the market. A regulator that serves favoured players destroys it. Auzan’s ultimate conclusion is not so much pessimistic as demanding: a cultural code is not a sentence. But it cannot be changed by a slogan. It requires honest acknowledgment of the problem, patience, and consistent institutional policy sustained over the length of generations.
How Trust Is Built and Destroyed
Trust does not arise from nothing. Its formation requires at least three interrelated conditions. The first is competence: a person or institution must genuinely be able to do what they promise. The second is good faith: they must want to fulfil their promise rather than pursue a hidden interest. The third is consistency: trust is built not by a single admirable act but by the repeated practice of reliable, stable behaviour. Even neurobiology shows that trust is literally inscribed in human experience. Oxytocin, the neurotransmitter associated with social bonds and attachment, is released in response to signals of trust and, in turn, enhances readiness to cooperate.
Destroying trust is far easier than building it. Psychologists call this the negativity bias: bad information carries more weight than good. A single episode of deception can cancel out dozens of examples of honest behaviour. This is precisely why political, corporate, and institutional scandals strike so hard. When Enron collapsed in 2001, it was not simply the failure of one company. It was a blow to trust in the financial reporting of an entire market. Within months the market capitalisation of American corporations fell by hundreds of billions of dollars, because investors asked the most dangerous question: who else can no longer be trusted?
The Political Economy of Trust
Trust, then, is not a soft value or a romantic abstraction. It is a hard economic reality that can be measured in GDP growth percentages, in the cost of capital, in billions of dollars of transaction costs, and in labour productivity levels. A high-trust society is one in which the costs of mutual monitoring and self-protection fall sharply. It is a world where contracts are honoured not because an army of lawyers stands over every deal but because breaking one’s word is regarded as unacceptable. It is an economy where investment is possible without triple insurance, where people do not hide money under the mattress but put it to work, where strangers can cooperate without the constant expectation of a catch.
Trust can be measured, analysed, and built. Which means that investments in trust are by no means expenditure on fine words. They are investments in making every transaction cheaper, in extending planning horizons, in the capacity to cooperate with strangers and to create complex forms of shared life. In other words, they are investments in society’s very capacity to become wealthier, freer, and more resilient.