How do societies control trust relationships that are not embedded in structures of personal relations? This paper discusses the guardians of impersonal trust and discovers that, in the quest for agent fidelity, they create new problems. The resulting collection of procedural norms, structural constraints, entry restrictions, policing mechanisms, social-control specialists, and insurance-like arrangements increases the opportunities for abuse while it encourages less acceptable trustee performance. Moreover, this system sometimes leads people to throw good "money" after bad; they protect trust and respond to its failures by conferring even more trust. The paper explores the sources and consequences of the paradox that the guardians of trust are themselves trustees.

XREF: Connects to broader literatures on institutional trust, principal-agent problems, and the paradox of trust in modern governance. QUESTION: What specific guardians or institutions exhibit this trust-abuse paradox, and how does escalation of trust after failure perpetuate it?

Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Imper…, loc. 1