In organizations, checks can be set up which operate under a specified order to distrust, and here too place others, often even the people who are themselves controlled, in a position of trusting the functioning of this distrust. There are even roles, for example, those of researchers or judges, where, within the specific horizon of their task, trust is allowed to be treated as distrust, and where reports about trust are regarded with distrust. Trust in systems as a whole can, as we saw, depend decisively on trust being interrupted at critical points and distrust being switched on. Conversely, only in systems which are trusted can distrust be so institutionalized and restricted that it is not regarded as personal and reciprocated, so remains protected from escalating into conflicts.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 321