This general background or atmosphere of trustworthiness makes not only the market but also social life more generally go much better than it would without such an atmosphere. Hence life in a harsh ghetto or in a society that has broken down into violence and rabid self-seeking, as in Somalia at the end of the twentieth century, is hampered by the prudent lack of trust and by the disastrous lack of institutions to enable joint enterprises to proceed even without much trust. Introducing trust in such a context would be pointless. What is required for a constructive atmosphere is trustworthiness, which cannot easily be established by individuals across a whole society that has destroyed it. Again, before trustworthiness can be established there must first be institutional safeguards against the potential for disastrous consequences of dealing with others so that people can begin to take the risk of cooperating in ways that, if successful, would lead to trust relationships.

XREF: Connects to the chicken-and-egg problem in institutional economics — how trust and institutions bootstrap each other in development contexts.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 849