Not having confidence in the state leads to not trusting other individuals in many contexts, because the state cannot be relied upon to prevent the worst possible outcomes from various joint endeavors and contractual relations. Rather than risk such outcomes, individuals may refrain from cooperating at all. Hence by wrecking the conditions for trust between pairs of individuals or families, the Spanish could substantially reduce the prospects of cooperative endeavors to oppose or hinder their rule (Pagden 1988). In this, Spanish Italy and contemporary American prisons have much in common.

XREF: Echoes the mechanism of prison social dynamics and fractured trust under unpredictable authority; parallels Hobbesian and game-theoretic accounts of coordination collapse.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 492