Bolstering societies’ resilience through high social trust levels
This FRS working paper outlines how social contracts and social trust are key building blocks of social resilience.
Societies around the world have to work on their capacities to remain resilient in the face of all sorts of adversities. Robust technical and financial infrastructures as well as well-functioning social contracts between citizens on the one hand and governments on the other hand matter.
The paper - Download Strengthening Social Resilience–The Importance of Trust (PDF, 653 KB) - outlines how social contracts help societies. Social contracts are described as providing people with a basic sense of security and fairness, as lubricants for collective and reciprocal behaviour, and as a common pooling of costs and risks in a society.
Social trust, a more abstract concept, refers to trust relations in a society. This ranges from trust among and across citizen communities and social groups (horizontal social trust), and trust between citizens and formal institutions and systems of authority (vertical social trust).
This paper argues that social trust is a prerequisite for effective social contracts and hence for social resilience. It outlines salient factors that strengthen or weaken social trust on the individual and collective level and recommends 'trust archetypes' as an instrument to promote trust in social contracts.
Photo Credit: Premshree Pillai (Flickr)
This working paper was authored by Isabel Chin, Research Assistant in FRS’ Module 5; Dr Jonas Joerin, Co-Director of the FRS Programme; and Prof. Dr Renate Schubert, PI in FRS’ Module 5 (Social and Financial Resilience).