Trust in Conflict. Notes on a Research Program

The ConTrust research initiative challenges the conventional wisdom that trust is antithetical to conflict. Instead, ConTrust posits that under certain social and institutional conditions, trust can also emerge in and through conflict. To lay the groundwork for this agenda, this working paper develops a basic concept of trust that is the foundation for more specific conceptions of trust. Furthermore, it distinguishes between justified and unjustified trust, introduces a notion of social integration through conflict, highlights the role of uncertainty and crisis in contemporary trust dynamics, and outlines avenues for studying trust formation in contexts of political, socio-economic, epistemic, and security conflict. Through this work, ConTrust seeks to advance our understanding of how modern pluralistic societies (and international orders) generate trust in the relative absence of shared norms and values, and to provide guidance on how conflict can be organized and shaped in ways that are productive of trust.