How can we trust a political leader? Ethics, institutions, and relational theory
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512120913572 |
| Author | Markus Holdo |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512120913572
International Political Science Review
2022, Vol. 43(2) 226 –239
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512120913572
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How can we trust a political leader?
Ethics, institutions, and relational
theory
Markus Holdo
Uppsala University, Sweden
Abstract
That citizens can trust leaders in politics and the public sphere to be sincere and truthful helps to make
democracy work. However, the idea of authentic communication raises both sociological and ethical
questions. Scholars focusing on institutional conditions emphasize that audiences only have reasons to trust
speakers that appear to have incentives to be truthful, unless they know them personally. However, theorists
of ethics argue that authentic communication requires genuine commitment, which is conceptually at odds
with self-interested reasoning. This article finds that both incentives and genuine commitment are necessary
conditions for trustworthiness in speech, but neither is sufficient on its own. The problem is thus how to
combine them. Examining the work of Habermas and Bourdieu, this article develops a relational perspective
on authentic communication. It suggests that latent institutions can induce trust by making trustworthiness
preferable, and still allow speakers to earn citizens’ trust through genuine ethical commitment.
Keywords
Trust, speech, deliberation, Habermas, Bourdieu, relational sociology
Introduction
Scholars from various subfields of political and social theory have been drawn to the idea of
authentic communication, the type of interaction where speakers address listeners with sincerity
and truthfulness. While it has long been recognized that such communication contributes to social
cooperation and democratic self-rule, it is only recently that this phenomenon has caught the inter-
est of scholars examining citizens’ trust in leaders. Specifically, the works of Jürgen Habermas and
Pierre Bourdieu, which have previously inspired distinct literatures on deliberative democracy and
discursive domination, respectively, have informed analyses of leaders’ communication in party
politics, social movements, and public administrations. Habermas’ work has helped examine the
role that shared ethical commitments to sincerity and truthfulness play in leaders’ communication
(e.g. Holdo, 2019; O’Mahony, 2010). Scholars have drawn on Bourdieu’s work, on the other hand,
Corresponding author:
Markus Holdo, The Institute for Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University, Gamla torget 6, Uppsala, 753 20,
Sweden.
Email: markus.holdo@ibf.uu.se.
913572IPS0010.1177/0192512120913572International Political Science ReviewHoldo
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