Regulation and (Dis)Trust: Exploring a Complex Relationship

This paper summarises the analytical frameworks, questions, and empirical findings of a forthcoming volume on trust and regulation. It begins by defining the key concepts used, notably trust, distrust, and regulation, and by offering a typology of possible trust-regulation relationships. Such relationships include parallel or divergent independent evolutions. They also include mutually undermining or reinforcing interdependencies. Then, the paper sets out theoretical material used to study trust-regulation relations, which concerns trust of whom in whom or what, and at what level. Thereafter, it relates the empirical findings of the volume, as well as of other analyses not belonging to it, to wide questions about how trust and regulation relate to one another. It organises these findings in two section, first discussion how regulation can help build trust, and then how it can maintain it in challenging times and repair it after trust breakdowns.