The relational preconditions of trust in collective action fields

Abstract

This article explores some relational mechanisms that may facilitate strong inter-organizational alliances, and the associated trust, in collective action fields. It departs from mainstream research on trust by focusing on organizations rather than individuals. The article focuses in particular on three mechanisms: embeddedness (i.e. the role of individual members’ multiple involvements as facilitators of sustained inter-organizational exchanges), familiarity (the role of previous interactions in facilitating cooperation and thus generating trust), and brokerage (the role of trusted leaders in bringing different organizations together). These mechanisms may affect trust creation in two different ways: by facilitating dyadic alliances between pairs of actors and by facilitating actors’ incumbency of the same network position, regardless of being directly connected. Illustrations come from data on environmental groups in Milan in the mid 1980s, civic organizations active on various public issues in Glasgow and Bristol in the early 2000s, and organizations active on the urban environment in Cape Town in the early 2010s. While the exercise is exploratory in nature, the relational mechanisms identified may represent some of the building blocks for a systematic explanation of alliance building and trust emergence. Moreover, data from urban polities with different levels of democratic consolidation and cleavage pacification illustrate the importance of adding a comparative element to our explorations of the relationship between trust and collective action.