Trust, Institutions and Governance

These are a series of seminars for post-doctoral fellows, PhD students and the Mediated Trust research team on the theme of “Trust, Institutions and Governance”. The aims of the seminars are:

1. To ground the concept of trust in institutions and organisations, as an intermediate (meso) point between interpersonal and societal trust.
2. To consider leading theories of trust, truth and communication, and consensus, critical and conflict models of social order, and how they shape understandings of trust. 
3. To discuss institutionalism as a set of theories and methods that can inform the study of trust by grounding it in the historical development of social institutions. 
4. To consider the concept of governance as a way of understanding contemporary forms of politics, power and regulation. 

The seminars take place from August-November 2025 and are convened by Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow Professor Terry Flew at The University of Sydney. 

Week 1

Trust Foundations

Jack Barbalet, “The Experience of Trust: Its Content and Basis”, in M. Sasaki (ed.), Trust in Contemporary Society (Brill, 2019), pp. 11-30.

Anthony Giddens, “Trust and Modernity”, in The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press 1990), pp. 79-111.

Guido Mollering, “The Nature of Trust: From Georg Simmel to a Theory of Expectation, Interpretation and Suspension”, Sociology 35(2), pp. 403-420.

Week 2

Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas, 1992, ‘Further Reflections on the Public Sphere’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (MIT Press), pp. 421-460.

Jürgen Habermas, 2015, “Theory of Rationality and Theory of Meaning”, in Philosophical introductions: Five Approaches to Communicative Reason (Cambridge, Polity Press 2015), pp. 79-99.

Jürgen Habermas, 2022, “Reflections and Conjectures on a New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere”, in A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2023), pp. 1-59.

Christina Lafont, “Communicative Action”, in H. Brunkhorst, R. Kreide and C. Lafont (eds.), The Habermas Handbook (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), pp. 499-503.

Week 3

Niklas Luhmann

Niklas Luhmann, “Communications Media and Systems Trust”, in Trust and Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), pp. 53-67.

Christian Borch, “Social Systems”, in Niklas Luhmann (Abingdon: Routledge), pp. 19-50.

Barbara Misztal, “Reduction of complexity – trust in Niklas Luhmann’s writing”, in Trust in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 73-77.

Christian Morgner, “Trust and Society: Suggestions for Further Development of Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Trust”, Canadian Journal of Sociology 55(2), 2018, pp. 232-256.

Week 4

Chantal Mouffe

Chantal Mouffe, “Politics and the Limits of Liberalism”, in J. Martin (ed.), Chantal Mouffe: Hegemony, Radical Democracy and the Political (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 115-131.

Chantal Mouffe, “Politics and the Political”, in On the Political (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 8-34.

John Budarick, “Media, Democracy and Pluralism: Exploring a Radical Response to the Crisis of Journalism”, Journalism Studies 24(5), pp. 594-611.

Kari Kaarpinen, Hallvard Moe and Jakob Svensson, 2008, “Habermas, Mouffe and Political Communication: A Case for Theoretical Eclecticism”, Javnost 15(3), pp. 5-21.

Week 5

Institutions

John Searle, “What is an Institution?”, Journal of institutional economics, 1(1), 2005, pp. 1 – 22.

Mary Douglas, 1986, ‘Institutions Remember and Forget’, How Institutions Think, Syracuse University Press, pp. 69-80.

Douglass North, 1995, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press, Ch. 1.

W. Richard Scott, 2014, Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests and Identities, Thousand Oaks: SAGE, Ch. 3.

Roberto Esposito,”Beyond the State”, in Institution (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022), pp. 56-75.

Week 6

Historical Institutionalism

Sara Bannerman and Blayne Haggart (2015), Historical Institutionalism in Communication Studies, Communication Theory 25, 1-22.

Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor (1996), Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms, Political Studies 44, 936-957.

Lynne Zucker, 1987, “Institutional Theories of Organization’, Annual Review of Sociology 13(1), pp. 443-464.

Week 7

Sociological Institutionalism

Heino Hendrich Nau, 2005, ‘Institutional, Evolutionary and Cultural Aspects of Max Weber’s Social Economics’, Papers in Political Economy, pp. 127-142.

Perssi Alasuutari, 2015, The Discursive Side of New Institutionalism, Cultural Sociology, 9(2), 162-184.

Richard Swedborg, 2008, ‘The Toolkit of Economic Sociology”, in B. R. Weingast and D. A. Wittman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, Oxford University Press, pp. 936-949.

Robin Mansell, Hilde van den Bulck and Manuel Puppis, 2024, ‘Sociological institutionalism: conceptualizing media governance as institution and organization’, Handbook of Media and Communication Governance, Edward Elgar, pp. 28-39.

Week 8

Governance

Mark Bevir, 2011, ‘Governance as theory, practice and dilemma’ in M. Bevir (ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Governance, SAGE, pp. 3-18.

Manuel Puppis, 2010, ‘Media governance: A new concept for the analysis of media policy and regulation’, Communication, Culture & Critique, 3(2), PP. 132-149.

Avshalom Ginosar, 2013, ‘Media Governance: A Conceptual Framework or Merely a Buzz Word?’, Communication Theory, 23(4), pp. 356-374.

Terry Flew, 2023, ‘Policy Futures for Digital Platforms’, in T. Flew, J. Holt and J. Thomas (eds.), SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy, SAGE, pp. 545-570.

Week 9

Trust and Technology (Dr. Louisa Shen discussion leader)

Philip J. Nickel, Maarten Franssen & Peter Kroes, 2010, ‘Can We Make Sense of the Notion of Trustworthy Technology?’, Knowledge, technology and Politics 23, pp. 429-444.

Sebastian Schuetz, Le Kuai, Mary C. Lacity and Zach Steelman, 2025, ‘A qualitative systematic review of trust in technology’, Journal of Information Technology 40(1), pp. 55-76.

Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, 2021, ‘When we can trust computers (and when we can’t)’, Philosophical Transactions A 379, pp. 1-14.