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:
- To ground the concept of trust in institutions and organisations, as an intermediate (meso) point between interpersonal and societal trust.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
