Political trust is usually construed in the terms of political elites’ duty to be trustworthy. This paper makes a modest yet radical claim, contending that in a democratic polity, political elites have also a symmetric prima facie duty to trust citizens to be competent and willing social actors. The paper offers a general framework for rethinking political trust as a bi-directional, rather than uni-directional, social relation. “Trust as an attitude” section begins by distinguishing trust-as-belief from trust-as-attitude, and contends that only with reference to the latter the idea of a duty to trust becomes plausible. “A comprehensive theory of political trust” section outlines my comprehensive theory of political trust. “Political trust as delegative and as coordinative” section distinguishes two basic dimensions of political trust: delegative and coordinative. “Political elites’ duty to trust” section introduces the notion of a political duty to trust, and contends that political elites have a prima facie duty to trust based on the specific features of coordinative trust. “Who belongs to political elites?” section specifies who is bound by this prima facie duty and “Democracy and the circle of trust” section reflects on how circles of trust can be initiated.
