confiance; institutions politiques; droit constitutionnel
Abstract :
[en] Trust is commonly regarded as one of the "invisible institutions" on which social systems, political systems and, even more generally, democracy are built. Yet, trust is considered as central in the functioning and the maintaining of political systems and if, for this reason, the "crisis of trust" creates so much concern, nevertheless trust is never really defined. It is rather assumed, as hovering above institutions. By contrast, the issue of mistrust has been much more deeply explored by modern constitutionalism than that of trust. The increasing number of observations of a crisis of trust in representative institutions has led to a mobilization of law. However, it remains contested whether "trust can be decreed by procedures”.In this framework, two aspects particularly caught our attention:
- The gap between the importance of relationships of trust in representative governments and the evanescent nature of their conceptualization
- The absence of any questioning of the concrete effect of the rules adopted on trust and, more generally, of the fact that the law procedures can generate trust
To provide some answers to these questions, we have set out three main theses in a book, which we will present in the next few minutes:
1) Theories of democracy have had and continue to have an impact on the approach to trust in representative regimes
2) It is possible to use the social sciences to better understand trust in constitutional law and to identify its main issues.
3) Under certain conditions and in certain contexts, legal rules can generate or reduce trust.
