Trust Cultures and the Politics of Relational Legitimacy: Rethinking Trust from the Global South

Moving beyond conventional understandings of trust as an individual attitude or institutional outcome, Trust Cultures and the Politics of Relational Legitimacy develop the concept of trust cultures to explain how historically and culturally situated publics learn to navigate uncertainty, recalibrate expectations, and sustain democratic life despite persistent institutional fragility. Trust is understood not simply as confidence in institutions but as part of a broader relational process through which legitimacy is continually negotiated, contested, repaired, and reconstituted.Drawing on interpretive analyses of public health controversies, local governance, political scandals, and everyday democratic life in the Philippines, the book develops an interconnected conceptual vocabulary-including relational legitimacy, democratic ambivalence, scandal constructivation, accrued damage, fragile repair, and moral coordination-to demonstrate that democratic endurance depends less on institutiona