Title: "Deep Trust, Political Hope, and the Future of Democracy"
Abstract: Many citizens of once stable democracies have become tolerant of autocracy because they feel disempowered by established political institutions and betrayed by conventional political elites. We can cultivate leaders and create institutions more conducive to the stability of democracies and to the flourishing of their citizens. But we must first build—or rebuild—what I call deep trust in the human capacity for self-governance. This deep trust is composed, in part, of what Lawrence Becker called noncognitive security regarding the motives of others. But deep trust also requires that most citizens develop cognitive self-trust in their capacities to contribute constructively to public debate and decision. Building deep trust is critical to encouraging robust hope for the survival of democracy, and to enabling the pursuit of John Dewey’s ideal of democracy as a “freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.”