Vulnerability: The active ingredient of trust in public governance

Abstract

A key task of public governance is the management of vulnerability. Whether by standardizing units of measurement or coordinating global responses to climate change, public governance actors are empowered to leverage their expertise, authority, and time to address the variety of risks facing society. Paradoxically, however, these efforts to manage risk create new potential for injury. Trust, as a willingness to accept vulnerability, is therefore critically important. This chapter explores the intersection of trust and vulnerability, first, by elucidating imposed, relational, focal, and emergent vulnerability to both internal and external harms as discrete types with distinct implications for trust. We then turn to the dynamics of vulnerability and posit that—per the proposed law of conservation of vulnerability—addressing vulnerability in a social system does not destroy it. Instead, vulnerability evolves from one form to another as trustors work to convert felt vulnerability into more acceptable versions. We conclude by presenting three complimentary approaches by which public governance actors can center vulnerability and conclude with a normative argument regarding the relationship between the vulnerability experienced by governance actors and that of the public they serve.