Can the Good Old Days Restore Trust? A Study in U.S.-China Trust-Building

• In Event: China and IOs

Abstract

Can positive historical memory restore broken trust between states? Trust is a central variable in International Relations — while it enables international cooperation, the lack of which leads states to conflicts. Research on international trust-building has grown, but mistrust remains pervasive in global politics. Negative historical memory, particularly memory of past aggressions, is one major obstacle of trust-building. In China, memory of national humiliation is an integral component of contemporary Chinese identity and a key driver of the Chinese suspicion of the West. I field a survey experiment in China to investigate whether positive historical memory may alleviate the Chinese mistrust, contributing to two areas of research. First, I provide a first set of experimental evidence on how moralistic trust may be built at the international level. The conception of moralistic trust is a promising development in recent trust research, but it remains an untested phenomenon, which I put to empirical test in the current project. Second, I address a conceptual blind spot in historical memory research, spotlighting the role of positive historical memory in International Relations. Existing works tend to focus on negative historical memory, undertheorizing how positive historical memory may influence trust. Leveraging insights in episodic memory research in social psychology, I theorize and test how the social context of positive memory helps build international trust. Specifically, I argue low-social positive memory and high-social positive memory leads to distinct causal pathways in building trust, introducing novel perspectives on the microfoundations of historical memory in international trust-building.

Author

• Samuel Chan, Columbia University