Rightly fearing that unscrupulous rulers would break them up, seize their resources, or submit them to damaging forms of intervention, strong networks of trust such as kinship groups, clandestine religious sects, and trade diasporas have historically insulated themselves from political control by a variety of strategies. Drawing on a vast range of comparisons over time and space, Charles Tilly asks and answers how, and with what consequences, members of trust networks have evaded, compromised with, or even sought connections with political regimes.

"Not since Max Weber has there been a sociologist who knows more about world history than Charles Tilly, and puts it to more lucid analytical use."
Julia Adams, Yale University"Trust and Rule is a book of nearly unparalleled creativity. Tilly joins the complexities of vast literatures from disparate fields with the grace of a master craftsman, producing a work that is both elegant and useful. Though based in history, sociology and anthropology, Trust and Rule leaves us with powerful political lessons applicable to states from Iraq to Brazil. No one who reads this study will look at trust networks with the same eyes again. "
Nancy Bermeo, Princeton University"A new Tilly is born, confronting trust with democracy and oppression, wandering from migrant Jews in the U.S. to Tocqueville's travel in Ireland, giving us his own remembrance while visiting an old Italian cemetery, jumping from Roberts the pirate to Provencal religious confraternities, and even to Bin Laden's network. A new and crucial subject is established through a wide range of empirical examples: how is trust crucially connected to democracy but much less vital in authoritarian regimes based on patronage, and how without trust may we witness a decay of democracy? "
Pierre Birnbaum, University of Paris"[This book] is a sustained, highly integrated analysis of a concept that stands at the heart of current debates written by a major scholar able to draw on an astonishing range of historical examples. Further, the position proposed is original, notably in offering a relational rather than a dispositional view of trust." Canadian
Journal of Sociology Online"This work offers a stimulating, demanding, and provocative argument on trust and forms of rule. It also reveal Charles Tilly as a fine storyteller."
Perspectives on Politics

People rely on networks of strong ties to other people for a wide range of risky long-term activities such as marrying, raising children, sustaining distinctive religions, and carrying on long-distance trade. What happens when those networks confront political regimes that could regulate them, destroy them, or seize their assets?

People rely on networks of strong ties to other people for a wide range of risky long-term activities such as marrying, raising children, sustaining distinctive religions, and carrying on long-distance trade. What happens when those networks confront political regimes that could regulate them, destroy them, or seize their assets? Trust and Rule uses a wide range of historical and contemporary evidence to map and explain different sorts of encounters between networks and political authorities, including their implications for democracy.

This book provides an essential background to the explanation of democratization and de-democratization.

Charles Tilly is currently the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. He has also taught at the University of Delaware, Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the University of Michigan, and the New School for Social Research. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow and former member of both the Midwest Council and the American Association for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences. Charles Tilly is the author of many books, including three recently published by Cambridge University Press: Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000, Dynamics of Contention (with Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow) and The Politics of Collective Violence.