“Against the Politics of Fear: On Deliberation, Inclusion, and the Political Economy of Trust”

This is an inquiry into the economic psychology of trust: what model of the political economy of complex liberal democracies is conducive to attitudes allowing difference to be perceived in the terms of ‘significant other’, rather than as a menacing or an irrelevant stranger. As a test case of prevailing perceptions of otherness in European societies, I examine attitudes towards Turkey’s accession to the European Union. The analysis introduces the concept of 'economic xenophobia'.