International relations theory has had a trust revival, with scholars focusing on how trust can enhance interpersonal cooperation attempts between leaders. We propose there is another type of trust at play in world politics. International system trust is a feeling of confidence in the international social order, which is indexed especially by trust in its central unit, state persons. System trust anchors ontological security, and its presence is an unstated assumption of the international relations trust scholarship. In this paper we conceptualize system trust. We illuminate its presence by flagging the production of state personhood in a familiar case in international relations trust scholarship, the 1985 Geneva Summit between Reagan and Gorbachev. Interpersonal and system trust perspectives highlight different aspects of the same summit. The juxtaposition suggests new lines of research into the production of state persons in diplomacy, the relationship between interpersonal and system trust, and the impact of the rise of personalistic/patrimonial leadership on diplomacy and international order.

国际关系理论重振信任，学者们关注信任如何加强领导人之间的人际合作尝试。我们认为在世界政治中还有另一种类型的信任在起作用。国际体系信任是一种对国际社会秩序的信心，这种信心尤其体现在对其中央单位国家人员的信任上。系统信任锚定本体安全，它的存在是国际关系信任学术的一个未说明的假设。在本文中，我们将系统信任概念化。我们通过在国际关系信托奖学金的一个熟悉案例中标记国家人格的产生来阐明它的存在，即 1985 年里根和戈尔巴乔夫之间的日内瓦峰会。人际和系统信任视角突出了同一峰会的不同方面。