From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia Distrust is a
formal way of not trusting any one party too much in a situation
of grave risk or deep doubt. It is commonly expressed in civics
as a division or balance of powers, or in politics as means of
validating treaty terms. Systems based on distrust simply divide
the responsibility so that checks and balances can operate. The
phrase "trust but verify" refers specifically to distrust.
Distrust should not be confused with mistrust, which is
believing that a particular party has a hidden agenda. When such
is the case, however, distrust plays a role in minimizing the
power of specific individuals with roles in "the system." For
instance providing the benefit of the doubt to someone accused
of a crime. An electoral system or adversarial process
inevitably is based on distrust, but not on mistrust. Parties
compete in the system, but they do not compete to subvert the
system itself, or gain bad faith advantage through it - if they
do they are easily caught by the