The1980s political scientists ‘brought the state back in’; now they are busy ‘bringing fraternity back in’, except they call it
social capital, or trust, or sociability, or the capacity to co-operate and reciprocate. Trust is a handy empirical way of
approaching this clutch of concepts, because it narrows them down and makes them amenable to survey investigation.
Yet the nature, origins and consequences of trust, and its relationship with associated concepts are unclear. An
important part of contemporary social sciences may be to try to sort out the causes and the consequences of trust, and
its implications for social, political and economic life.
This chapter will deal with three main topics.
• The nature and origins of social trust and its importance in society.
• Trends in social trust in Western societies.
• The relations between social and political trust, and their implications for theories of politics and society.
In terms of the main concepts and measures of this volume, as outlined in the Introduction, social trust is a feature of
the most basic level of community, while political trust refers primarily to attitudes about political institutions and
leaders. The general assumption seems to be that social and political trust are closely linked, perhaps different sides of
the same coin. Social trust is regarded as a strong determinant of, or influence upon, political support of various kinds,
including support for the political community, confidence in institutions, and trust in political leaders. As a result it is
believed that the accumulation of social capital, in the form of social trust, will also result in the accumulation of
political capital. This chapter will present theory and evidence questioning these assumptions.
Social Trust
The Nature of Social Trust
Those who liked one another so well as to joyn into Society, cannot but be supposed to have some Acquaintance
and Friendship together, and some Trust one in another.
(John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, 1690)
A's trust in B is based on A's belief that B will not knowingly or willingly do him/her harm. Trust involves the belief
that others will, so far as they can, look after our interests, that they will not take advantage or harm us. Therefore,
trust involves personal vulnerability caused by uncertainty about the future behaviour of others; we cannot be sure, but
we believe that they will be benign, or at least not malign, and act accordingly in a way which may possibly put us at risk
(Baier 1986: 235). We are often forced to take