Social Trust: Croatia 1995-2003

In this paper the author deals with the concept of social trust. Since the concept has so far been neglected in the political science research in Croatia, the author intends to map it out for the scientific and expert political science public and lay the foundations for its future use. By means of the secondary data analysis, the author describes the state of social trust in Croatia. First he contextualizes the concept of social trust from the perspective of the dominant approaches in political science research; then he identifies the distinguishing features of social trust in relation to the other types of the trust; and finally, he provides an overview of major works on the importance and functions of social trust. The last portion of the paper is devoted to the analysis of the levels of social trust which shows that Croatia is a society with low levels of social trust which, according to the author, may represent an obstacle for political and economic development