What are the origins of political trust? Testing institutional and cultural theories in post-Communist societies

Popular trust in political institutions is vital to democracy, but in post-Communist countries, popular distrust for institutions is widespread, and prospects for generating increased political trust are uncertain given disagreements over its origins. Cultural theories emphasizing exoge-nous determinants of trust compete with institutional theories emphasizing endogenous influ-ences, and both can be further differentiated into micro and macro variants. Competing hypothe-ses drawn from these theories are tested using data from 10 post-Communist countries in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Aggregate data on economic and political per-formance are combined with survey data on interpersonal and political trust, political socializa-tion experiences, and individual evaluations of national performance. Results strongly support the superiority of institutional explanations of the origins of political trust, especially micro-level explanations, while providing little support for either micro-cultural or macro-cultural explanations. This encourages cautious optimism about the potential for nurturing popular trust in new democratic institutions