The state counts: State efficacy and the development of trust

Francisco Herreros

Rationality and Society, 2012, vol. 24, issue 4, 483-509

Abstract: Most analyses of the relationship between state institutions and interpersonal trust claim either that the state crowds out trust or that it helps to create trust, acting as a third-party enforcer of agreements. Actually, the relationship between the state and trust is much more complex. This article presents a theoretical model that predicts how trust will evolve in highly efficacious and low-efficacious states. Based on priors about other people’s trustworthiness determined by educational level, the model claims that in low-efficacious states, trust will tend to collapse and education will not have an effect on trust levels. However, as state efficacy grows, education level will explain variations in trust levels. The theoretical predictions are to a great extent confirmed by a multilevel analysis of 47 countries.

Keywords: Education; institutions; trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463112463931 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:24:y:2012:i:4:p:483-509

DOI: 10.1177/1043463112463931

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Rationality and Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().