trust II, eastern eurpoe

susan rose-ackerman has an interesting paper on trust in eastern europe that we can use to compare to the US trust questions in my last post.

though the data (PDF) isn't in percents, we can still see categorical differences between the US and eastern europe. trust in individuals is high in both the US and eastern eurpoe, but trust in military scores higher than individuals there, interestingly/ disturbingly. trust in the primary leader and the press are high as well. i would love to see an update; so much has changed since 1998. i also wish they had included the baltic tigers.

another interesting item to note from the data: 88% of ukrainians are either agnostic or distrusting of police. that's 81% in russia. of those who do trust the police only 13% and 17% in ukraine and russia respectively expect fair treatment. the other figures are disturbingly revealing about how opaque and corrupt government still is for our post-soviet friends.

the paper itself is very interesting (though a bit long in the tooth):

Real trouble arises when one trusts public officials to behave like friends or kinsmen in making public decisions. Conversely, if trust in friends is generalized so that people assume the good will of strangers, a society can economize on some of the coercive apparatus of the state.

Labels: political