Trust in mature and postcommunist democracies
Trust in mature and postcommunist democracies
- Author
- Teodora Gaidyt? VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- DOI
- 10.1177/20568460136
abstract This article aims to analyse and theorize the peculiarities of trust in mature and post
communist democracies. First, the article conceptualizes the notion of trust as interpreted by the culturalist and rationalist approaches, and systemizes it into a more coherent theoretical framework. Second, social and political trust are discussed and the relationship between these is analysed. Third, the dialectics of political trust and liberalism is tackled. Finally, trust in the communist regime and aftermath is examined. The main argument is that, at the societal level, social trust in post-communist societies is limited to particularized trust; it is more family-centred as compared to the wider radius of generalized trust in mature democracies. Meanwhile political trust in post-communist societies is less self-reflexive, since, unlike in the older democratic societies, it has evolved in counterpose to fear, rather than to risk.
