Learning to Trust: Trends in Generalized Social Trust in the Three Baltic Countries from 1990 to 2018

Abstract

Generalized social trust (social trust) is often seen as the glue that holds a society together and fosters cooperation among individuals. There is a growing amount of empirical evidence that social trust is conducive to many positive societal and individual outcomes, including democracy. In this paper, we examine the change in social trust levels in the three Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—from 1991 to 2018 using data from the World Values Survey, European Values Survey, and the European Social Survey. Our findings show that change trajectories in social trust have not followed the same path in all three Baltic countries. A steady rise in the levels of social trust in Estonia and Lithuania during the last decades is rather unprecedented from an international comparative perspective, whereas, in Latvia, where levels of social trust have been historically lower than in the other two Baltic countries, social trust has been surprisingly stable since 2008. Our results offer partial support for the hypothesis that a trustworthy state and good governance play some role in generating social trust.