Trust and cooperation are at the heart of the two most important approaches to comparative politics - rational choice and political culture. Yet we know little about trust's relationship to political institutions. This book sets out a rationalist theory of how institutions - and in particular informal institutions - can affect trust without reducing it to fully determine expectations. It then shows how this theory can be applied to comparative political economy, and in particular to explaining inter-firm cooperation in industrial districts, geographical areas of intense small firm collaboration. The book compares trust and cooperation in two prominent districts in the literature, one in Emilia Romagna, Italy, and the other in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It also sets out and applies a theory of how national informal institutions may change as a result of changes in global markets, and shows how similar mechanisms may explain persistent distrust too among Sicilian Mafiosi.

Trust has been the subject of empirical and theoretical inquiry in a range of disciplines, including sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, public policy and political theory. The book approaches trust from a multi-disciplinary scope of inquiry. It explains why most existing definitions and theories of trust are inadequate. The book examines how trust evolved from a quality of personal relationships into a critical factor in political institutions and representation, and to an abstract and impersonal factor that applies now to complex systems, including monetary systems. It makes a distinctive contribution by recasting trust conceptually in dialectical and pragmatic terms, and reapplying the concept to our understanding of critical issues in politics and political economy.

A lot of recent attention has been given to one of the central paradoxes of trust: namely how people can restrict self-interest in order to trust. Existing perspectives, theories, and models offer partial explanations, but this volume presents a novel framework that expands on the findings of recent studies of trust and exchange. This book offers a new angle for the understanding of exchange and trust in an interactive context, describes the interactive characteristics of trust in exchange systems, and develops a theory explaining the co-evolution of trust and exchange systems. A new framework is used to incorporate the theory of systems of trust and evolutionary game-theoretical approach to investigate four important questions: How can trust emerge in exchange when people pursue self-interest? After its emergence, how does exchange affect trust in a dynamic process? When are dynamics of trust stable? Do interactive trust phenomena differ under different exchange systems? This book concludes with a discussion of the implications of the theoretical findings for three areas: the improvement of trust, potential economic growth, and mechanism design in exchange systems. This volume makes a significant contribution to the literature on evolutionary and institutional economics and is suitable for those who have an interest in political economy, economy theory and philosophy as well as economic psychology.

This chapter surveys the theoretical and empirical development of the political economy of social trust. The particular focus is on the association between trust and formal institutions and policy choices.

This volume explores the foundations of trust, and whether social and political trust have common roots. Contributions by noted scholars examine how we measure trust, the cultural and social psychological roots of trust, the foundations of political trust, and how trust concerns the law, the economy, elections, international relations, corruption, and cooperation, among myriad societal factors. The rich assortment of essays on these themes addresses questions such as: How does national identity shape trust, and how does trust form in developing countries and in new democracies? Are minority groups less trusting than the dominant group in a society? Do immigrants adapt to the trust levels of their host countries? Does group interaction build trust? Does the welfare state promote trust and, in turn, does trust lead to greater well-being and to better health outcomes? The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust considers these and other questions of critical importance for current scholarly investigations of trust.