사적 신뢰, 보편적 신뢰 및 제도적 신뢰 간의 관계: 발틱국가 중심의 사례비교연구

This study explores the causal mechanism among three forms of trust. It is hypothesized that particular or personalized trust is expanded to generalized trust by the mediating or moderating role of institutional trust. To test the relationship between the former two types of trust, this study reexamines the empirical evidences of other relevant research. To figure out the role of institutional trust in the expansion of generalized trust, it examines the Baltic countries and Slovenia during their post-communist transformations. They are compared by the method of difference and by process-tracing. The results show that socioeconomic variables are far less important than they are in the existing cross-sectional quantitative analyses. Instead, institutional quality such as the level of corruption appears to be more important. However, rather than the relative level of corruption, the progressive improvement of corruption control driven by the persistent institutional reform efforts effectively explains the rising level of generalized trust.