The importance of social trust has become widely accepted in the social sciences. A number of explanations have been put forward for the stark variation in social trust among countries. Among these, participation in voluntary associations received most attention. Yet, there is scant evidence...

Social trust is a crucial ingredient for successful collective action. What causes social trust to develop, however, remains poorly understood. The quality of political institutions has been proposed as a candidate driver and has been shown to correlate with social trust. We show that this...