In this book the issue of political trust is approached from several perspectives. The first chapters examine empirical evidence describing the nature and evolution of political trust, following chapters go on to explore how political trust can be explained and what elements seem to have the strongest influence on the level of trust. More specifically, the editors take a comparative approach and ask why people evaluate the trustworthiness of political institutions the way they do. Another focus of the empirical comparative studies in this volume is post-communist societies and countries in transition. The extent to which support of welfare state reforms is at the origins of, but also subject to, political trust is explored in the concluding chapters.