Latov Yu.V. Institutional Trust as Social Capital in Modern Russia (Based on Survey Results). Social Sciences. 2022. Vol. 53. No. 1. P. 16–30.

Abstract

In his analysis of statics and dynamics of trust in state and public institutions in Russia, the author relies on the results of surveys carried out by the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2014-2021. It turns out that political democracy has not yet taken root in Russia: its citizens trust the institutions of the “power vertical” more than politically competitive institutions. The majority in both groups (over 50% of Russians) demonstrates its consistent trust in the President and the Army. The level of institutional trust changes in waves: in the mid-2010s, it reached its maximum, only to decrease during the next decade. The COVID-19 mitigation measures are one of the clearest examples that institutional trust is social capital that yields certain profits. Indeed, citizens who trust the President comply with COVID mitigation measures and, therefore, fall ill less. This means that even if the characteristics of the Russian citizens’ social capital connected with institutional trust make the modernization of the Russian nation much harder in the long-term perspective, it can be used in the mid-term to decrease the negative effects of the pandemic.

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