Trust and Governance: The conditioning role of national culture

I examine the role of national culture in conditioning the relationship between social trust and national governance. Results suggest national governance and social trust have very similar bivariate associations with various dimensions of national culture. Further, social trust and national governance are complements when not controlling for the impact of culture on governance. However, results suggest that the residual portion of governance, after accounting for national culture, has virtually no correlation with social trust. These results are consistent with the positive association of social trust and national governance being due to common cultural conditioning.