A Country-Specific Analysis of Social Trust Formation: The Case of Ukraine

While social trust is seen as an important factor for political, economic and social progress in the world, its country-specific mode of formation still remains under-researched. This study focuses on Ukraine as a primary subject of analysis and attempts to define major predictors that contribute to yielding or undermining trust levels in this country’s peculiar context. A special attention is paid to the impact that the recent war with Russia has conducted on the patterns of social trust building among the Ukrainian population. The analysis is based on applying a multilevel model to the World Values Survey (WVS) data from the pre-war and the in-war periods (2011 and 2020). The results are used to argue that the process of social trust emergence is largely influenced by political conditions in Ukraine and closely linked by the Ukrainians to the issues of national identity and liberal democracy.