People in these countries were asked whether they make difference between civil and state institutions and whether they evaluate discrete social and political institutions separately. Indeed, a principal components analysis of popular trust in fifteen social and political institutions suggests that people evaluate civil and political institutions holistically.






















Table 1

Source: Mishler and Rose: Trust, p. 431

Political institutions generally have the strongest loadings; the highest is trust in government, followed by trust in courts, police, parliament and civil servants. On this single dimension the social institutions, like farm organizations, unions, and private enterprises, are also strongly loaded. Church contributes to trust in civil society least.
The difference between a single-factor and a three-factor is that the first one, as it provides the best fit with the data, confirms that civil and political institutions are perceived holistically, while the second one implies the existence of more emergent dimensions of trust. The general expectation is that in countries in which citizens fail to differentiate between social and political institutions because of lack of experience with independent civil institutions, the subsidiary dimensions of trust would emerge with greater strength as democracy is consolidated.
The first factor is clearly dominated by trust in political institutions; all of the state institutions have loadings above 0.55 except for the army. The second factor reflects trust in civil institutions, especially the ones associated with market reform. The great amount of trust put in churches and the army suggests that this third factor reflects a residual trust in institutions of traditional authority – both social and political. This is further supported by the secondary strongest loadings of police and farm organizations.
The substantial correlations among the three dimensions reinforce the idea that the citizens’ trust in all of them is holistic. Between the political and civic trust the correlation is 0.42; trust between political and traditional is 0.29, and trust between civic and traditional institutions is 0.19. All of the correlations are statistically significant, showing that the three factors reflect a common underlying dimension. Citizens can only draw distinctions between society and state institutions after they have had enough experience with them.