Trust and Corruption in the Czech Republic

The purpose of this discussion paper is to discuss the issue of corruption and trust in the context of the Czech Republic and to examine whether the generally valid model of the relationship between these two phenomena fits the Czech experience as well. We use the social capital lens to study this issue and on this basis build our discussion around two types of trust: particularised (PST) and generalised (GST) social trust. Trust and corruption are first discussed in both theoretical and empirical terms from the Czech expe-rience before exposing them to the corruption-trust relationship model. The information about the Czech Republic has been obtained from data published by Transparency International (TI), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Polity IV project (CSP, 2014). The data suggest that the Czech experience is similar to that of other countries. However, the proportion between PST and GST seems to bear some importance in its explanatory value of corrup-tion levels. Different types of corruption also have positive effect on PST and negative effect on GST. We conclude this paper by proposing directions for further research and their implications for the study of so-cial capital in the Czech Republic.