The importance of research on the notion of trust has grown considerably in the social sciences over the last three decades. Much has been said about the decline of political trust in democracies and intense debates have occurred about the nature and complexity of the relationship between trust and democracy. Political trust is usually understood as trust in political institutions (including trust in political actors that inhabit the institutions), trust between citizens, and to a lesser extent, trust between groups. However, the literature on trust has given no special attention to the issue of trust between minority and majority nations in multinational democracies – countries that are not only multicultural but also constitutional associations containing two or more nations or peoples whose members claim to be self-governing and have the right of self-determination. This volume, part of the work of the Groupe de recherche sur les sociétés plurinationales (GRSP), is a comparative study of trust, distrust, and mistrust in multinational democracies, centring on Canada, Belgium, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Beliefs, attitudes, practices, and relations of trust, distrust, and mistrust are studied as situated, interacting, and coexisting phenomena that change over time and space. Contributors include Dario Castiglione (Exeter), Jérôme Couture (INRS-UCS), Kris Deschouwer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Jean Leclair (Montréal), Patti Tamara Lenard (Ottawa), Niels Morsink (Antwerp), Geneviève Nootens (Chicoutimi), Darren O’Toole (Ottawa), Alexandre Pelletier (Toronto), Réjean Pelletier (Laval), Philip Resnick (UBC), David Robichaud (Ottawa), Peter Russell (Toronto), Richard Simeon (Toronto), Dave Sinardet (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and Jeremy Webber (Victoria).

Dimitrios Karmis is associate professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Dimitrios Karmis' profile page

François Rocher is Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He has held a similar position at Carleton University, where he was also director of the School of Canadian Studies. He is the co-editor, with Miriam Smith, of New Trends in Canadian Federalism (University of Toronto Press, 2003) and has extensively published on constitutional politics, intergovernmental relations, immigration, and citizenship in Canada.

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“The topic addressed is one of the most important political problems of our era: the cohabitation of nationalities within the same democratic state. The contributors and the arguments they put forward contribute to the study of trust/distrust in showing both the complexity of the world and the power of philosophy to organize knowledge.” Jean Crête, Université Laval

"The collection is interesting and timely. This is cutting-edge work on the important concept of trust in the political realm." Dwight Newman, College of Law, University of Saskatchewan

"In participatory democracies, trust is more significant as we understand its complexities in political actors. Karmis and Rocher have put together a highly developed treatise on trust in democracies. Now that democracies are coming under attack across the globe, this text helps us understand why we need to protect the institutions of democracy and foster trust in institutions that oversee our lives." Choice