4 ms·

This might get the causality backward. Most high trust societies were high trust before, not after, they became democracies.

• aprilthird2021 2y ago
  I think most democracies were founded as such and so the society and democracy were born at the same time
  • inglor_cz 2y ago
    Nope, democracies are usually much younger than the underlying societies. For example, the vast majority of Europe is now democratic. 200 years ago, most of Europe was autocratic and even exceptions like the UK were at most very incomplete democracies with limited suffrage. But the constituent nations and ethnicities are very much the same, even though political boundaries have shifted; an English, Polish or Spanish person can read 200 year old texts without much effort. There wasn't any seismic shift comparable to the collapse of the Roman world and the subsequent rearrangement of nations and ethnicities across the continent. Krakow is still Polish, Budapest is still Hungarian and Milan is still Italian. Only in a few places like Breslau/Wroclaw there was a meaningful population shift.
    • aprilthird2021 2y ago
      But most democratic countries in the world are not in Europe. Most of them were born as democracies: India, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, USA, etc.
      • dash2 2y ago
        US society existed and was plausibly high-trust for more than 150 years before 1776.