The corruption perceptions index, which is one of the factors the Economist ranking takes into account, is one possible proxy for the level of trust people have

The corruption perceptions index, which is one of the factors the Economist ranking takes into account, is one possible proxy for the level of trust people have in their government: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/ http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/ Trust is a more general concept than just perceived lack of corruption, but I would guess the two are closely related (though which direction the causality goes in is an interesting question).