Repeatedly, discussions are evolving on the lack of trust or confidence in governments, wither it is in the US, in Europe or elsewhere. Aware of the complex character of the topic, I adhere that the issue is by the heart of interests for political science, and it has not yet been enough explored.

Sweden has since the sixties had the parallel downward trend in political trust on national governmental level as the United States, although the two in many respects are the most different cases; Sweden being a proportional representative state, Social democrats has dominated the governmental power with interruptions 1976-1982 and 1991-1994. The Swedish population is highly homogenous, but still, the patterns of decline in political trust on national level is strikingly similar to the American case. A large number of theories has come up as explanations for these phenomena, and it is undoable to test for them all at the same time.

In this article I discuss three types of explanations, the first is how evaluations of political trust are connected to a persons supportiveness for the party/ies in government, the second is what role does the social capital theory play, and thirdly, what are the role of peoples evaluations of the core functions of society such as the police and the courts? The case-study is not being contrasted to the situation in other countries, but the hypothesis are tested in 1998 national Swedish data as well as in local municipal data 1992-1998.

The results confirm the home team hypothesis, saying we tend to have political trust if we voted for the party in government. A connection is also confirmed between generalized social trust and trust in political institutions, but there is no support found that persons involved in associations would have any significantly higher political trust than others. The third hypothesis, that there is a relationship between trust in politics and trust in the police and/or in the judiciary was also verified.