Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Experiments of Trust in Transition Societies - The Case of Bulgaria

后共产主义社会成功实现民主和经济转型的最大障碍之一是信任水平低和制度薄弱（Gibson 2001）。最近的学术辩论质疑什么样的政策应对最适合改善这些问题。具体来说，一些人质疑通过投资公民社会项目来建立信任关系的有效性（Cook et al. 2005）。这种批评认为，强大的政府机构，如合同法，可以替代低水平的信任。人们普遍认为，低水平的信任是保加利亚农村的主要障碍（Theesfeld 2005）。尽管如此，我们对普通民众的信任程度知之甚少。Koford（2003）发现保加利亚学生实际上比美国学生更信任他人。不幸的是，学生们在共产主义统治下的经历很少，可能无法充分反映普通民众的信任行为。例如，保加利亚农村人似乎不愿参与需要信任的合作努力（Theesfeld 2004; Hanisch 2003）。这些问题是通过在保加利亚城市索非亚和普罗夫迪夫进行的信任游戏实验来检验的。这些实验的参与者将被招募到一个结构化的配额样本，以涵盖广泛的年龄人口统计。在对私人捐赠进行信托决定的基线实验之后，将对信托决定进行处理，将其定义为共同财产撤回。这项研究将显著增加我们对转型社会信任的理解：(1)以理论和经验严格的方式检查广泛的保加利亚人口中的信任水平，(2)测试共产主义下的经验对信任水平的影响。还将审查其他机构设置的影响。这项研究将通过纳入和培训保加利亚研究人员和研究生来促进教学、培训和学习。他们将帮助招募和开展实验，并对未来的合作努力和将研究成果应用到自己未来的教学中表现出极大的热情。代表性不足的群体，特别是老年人和农村保加利亚人，没有在Koford（2003）过去进行的信任博弈实验中，将被招募参加这些实验。这项研究的结果将在专业会议上发表，并提交给同行评审的期刊。这项研究还将为保加利亚和其他后共产主义国家的决策界提供见解。

One of the biggest obstacles to successful democratic and economic transition in post-communist societies is low levels of trust and weak institutions (Gibson 2001). Recent academic debate questions what policy response is most appropriate to ameliorate these problems. Specifically, some question the efficacy of building trust-relations by investing in civil society programs (Cook et al. 2005). This critique argues that strong government institutions, such as contract law, can substitute for low levels of trust. It is widely believed that low levels of trust are a major impediment in rural Bulgaria (Theesfeld 2005). Still, we know little about the precise levels of trust in the general population. Koford (2003) has found that Bulgarian students are actually more trusting than American students. Unfortunately students have little experience under communism and may not adequately reflect the general populations' trusting behavior. Rural Bulgarians, for example, seem reticent to engage in cooperative endeavors where trust is required (Theesfeld 2004; Hanisch 2003).These questions are examined by conducting 8 trust game experiments in the Bulgarian cities of Sofia and Plovdiv. Participants for these experiments will be recruited on a structured quota sample to encompass a wide age demographic. A baseline experiment of a trusting decision with a private donation will be followed by a treatment in which the trust decision is framed as a common property withdrawal. This research will significantly add to our understanding of trust in transition societies by (1) examining levels of trust among a broad demographic of Bulgarians in a theoretically and empirically rigorous manner and (2) testing the effects of experience under communism on levels of trust. The effects of other institutional settings will also be examined.This research will promote teaching, training, and learning by the inclusion and training of Bulgarian researchers and graduate students. They will help in recruitment and conducting of experiments and have shown a great enthusiasm for future collaborative efforts and the implementation of research results into their own future teaching. Underrepresented groups, specifically older and rural Bulgarians, absent from the past trust game experiments conducted by Koford (2003), will be recruited for these experiments. Results of this research will be presented at professional conferences and submitted to peer-reviewed journals. The research will also provide insight to the policymaking community in Bulgaria and other post-communist countries.