This article discusses the thesis according to which a necessary link exists between a culture of trust and the emergence of a democratic regime. After analyzing the ordinary uses of the word trust, it differentiates three conceptions of “civic trust”: culturalist, rational-instrumental and moral. Then, by comparing the features of both a democratic and a totalitarian regime, it refutes the idea of a constitutive relation between trust and democracy. It then concludes that one cannot claim that a population lacks the ability to establish a democracy because it possesses certain cultural traits.