Trust and Democratic Transition in Post-Communist Europe. Edited by Ivana Markova. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 232p. $65.00.

This is a frustrating volume. That trust is important to democratic transition is its central assumption, but only the final chapter asks whether it is true or why it should be. Instead, most of the chapters discuss how the communist experience affected relations of trust. But some chapters make claims about communist society that generalize solely from the Stalinist period, while others concern the experiences of particular countries to a point where the precise relationship to communism is left unclear. In the end, the only unifying aspect of the book is each chapter's discussion of some aspect of trust in relation to some aspect of the former Soviet bloc.