How do you get from Moscow to Stockholm? That is, how do you create efficient, honest government like that of Sweden as opposed to the incompetence and corruption found in Russia? This question drives Bo Rothstein into an analysis of the causes of social traps—situations where actors cannot cooperate due to mutual distrust, even if cooperation is mutually beneficial. Eliminating social traps requires generalized trust, that is, social capital. How does one engender trust? Robert Putnam, both in Making Democracy Work (1993) and Bowling Alone (2001), argues that social capital is created through civil society, a process that bubbles up through history and culture. Rothstein takes this view to task for not analytically distinguishing between associations (a behavior) and trust (a belief), for it is really the belief that needs to be generated. Trust, in his view, need not evolve organically from below; it can be generated from above by establishing efficient political institutions. If public officials are corrupt, citizens will infer that people in general are dishonest and behave dishonestly themselves. Thus, social traps are sprung. The reverse is also true: Honest governance begets social trust.

Yet even with better administrative monitoring, there remains a credibility problem. Why should citizens in low social capital environments believe that governmental institutions will be honest? The solution to the credibility problem—and the solution to social traps, in Rothstein's view—is to create universal political institutions where benefits are equally distributed, forcing officials to act impartially. As he puts it, “selective, needs-testing welfare institutions undermine interpersonal trust, while experiences of universal institutions tend to increase it” (p. 126).

How are such institutions formed in the first place? Cooperation is guided by the “mental maps” people develop regarding others' likely behavior. The key is collective memory, “the spawn of deliberate and strategic action by political elites” (p. 161). (Rothstein rejects the more general concept of culture as being overly deterministic.) The “stab-in-the-back” myth of the Nazis was an example of collective memory, but it can also be harnessed for good. Rothstein illustrates this by tracing labor market relations in Sweden in the early twentieth century. Sweden had as much labor strife as any other industrialized nation, punctuated by the military firing on strikers at Ådalen in 1931. Yet by 1938, labor and management had struck the cooperative Saltsjöbad Accords. How did they move from mistrust to trust? Rothstein argues that a battle for collective memory began between radicals seeking to intensify the struggle against capitalism and moderate labor leaders who saw labor relations spinning out of control. The latter interpretation of the collective memory predominated, establishing an imperative for compromise that was mirrored by the bourgeoisie. This was not simply the lucky result of enlightened leaders. Rather, Rothstein notes that corporatist labor market institutions previously established by the Swedish state had developed habits of dialogue and trust between workers and managers well before Saltsjöbad. Social capital in Sweden came from above.

The major flaw in the study of social capital is an inability to guide political leaders in the way to build trust where it is lacking. By developing a viable argument as to how political institutions can create social capital, Rothstein fills the gap and (potentially) greatly increases the utility of social capital as an analytical concept. This in itself is quite an accomplishment. His argument also offers the advantage of simplicity in application: If you want to have a high social capital society like Sweden, adopt Sweden's universal institutions.

The novelty of Rothstein's argument is the causal sequence he proposes—good government (from universal institutions) leading to trust, rather than trust leading to good government. Yet the very history he examines to establish this point raises a question. Policies designed to avoid social traps were implemented by the Swedish state in the late 1800s, which helps to explain cooperative labor relations in the 1930s (pp. 191–97). Why did the Swedish state adopt such policies in the first place? Other states faced similar pressures but did not go down the same path. If universal political institutions are the key, we need a better sense of how and why these were selected in the first instance. Without a better explanation of how the causal chain began, Rothstein's evidence is insufficient to discount alternative explanations. The obvious alternative as to why this model was followed in Sweden but not elsewhere in Europe takes us back to Putnam: Perhaps Sweden had already developed a base of social trust that encouraged the adoption of corporatist structures in the first instance.

Rothstein's portrayal of universalism is also problematic, as he defines it in substantive and procedural terms. Mostly he seems to mean universal welfare benefits: “The comparatively high levels of social capital in Scandinavian countries may thus be caused by their extensive policies for economic equality and equality of opportunity” (p. 100). Yet he later defines universal institutions as exhibiting impartiality, objectivity, and equal treatment (p. 129), even saying that “[t]rust does not come from the actual contents [of policy]; it is based on respect for procedures” (p. 145). Government can be fair, impartial, and objective without having universal welfare programs, of course. So which does one need to produce social capital? Lack of clarity muddles potential application.

Potential application is further confused because Rothstein offers minimal comparative empirical data to support his argument. There is a clear and testable hypothesis here: Countries with universal welfare states should have higher social capital. Methodologically, he relies on logical argumentation and a case study of Sweden—with the exception of one set of regressions (without robust results) including other states (p. 113). More systematic, comparative analysis would bolster his conclusions.

That being said, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust stands out among a crowded field of books on social capital, a work that should not be overlooked by serious scholars of the subject. Rothstein's shortcomings, moreover, are perhaps forgivable. This is an ambitious book exploring a crucial political problem. The sad reality is that deciphering the path from Moscow to Stockholm may be beyond the reach of even his many talents. Still, he deserves credit for his valiant effort to address this large and important issue.