The focus, thus far, has been largely on civic participation; we turn in this chapter to two other critical dimensions of ‘social capital’ for Putnam, namely civic trust and shared norms. Indeed, it is the connection between participation and trust that lies at the core of social capital's unique contribution to the study of politics and society. As Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart comment: ‘The core claim of Putnam's account [of social capital] is that face-to-face … horizontal collaboration within voluntary organizations … promotes interpersonal trust’ (Norris and Inglehart, 2006, p. 2). While civic participation is the extent to which individuals join associations and can be measured by membership figures in voluntary associations as well as surveys of the general populace, civic trust is the degree to which people trust the generalized ‘other’ and is normally measured through public opinion analysis. The ‘shared norms’ that ‘attend’ trusting communities vary considerably in definition, as shall be discussed. At a minimum, Putnam explicitly argues for reciprocity and trustworthiness, but – as I shall argue – embedded in Putnam's theory is a much broader set of shared cultural norms that implies a thicker and more homogeneous kind of community than the minimalist definition might suggest. We begin by exploring the idea of ‘trust’ and incorporate the idea of shared ‘norms’ later in our analysis.