A recurring theme in the book Is the Swede Human? was the seemingly paradoxical mix of collectivist and individualist traits in Swedish society. This led Lars Trägårdh to reflect more deeply on the nature and conditions of trust in Sweden, which in turn resulted in a new research project. Together with other scholars at Ersta Sköndal University College, he developed a research program on social trust in Sweden.

This research has, among other things, resulted in the anthology Trust in Modern Sweden – The Gullible Swede and Other Mysteries (2009), a number of academic articles and book chapters, as well as the book The Cool Swedish Trust: Conditions and Challenges (2013). In The Cool Swedish Trust, the authors analyze findings from international studies, but above all from a large population survey conducted in 33 Swedish municipalities. Trust in Sweden is high from an international comparative perspective, but there are significant differences within the country.

The first part of the book examines how enduring social structures have historically created a broad but “cool” (i.e., less emotionally expressive) form of trust in Sweden. The second part raises the question of whether this high general trust may now be challenged and weakened by processes of change—including economic inequality and immigration-related diversity—that are most evident at the local level. This applies in particular to what the authors call “local community trust.” In addition to Lars Trägårdh, the authors include Susanne Wallman Lundåsen, Dag Wollebæk, and Lars Svedberg.

The Community Barometer is a further development of the Trust Barometer developed by Lars Trägårdh at Marie Cederschiöld University in collaboration with LF Research Foundation. In 2023, Trägårdh moved to Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF) and began work on the new Community Barometer. The aim of the project is to examine trust and security at the local community level in order to deepen the knowledge generated by national-level studies. The idea is to better investigate the relationships between trust and factors such as diversity and inequality, as well as to gain a deeper understanding of how trust and security vary across municipalities and urban districts in Sweden. Since the move to IBF, the Community Barometer has been revised and updated to maintain continuity with earlier iterations while also enabling new perspectives on both new and longstanding challenges and research questions. Its scope has expanded to include more municipalities and districts.

A quantitative population survey has been conducted by Statistics Sweden (SCB) on four occasions (2009, 2017, 2020, and 2024), initially in 33 municipalities and now in around fifty municipalities, as well as districts in Malmö, Stockholm, Helsingborg, Norrköping, and Uppsala. This recurring survey has been complemented by ethnographic in-depth studies in a selection of eight local communities.

Questions inspired by the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt—aimed at understanding polarization and why people hold widely differing views about right and wrong and about solutions to societal challenges—were also added. This “Moral Foundations Theory” was popularized in the book The Righteous Mind (Haidt, 2012). In light of a deteriorating global environment, the concept of security was broadened to include perceptions of the risk of threats of a more national character, such as disinformation and armed conflict. Analogous to earlier questions concerning confidence in society’s ability to withstand and manage local threats—such as crime and deficiencies in welfare—corresponding questions addressing these national threats were also included. As a complement to earlier questions focusing on collective action at the local level, new questions concerning willingness to defend the country were introduced as a measure of collective action at the national level. Finally, additional questions were included to capture people’s perceived social distance and their relationship to one another, as well as to the shared collective: the nation and citizenship.