Citizens of Southeast Asia put their trust in government, like the rest of Asia, but unlike most other regions of the world. They accord this trust even though they have low levels of generalized trust, and have governments that do not seem worthy of their trust. Governance deficits are evident in the performance of order institutions in service delivery and access, transparency, accountability and anti-corruption, military and police performance and judicial independence. There are also problems in representational institutions involved in electoral and parliamentary processes, which are accorded less trust than other institutions. A major set of challenges is to make government more trustworthy through improving service delivery and access, making civil servants content but challenged, stressing equality and justice in providing services, taking available solutions to reduce corruption seriously, providing civic education to forestall approval of military rule, improving representational institutions, and engaging civil society. The final challenge is to improve trust in government by making government accord trust in its citizens also.