Political trust is important to any culture, but there has been a noticeable decline in political trust around the world. In search for the origin of political trust and ways to enhance political trust, institutional theorists have largely focused on perceived competence of political institutions in Western democracies and neglected another dimension of political institutions’ character—benevolence. The lack of empirical evidence from Arab countries also raises questions about the generalizability of the institutional theories developed in Western democracies. Following previous research on legal institutions, I extended institutional theories of political trust and found that both perceived competence and benevolence of political institutions facilitated political trust in Arab countries, using the archival data from the Arab-Barometer (2006-2007). Given the limited research on political trust in Arab countries or authoritarian regimes and the ongoing search for a global, multilevel theory of trust, the current research makes a contribution to the literatures on political trust and trust at large.