Suchergebnisse

This article investigates the relationships between particular social trust, general social trust, and political trust and tests a variety of political, social-psychological, and social capital theories of them. This sort of research has not been carried out before because until the World Values Survey of 2005–07 there has been, to our knowledge, no comparative survey that includes measures of particular and other forms of trust. The new data challenge a common assumption that particular social trust is either harmful or of little importance in modern democracies and shows that it has strong, positive associations with other forms of trust. However, the relationships are not symmetrical and particular social trust seems to be a necessary but not sufficient cause of general social trust, and both forms of social trust appear to be necessary, but not sufficient conditions for political trust. Strong evidence of mutual associations between different forms of trust at both the individual micro level and the contextual macro level supports theories of rainmaker effects, the importance of political institutions, and the significance of social trust for political trust. In more ways than one, social trust, not least of a particular type, seems to have an important bearing on social and political stability.

"Auch 15 Jahre nach dem Zusammenbruch des Kommunismus vertrauen die Menschen in den postkommunistischen Gesellschaften den Politikern und politischen Institutionen immer noch nicht im gleichen Maße, wie dies die Westeuropäer tun. In abgeschwächter Form finden sich diese Unterschiede auch im wiedervereinigten Deutschland." (Autorenreferat)

Debates about social capital usually focus on its presumed positive consequences. Although this expectation has been corroborated empirically, in many instances some less benign consequences of social capital have also been uncovered. Several explanations for the emergence and consequences of these "dark sides" of social capital are briefly presented here and, subsequently, put to empirical testing. The contributors to this issue of American Behavioral Scientist have a common understanding of these dark sides of social capital. Conceptualizing them as negative consequences or outcomes, the authors use various research strategies to scrutinize the nature of the effects of social capital in various situations. In each analysis, however, particular focus is placed on the importance of the contextual setting. Special attention is paid to the degree of democratization, the postcommunist legacy, different welfare state regimes, the saliency of political cleavages, and types and interconnectedness of voluntary associations. The findings suggest that the specific consequences of social capital largely depend on political and social conditions.

Este artículo analiza las relaciones entre tres variables fundamentales dentro de la literatura sobre capital social. En él se discuten la conceptualización y operacionalización empírica de cada una de ellas y se examinan sus relaciones mutuas y el papel de algunas variables básicas, como el asociacionismo, en sus orígenes. Los datos utilizados proceden de las encuestas del proyecto Citizenship, Involvement, and Democracy (CID), realizadas en 12 países europeos entre 1999 y 2002. Los hallazgos empíricos caminan en dirección contraria a los de buena parte de la literatura en lo que hace a las relaciones entre confianza social y confianza política, entre confianza social y satisfacción con la democracia y sobre el papel de las asociaciones voluntarias para la creación de confianza social y política. Las implicaciones de estos hallazgos son metodológicas y sustantivas.