Social Capital and the Development of Political Support in Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Hooghe ◽  
Anna Kern
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Basic Assumption ◽  
Voluntary Associations ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
The One ◽  
Democratic Norms

This chapter evaluates the claim that the decline of legitimacy is due to a decline of social capital. The idea that voluntary associations play an important role in establishing social cohesion and political support is a traditional insight in the field of political sociology. The basic assumption is that voluntary associations function as a training ground for democracy, where citizens involved acquire democratic norms and skills that they subsequently apply in their relation with the political system. If this argument is correct, political support should be at least partly influenced by citizens’ participation in civil society organizations. Using European Social Survey data from 2006 and 2012 the authors demonstrate that there is a clear and significant correlation between social involvement on the one hand and satisfaction with the working of democracy and political trust on the other, which largely survives the introduction of a range of control variables.

scholarly journals Mind This Gap, Too: Political Orientations of People with Disabilities in Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 791-818 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Reher
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Political Inequality ◽  
Political Orientations

Abstract People with disabilities constitute one of the largest minority groups in Europe, and yet our knowledge about how they relate to the political system remains limited. In addition to facing practical barriers such as inaccessible campaign material and polling stations, they often have fewer resources that facilitate and promote confidence and engagement in politics. Moreover, experiences of discrimination and low numbers of politicians with disabilities can generate feelings of disempowerment. Using European Social Survey data from 30 countries from 2002 to 2015, this study shows that people with disabilities have lower levels of internal and external efficacy, political trust and interest, and electoral participation. The disparities in internal efficacy and political interest disappear when accounting for education, income, employment, and social contact. Meanwhile, significant gaps in external efficacy, political trust, and turnout remain to be explained. Perceptions of discrimination strengthen the internal efficacy and political interest of citizens with disabilities but further decrease their external efficacy, political trust, and turnout. The study sheds light on a frequently overlooked dimension of political inequality, provides insights on several contributing factors, and highlights where further research is needed.

scholarly journals Measuring the trust in the European values study and the European social survey

Sociologija ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-439
Author(s):  
Milos Besic
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Trust ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Multilevel Regression ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Confirmatory Factor Analyses ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
European Values ◽  
European Values Study

In this paper, we compare the latent construct measurement of political and interpersonal trust in two researches: the European Values Study and the European Social Survey. The main goal was to estimate the validity of measuring the respective concepts. In order to achieve this goal, we conducted a number of Principal Component Analyses and Confirmatory Factor Analyses. Additionally, we used multilevel regression modelling to test and compare the effect of socio-demographic variables on political and interpersonal trust in both researches. We identified that socio-demographic predictors had a similar effect on both types of trust. The paper is complemented with descriptive data that portray the differences among countries when it comes to interpersonal and political trust.

scholarly journals Status Loss: The Burden of Positively Selected Immigrants

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 471-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per Engzell ◽  
Mathieu Ichou
Keyword(s):  
European Social Survey ◽  
Social Position ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Financial Situation ◽  
Individual Outcomes ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Country Differences ◽  
The One

Immigrants experience an ambiguous social position: on the one hand, they tend to be positively selected on resources from the origin country; on the other, they often occupy the lower rungs of the status ladder in receiving countries. This study explores the implications of this ambiguity for two important individual outcomes: subjective social status and perceived financial situation. We study the diverse sample of immigrants in the European Social Survey and use the fact that, due to country differences in educational distributions, a given education level can entail a very different rank in the sending and receiving countries. We document a robust relationship whereby immigrants who ranked higher in the origin than in the destination country see themselves as being comparatively worse off. This finding suggests that the social position before migration provides an important reference point by which immigrants judge their success in the new country.

Political Support

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (12) ◽  
pp. 1511-1532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henar Criado ◽  
Francisco Herreros
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Individual Variables ◽  
The Government

The analysis of the causes of political support for political institutions has been focused either on one-case studies that stress the relevance of individual variables or cross-national studies that stress the role of institutions. In this article, the authors suggest that to understand the logic of political support, it is necessary to combine both types of explanations. Using evidence from 17 European countries of the 2002 to 2003 European Social Survey data set, the authors show that the effect of the performance of the institution on political support is higher in majoritarian democracies, where the attribution of responsibility for policy outcomes is clear, than in proportional democracies. They also show that the effect of ideology on political support depends on the type of democracy: Those citizens ideologically far from the government will show higher levels of political support in proportional democracies than in majoritarian ones.

scholarly journals Is it All about the Economy? Government Fractionalization, Economic Performance and Satisfaction with Democracy across Europe, 2002−13

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elina Kestilä-Kekkonen ◽  
Peter Söderlund
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Satisfaction With Democracy ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Government Power

While previous research has generally shown that economic performance is an important predictor of satisfaction with democracy, differences between political systems on the majoritarian-consensual dimension have not been as marked as expected. What has been neglected in previous studies is how the interaction between economic performance and type of power-sharing arrangement co-produce democratic satisfaction. This study uses multiple rounds of data from the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2013 involving 31 countries. The results show that short-term changes in economic performance and government fractionalization interactively increase or decrease levels of political support. The effect of economic performance on satisfaction with democracy becomes weaker the more fractionalized a government is. Satisfaction with how democracy works in a country remains relatively high in systems with fractionalized coalition governments when the economy is performing poorly. But when the economy performs extraordinarily well, satisfaction with democracy is even higher in countries with a dominant party in charge of government power.

scholarly journals Subterranean Values and Deviance: An Empirical Investigation of the Case of Spain

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
pp. 149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Herranz de Rafael ◽  
Juan Fernández-Prados
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Deviant Behavior ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Value Differences ◽  
Feminist Criminology ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The One

This study examines value similarities between deviant youth on the one hand and mainstream society on the other rather than value differences. The classic sociological research on deviance by Matza and Sykes supports this approach, given that their investigations focused more on similarities between subterranean values and the values of normal society. The General Social Survey of Spain (2016) includes 17 indicators for deviant behavior, which is the dependent variable. Likewise, it is used to define social capital and the rest of the different independent variables of the analysis. In conclusion, whereas social capital and social values were absent as causes of juvenile delinquency, the following variables explained significantly the deviant behavior among Spanish youth: tolerance towards deviance, adolescent experience, and sex. This suggests that there are at least two possible keys to improve or avoid the problem of juvenile crime: prevention or awareness programmes and new critical feminist criminology point of view.

Mapping social capital across Europe: findings, trends and methodological shortcomings of cross-national surveys

2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frane Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
European Level ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
National Surveys ◽  
European Values ◽  
European Values Study ◽  
Cross National

Two sets of issues are elaborated and reflected on. The first one concerns the distribution of stocks of social capital across European (EU) nations. Using the conventional proxies like trust and associational involvement on the basis of data from cross-national surveys (European Values Study and European Social Survey as well as from Eurobarometer), the main tentative trends and patterns are outlined. The second set of issues refers to the quality and credibility of data. Concerning the first issue, it is possible to speak of four groups of countries with regard to the distribution of social capital at the European level. In contrast to authors who argue that there are no large differences in mean scores across the national patterns, this analysis arrived at more differentiated conclusions. Between the first and fourth groups, a very clear borderline can be drawn, while differences between the second and third groups are not so pronounced. In the context of the thematizing and critical reflection of the validity and comparability of the empirical evidence, some errors and inconsistencies were found. It seems that they appeared in part due to the inappropriate technical design of cross-national surveys and in part because of the countries-specific semantic-cultural as well as institutional factors, which did receive much attention either in the stage of preparing and conducting the survey or in the phase of interpreting and generalizing of the data.

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