The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Many fear that democracies are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. This book focuses on 'democratic deficits', reflecting how far the perceived democratic performance of any state diverges from public expectations. Pippa Norris examines the symptoms by comparing system support in more than fifty societies worldwide, challenging the pervasive claim that most established democracies have experienced a steadily rising tide of political disaffection during the third-wave era. The book diagnoses the reasons behind the democratic deficit, including demand (rising public aspirations for democracy), information (negative news about government) and supply (the performance and structure of democratic regimes). Finally, Norris examines the consequences for active citizenship, for governance and, ultimately, for democratization. This book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of comparative politics, public opinion, political culture, political behavior, democratic governance, political psychology, political communications, public policymaking, comparative sociology, cross-national survey analysis and the dynamics of the democratization process.

Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/4247.pdf

The dark side of buyer–supplier relationships: A social capital perspective⋆

Preface Introduction: The Decline of Confidence in Government Joseph S. Nye, Jr. PART ONE: The Scope and Performance of Government The Evolving Scope of Government Ernest R. May Measuring the Performance of Government Derek Bok Fall from Grace: The Public's Loss of Faith in Government Gary Orren PART TWO: The Menu of Explanations Is It Really the Economy Stupid? Robert Z. Lawrence Social and Cultural Causes of Dissatisfaction with U.S. Government Jane Manbridge The Polarization of American Parties and Mistrust of Government David C. King The Politics of Mistrust Richard E. Neustadt PART THREE: Data on Public Attitudes toward Governance Changing Attitudes in America Robert J. Blendon, John M. Benson, Richard Morin, Drew E. Altman, Mollyann Brodie, Mario Brossard, And Matt James Postmaterialist Values and the Erosion of Institutional Authority Ronald Inglehart Public Trust and Democracy in Japan Susan J. Pharr Conclusion: Reflections, Conjectures, and Puzzles Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and Philip D. Zelikow Notes Contributors Index

Why people don't trust government

This study explores time trends in public trust in science in the United States from 1974 to 2010. More precisely, I test Mooney’s (2005) claim that conservatives in the United States have become i...

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Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010

In spite of the great importance attached by social capital theory to the role of social trust in maintaining stable and effective democracy, research has produced rather weak and mixed support for the idea that the socially trusting individuals tend to be politically trusting, and the weight of evidence suggests either a weak or insignificant relationship between social and political trust. The present work, however, reports robust and statistically significant correlations between generalized social trust, on the one hand, and confidence in political institutions and satisfaction with democracy, on the other. The associations are significant in 23 European countries and in the United States. This article argues that its findings are more accurate and more reliable than much of the previous work because they are based on better and more sensitive measures. The results pose a dilemma for future survey work, while reopening possibilities for social capital research.

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Social Trust and Attitudes Toward Democracy

During recent years, empirical trust research has significantly advanced our understanding about the interdependencies of social and political trust. This progress can mostly be attributed to major improvements of measurement instruments in survey research. Research on the causes of both forms of trust have examined the top-down approach of trust building, which places importance on fair and impartial political institutions, such as the police and judiciary, as well as societal accounts of trust building that relate to the role of social networks and parents as well as perceptions of inequality. While there is a modest relationship between social forms of trust and political forms of trust, research has not entirely disentangled the flow of causality between the two. Recent insights into contextual and individual-level covariates of social and political trust may hold answers regarding future developments and political and societal consequences.

Social and Political Trust

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.

Three forms of trust and their association

In claiming that ‘Mutual trust lies at the heart of all political processes’, the
political philosopher John Dunn (1993: 641) reasserts a theme going back
at least to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and coming from them to us
through the writings of de Tocqueville, Simmel, Tonnies, Durkheim,
Weber, Parsons, Coleman, and Luhmann.1 In recent years, the theme has
been reformulated in a powerful form by writers of the social capital
school. According to them, social trust is the central element in a complex
virtuous circle in which a set of attitudes, such as mutuality, reciprocity, and
trust, are associated with social participation and engagement in community and civic affairs; these help to build the social and political institutions
necessary for democratic and efﬁcient governments; in turn, these create
the conditions in which social and political trust can ﬂourish. At the individual level, trust is the cornerstone ‘habit of the heart’, which is associated
with a climate of social trust that enables citizens to cooperate with each
other, build a common identity, and pursue common goals. At the structural level, effective community organisations, especially voluntary associations, are an essential part of the social framework necessary to build the
social, economic, and political institutions of modern democratic society.

Trust in people, confidence in political institutions, and satisfaction with democracy

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 soc...

Sonja Zmerli

Papers

Social Trust and Attitudes Toward Democracy

Social and Political Trust

Three forms of trust and their association

Trust in people, confidence in political institutions, and satisfaction with democracy

Introduction: Civicness, Equality, and Democracy—A “Dark Side” of Social Capital?: