Multidimensional Social Capital and Multiple Levels – A Comparative Study of European Nations

It is possible to distinguish several different approaches concerning the generation of social capital at different levels of society. Some authors stress the importance of civic engagement (society centered hypothesis). Others emphasize fair and well-functioning institutions as the most important sources of social capital in society (institution centered hypothesis). On the other hand, even the definitions of the concept social capital vary to certain degree between these studies. In addition, it is not always clear how differences between individual and aggregate-level nature of social capital are taken into account when exploring its sources.

The paper examines the strength of the different explanations over the generation of social capital by combining micro and macro level data. Variables to be explained are generalized trust, institutional confidence and civic engagement. The purpose of the paper is to find out how society centred and institution centred explanations function in different institutional settings.

The data utilised in the article is European Social Survey (2004). The empirical interest of the article is narrowed down to comparison of 15 European countries. The results reveal remarkable differences in the generation of social capital between different types of societies, however, generally supporting institution centred hypothesis.