Social Context and Social Capital

Abstract

This research uses a three-part concept of social capital that incorporates structural elements, cognitive elements, and collective action, to explore cross-national variation in social capital. The forms and levels of social capital can be influenced by individual characteristics, such as gender and education level, and by macrolevel social context. Using data from the World Values Survey for thirty-three low- and middle-income countries, this study uses multilevel models to explore how governance, inequality, and general social conditions affect social capital. It is found that polity type matters for social capital levels, but the quality of governance does not. Democracy has a strong positive effect on levels of social capital, relative to more autocratic polity types. However, control of corruption has a negative effect. Even after controlling for a wide variety of macrolevel phenomena, social capital varies dramatically between countries. This finding lends support to the idea that cultural factors are extremely important to the study of social capital.