The Cultural Effects of Individualism and Collectivism on Social Capital

Abstract

This paper attempts to identify the cultural effects of individualism and collectivism, which have been widely studied as the central organizing dimensions of culture, on the individual's political attitude and behavior while disentangling the individual and national level effects based on multilevel modeling. It uses the five waves (1981–2007) of the World Values Survey for thirty OECD member countries and attempts to establish a stronger case for the external validity of the findings. The analysis finds that in general individualism and collectivism matter both for the elements of civic culture/social capital. The significant cultural effects show up either at one level or at both