European Societies 2003 [antikvár]

WHO TRUSTS? The origins of social trust in seven societies ian Delhey Department of Social Structure and Social Reporting, Social Science Research Centre, Berlin (WZB), Germany Kenneth Newton Department of Political Science, University of Southampton, UK ABSTRACT: This article identities six main theories of the determinants of social trust, and tests them against survey data from seven societies, 1999- 2001. Three of the six theories of trust fare rather poorly and three do better. First and foremost, social trust tends to be high among citizens who believe that there are few severe social conflicts and where the sense of public safety is high. Second, informál social networks are associated with trust. And third, those who are successful in life trust more, or are more inclined by their personal experience to do so. Individual theories seem to work best in societies with higher levels of trust, and societal ones in societies with lower levels of trust. This may have something to do with the fact that our two low trust societies, Hungary and Slovenia, happen to have experienced revolutionary change in the very recent past, so that societal events have overwhelmed individual circumstances. Key words: social trust; social capital; cleavages; personality; cross-national comparison; Euromodule survey 'Trust is one of the most important synthetic forces within society.' (Simmel 1950: 326) There is a generál consensus among contemporary social scientists that social trust is important, as the small flood of recent publications on the topic shows.1 The interest in trust covers, unusually in the increasingly 1. For recent generál work on the subject see, for example, Misztal 1996; Seligman 1997; Warren 1999; Braithwaite and Levi 1998; Gambetta 1988; Luhmann 1979; Coleman 1990; Ostrom 1990; Sztompka 1996, 2000; Hollis 1998. In addition, mucii of the recent work on contemporary political attitudes and behaviour makes extensive reference to trust - see Putnam 1993, 2000; Edwards et al. 2001; van Deth et al. 1999;