IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rsocec/v79y2021i2p166-190.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social capital – a topsoil for democracy

Author

Listed:
  • Kanybek Nur-tegin

Abstract

Political theorists are familiar with the proposition that social capital in the form of trust, membership in voluntary organizations, and community engagement, is conducive to democracy. Corroborating empirical evidence exists but it is patchy and inconclusive because it is usually based on aggregate, often country-level data or isolated case studies, and the identified relationship is associative rather than causal. In this paper, I use some of the most recent large-scale micro-level datasets to establish that the relationship between social capital and democracy is indeed strong and causal as predicted by theory. I find that citizens who have more trust in others, attend community meetings, and belong to voluntary organizations tend to prefer democracy to any other kind of governance.

Suggested Citation

  • Kanybek Nur-tegin, 2021. "Social capital – a topsoil for democracy," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 79(2), pages 166-190, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:79:y:2021:i:2:p:166-190
    DOI: 10.1080/00346764.2019.1640385
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00346764.2019.1640385
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00346764.2019.1640385?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:79:y:2021:i:2:p:166-190. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RRSE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.