Predicting Cross-National Levels of Social Trust: Global Pattern or Nordic Exceptionalism?

“On the other hand, several researchers find no evidence that social trust in ‘most people’ is more widespread in smaller countries (Knack and Keefer, 1997; Delhey and Newton, 2005).”

“These patterns may reflect national differences that have been found in the strength of the education effect associated with ingroup attitudes and trust, which appear to be stronger in more developed nations and older democracies (Delhey and Newton 2005; Elchardus and De Keere 2013; Hello et al. 2002; Scheepers et al.…”

“Rectifying this debate is imperative since much of the research exploring this relationship is cross-sectional and finds that institutional quality is associated with generalized trust (e.g., Delhey and Newton 2005; Freitag and Bu ¨hlmann 2009; Herreros 2004; Herreros and Criado 2008; Knack and Keefer 1997; Knack and…”

“…or economic differences, scholars posit a similar explanation of why they are detrimental to social trust: they decrease the sense of shared values and common belonging among members of society, leaving them feeling less connected with one another (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Rothstein & Uslaner, 2005).”

“One of the studies of the predictors of general trust is Delhey and Newton (2005) based on the worldwide WVS data from 1990– 1996, but this includes only macro-level analysis.”

“While there is no overall relationship between diversity and trust (Uslaner, in press a), the cases of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland have given some observers pause (Delhy and Newton, 2005).”

“Crime rate has been often used as an indicator of social trust within a community as distrust often comes with conflicts, and empirical studies have shown that social capital is inversely related with crime (Coffe & Geys, 2006; Delhey & Newton, 2005; Galea, Karpati, & Kennedy, 2002).”

“…or institutions, particularised trust works ‘at close social range’—it is directed at people or institutions that the individual knows personally and is built on interpersonal experience and interaction (Freitag & Bauer, 2016, 469; Frederiksen, 2019; Delhey & Newton, 2003, 2005; Granovetter, 1973).”

“For example, it has been argued that participation in the civil rights movements and protests against the war in Vietnam led to enduring changes in trust levels in the United States among those actively involved (Uslaner 2002).”

“The effect of Protestant traditions is explained by the observation that Protestant beliefs more than in other religions and churches, stress the importance of behaving trustworthy and having trusting attitudes towards others (Delhey and Newton, 2005, pp. 313-4).”

“It was shown that the welfare state and actual policies also impact on the spread of civic par ticipation as contemporary national policies promote active participation in society to different degrees (Delhey and Newton 2005; Pichler and Wallace 2007).”

“Cross-culturally, societies with a higher level of trust tend to be better governed, safer, more egalitarian, and wealthier than societies with a lower level of trust (Delhey & Newton, 2005).”

“…generally lack a variety of social and political structural characteristics, such as stable governments and effective law enforcement, that are conducive to generalized trust (Delhey & Newton, 2005), such that even wealthier individuals would have good reason to be distrusting in poorer countries.”

“More specifically, generalized social trust can be defined as “the belief that others will not deliberately or knowingly do us harm, if they can avoid it, and will look after our interests, if this is possible” (Delhey and Newton, 2005, p. 311).”

“(Delhey & Newton, 2005; Uslaner, 2002).”

“Additionally, Sweden consistently ranks high in measurements of trust, attributed by some to high economic equality and low corruption (Delhey and Newton 2005; Andersen 2018).”

“– have consistently indicated that generalized trust in Mainland China is among the highest worldwide, thus making it a notorious outlier in comparative studies (Allik and Realo, 2004; Bjørnskov,2006;Delhey and Newton,2005; Inglehart, 1999;Uslaner, 2002;Whiteley, 2000).”

“It goes without saying that social contexts, such as the configuration of village social and religious organizations, often the product of many decades or even centuries of evolution, may also affect the level of social trust (Delhey and Newton, 2005; Welch et al., 2004).”

“…trust in interpersonal interactions, most research on generalized trust comes from economics, sociology, and political science, which focus on macro-environmental factors, such as income inequality (Neville, 2012), wealth (Delhey & Newton, 2005), and corruption (Rothstein & Uslaner, 2005).”

“Although democratic institutions can operate at widely different levels of institutional fairness, authoritarian regimes generally perform more poorly in this regard (Delhey & Newton, 2005).”

“Firstly, researchers have reported that the propensity to trust others differs across countries (Buchan et al., 2002; Delhey & Newton, 2005; Dyer & Chu, 2000; Huff & Kelley, 2003).”

“However, all in all, most studies conducted show that the level of social capital decreases with ethnic heterogeneity (Alesina and La Ferrara, 2000, 2002; Coffe and Geys, 2006; Costa and Kahn, 2003; Delhey and Newton, 2005; Marschall and Stolle 2004, 2005; Stolle et al., 2005).”

“Most research on social trust and the associated concept of social capital has found that ethnic diversity in the population drives down levels of trust (Alesina and La Ferrara, 2000, 2002; Coffe and Geys, 2006; Costa and Kahn, 2003; Delhey and Newton, 2005; Putnam, 2007).”

“Likewise, socio-economic development has been found to be conducive to both trust (Delhey and Newton 2005) and unconventional political participation (Welzel et al. 2005).”

“…endorse this belief also exhibit democratic values such as tolerance and open-mindedness and behaviors such as voting, volunteering, and participating in community affairs (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Jennings & Stoker, 2004; Phan, 2008; Putnam, 2000; Uslaner, 2002; Wallace, 2008; Welch et al., 2005).”

“This work has found a negative correlation between trust and ethnic and economic diversity (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Öberg, Oskarsson, & Svensson, 2011; Putnam, 2007; Stolle, Soroka, & Johnston, 2008).”

“Whereas substantial differences in generalized trust exist between individuals within countries (see, e.g., Delhey and Newton 2005), the average levels of trust also vary substantially across countries (Bjørnskov 2007, Nannestad 2008).”

“A central demonstration of these endeavors is that trust might develop as a result of the politicalinstitutional environment in which individuals are embedded (Berggren and Jordahl, 2006; Delhey and Newton, 2005; Freitag and Bühlmann, 2009; Herreros, 2008; Knack and Keefer, 1997; Paxton, 2002; Robbins, forthcoming; Ro…”

“Studies using cross-sectional data and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression tend to show that property rights institutions, court independence, contract enforcement, welfare state development, and democracy significantly and positively relate to aggregated micro-level public-opinion survey data of generalized trust…”

“Yet, the assumption in this article is that QoG generates social trust – an assumption for which there is plenty of empirical support (e.g. Delhey and Newton, 2005; Dinesen, 2012; 2013; Dinesen and Hooghe, 2010; Herreros, 2009; Nannestad et al., 2013; Newton, 1999; 2007; Rothstein and Stolle, 2008;…”

“Perhaps, despite the popular notion of a crisis of mistrust in expertise [42], mistrust of peers is stronger still [90], though different results may be obtained in high trust societies [33] or those whose cultures are poorly represented by the expert body.”

“…thereby also diverge from previous findings that show a negative link between trust and diversity using generalized trust (Anderson and Paskeviciute 2006; Stolle et al. 2008; Delhey and Newton 2005), or no consistent relationship at all (Bjørnskov 2008; Gesthuizen et al. 2008; Hooghe et al. 2009).”

“…the relationship between local or regional indicators of ethnic diversity and trust, several cross-national studies examine the role of country-level diversity (Bjørnskov 2008; Delhey and Newton 2005; Gesthuizen, van der Meer, and Scheepers 2009; Hooghe et al. 2009; Lolle and Torpe 2011).”

“Observers argue that such flexibility is based to a significant degree on trust, which, as we have suggested, reflects a strong sense of national identity as rooted in cultural homogeneity (see also Delhey and Newton, 2005 ).”

“In another study, Delhey and Newton (2005) provide evidence for the impact of the religious background on the individual trusting propensity.”

“This pattern is familiar from countless studies of social development and few scholars would be surprised to rediscover it with whatever objective social indicator one uses (Delhey and Newton 2005; Estes 2010).”

“Generalized trust describes the general orientation of a society or community in which individuals intend to trust strangers or unfamiliar people (Delhey & Newton, 2005), while particularized trust refers to the trust based on all sorts of specific cues or ties (Wilson & Eckel, 2006; Bohnet &…”

“Additionally, on a social level, societies with higher levels of trust tend to be better governed and are safer, more egalitarian, and wealthier (Delhey and Newton 2005).”

“Those who have an ethnic background from low-trust societies, such as those with a Turkish background (Delhey & Newton, 2005), especially display more privacy on Facebook than do native Dutch.”

“…trusting also have a more optimistic view of their possibilities to influence their own life chances and, not least important, to be even more happy with how their life is going (Leung et al. 2011; Helliwell 2006; Dinesen 2013; Delhey and Newton 2005; Uslaner 2002; Freitag and Traunmuller 2009).”