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

“Based on WVS data on a sample of 60 countries, Delhey and Newton [2005] found a signifi cant negative association between inequality and social trust.”

“…is, in line with previous findings, likewise found to be very important and generates a noted increase in the explanatory power of the model: i.e., trusting societies show lower levels of perceived corruption (see also La Porta et al. 1997; Bjørnskov 2003; Uslaner 2004; Delhey and Newton 2005).”

“Esping-Anderson, 1985; Flora and Heidenheimer, 1981; Korpi, 1989). Huber and Stephens (2001) note that the more often socialist parties were part of the government, the more generous the welfare state has become.”

“Building on this cultural perspective, one would expect that the systematic differences in levels of generalised trust across countries (Delhey and Newton 2005; Inglehart 1997) persists among immigrants in the host country.”

“Research often refers to the Nordic countries in Europe as examples of countries with a strong social cohesion (Delhey and Newton 2005).”

“In some high-trust modern mass-societies such as Denmark, people would include almost all their fellow-citizens in the set S (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Kim, Helgesen, & Ahn, 2002).”

“When scholars have considered trust as it relates to immigration, it is commonly operationalized as a dependent variable, and even subject to the same material contextual predictors testing if proportions of immigrants and economic condition are associated with individual or country level trust (Delhey and Newton, 200…”

“This argumentation is based on Rokeach’s (1960) social-psychological belief congruence theory, which states that there is ‘a natural tendency for people to associate with, socialize with and be more comfortable with others having similar belief systems’ (Rokeach et al., 1960: 161; Delhey and Newton, 2005).”

“Whereas empirical results concerning social trust predominantly reject the crowding out hypothesis (Rothstein and Stolle 2003; Delhey and Newton 2005; Kumlin and Rothstein 2005), we find a variety of contradictory results with respect to the structural dimension of social capital, meaning informal and formal voluntary…”

“…variable of homogeneity to measure the cognitive dimensions of social capital (Alesina & La Ferrara, 2005; Anderson & Paskeviciute, 2006; Glaeser & Alesina, 2004; Jordahl & Gustavsson, 2006; Newton & Delhey, 2005; Putnam, 2007; Oberg, Oskarsson, & Svensson, 2011; Vigdor, 2004: World Bank, 1997).”

“High-trust societies (commonly, the Nordic countries: see Delhey and Newton, 2005) are distinguished by the ‘strength’ of trust in general, in the institutions of government, in the workplace, in individuals’ personal relationships (Fukuyama, 1995: Parts II and III, respectively).”

“2011; Delhey and Newton 2005; Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Welzel and Delhey 2015).”

“Trust in other people in general covers the perception of a benevolent human nature: this is the belief that other people in the society will abide by common ethical rules [9] and will not deliberately or knowingly do other human beings avoidable harm, but, if possible, will look after their interests [10].”

“In contrast, the evidence from mainland Europe is much more mixed (Delhey and Newton, 2005; Gerritsen and Lubbens, 2010; Gesthuizen et al., 2009; Kesler and Bloemraad, 2010).”

“…the one hand, and social capital, civic engagement and trust, on the other hand, has attracted significant scholarly discussion in recent years (e.g., Alesina and La Ferrara, 2000, 2002; Delhey and Newton, 2005; Hallberg and Lund, 2005; Coffé and Geys, 2006; Putnam, 2007; Gijsberts et al., 2012).”

“…social change occurs rapidly and randomly, the stable network of social life will be disrupted; old customs, routines and systems will unravel; and values and common behavioral patterns will undergo huge transformations, resulting in reduced social trust (Delhey and Newton, 2005; Sztompka, 1999).”

“A large number of studies have demonstrated that collectives with uneven distributions of disposable income exhibit lower degrees of social trust (Bjørnskov, 2007; Delhey & Newton, 2005; Kawachi et al., 1997; Leigh, 2006b; Neckerman & Torche, 2007).”

“culture and confirm the analysis of Delhey and Newton (2005) who partly link high levels of trust with the ethnic homogeneity, Protestant religious traditions, good government, wealth and income equality in these countries.”

“The question whether and how culture may affect the reported findings has to be investigated in future studies taking differences for example in social trust in different countries into account [39].”

“HET is rooted in comparative quality-of-life research, a field that takes a similar universalist approach to development (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Eckersley, 2000; Inkeles & Diamond, 1980).”

“The single-item measure for trust has been used in some prior research (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Snijders & Keren, 2001), as well as in the original version of some large-scale surveys such as the General Social Survey (GSS), the European Social Survey (ESS), and the World Values Survey (WVS).”

“Social trust has been 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 and Newton (2005) also propose that ethnic homogeneity, religion, stable government and income equality all have positive effects upon general trust in fellow citizens (Delhey and Newton 2005, 311).”

“This strong association between generalised trust and socioeconomic status and ethnic homogeneity is in line with results from other studies (Bjørnskov, 2006; Delhey and Newton, 2005; Leigh, 2006; Zak and Knack, 2001).”

“So, in general, the often discussed North–South divide in social capital (Delhey and Newton, 2005; Norris and Davis, 2007) is supplemented with an exceptional position of the Iberian countries, where many informal contacts with friends and family members take place (Pichler and Wallace, 2007).”

“Our study is situated in a Nordic context, which is characterized by high-trust countries (Delhey and Newton, 2005), thus affecting the applicability of the model.”

“…focus on countries as the units of analysis in medium- to large-N cross-national comparisons (Anderson & Paskeviciute, 2006; Bjornskov, 2008; Delhey & Newton, 2005; Gerritsen & Lubbers, 2010; Gesthuizen et al., 2009; Gundelach, 2013; Hooghe et al., 2009; Kesler & Bloemraad, 2010; Knack &…”

“Because previous research suggests that economic development is important to the creation of trust (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Freitag & Bühlmann, 2009; Paxton, 2007), we control for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita logged.”

“2016) and of social trust specifically (Delhey and Newton 2005).”

“…a lower education, lower income, and lower status, and in societies with higher levels of inequality, segregation, con fl icts, and diversity, and lower levels of government quality and democracy (Alesina and La Ferrara 2002; Delhey and Newton 2005; Rothstein 2011; Uslaner 2012; Wu and Wilkes 2016).”

“They are countries with traditionally strong levels of social trust, but currently experiencing polarization through increasing social, economic, ethnic and cultural divides (see Delhey & Newton, 2005).”

“Consistent with previous research using a standardized generalized trust item from the World Values Survey (e.g., Bjørnskov, 2007; Delhey & Newton, 2005), our findings showed that Mainland China has a very high proportion of high trustors.”

“A variety of definitions of trust exist (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Fukuyama, 1996; Luhmann, 2000; Misztal, 1996; Ostrom, 1998).”

“In a second approach, culture, such as religious beliefs and values (Uslaner, 2000, 2002), or ethnic and linguistic homogeneity (Bahry, Kosolapov, Kosyreva, & Wilson, 2005; Delhey & Newton, 2005; Nannestad, Svendsen, & Svendsen, 2008) leads to trust.”

“…several crucial determinants of trust: the role of parenting in creating optimistic views of life in early childhood at the individual level, and the role of Protestant heritages and ethnic homogeneity at the societal level (Delhey and Newton 2005; Inglehart 1997, 1999; Putnam 1993; Uslaner 2002).”

“Th e relationship between social capital regimes and welfare regimes is therefore not a straightforward one and ‘Nordic 50 Intersentia exceptionalism’ (Delhey and Newton 2005) is not entirely borne out since Finland is not in the fi rst cluster of countries, whereas the Netherlands is.”

“Research that has shown country-level relationships between higher income inequality and lower trust has predominantly used the increase in social distance associated with higher levels of inequality as the theoretical explanation for this relationship (Delhey and Newton, 2005; Jordahl, 2009; Olivera, 2015; Wilkinson…”

“…contact theory, conflict theory is supported by numerous observational, and mostly cross-sectional, studies (e.g., Alesina and La Ferrara 2002; Delhey and Newton 2005; Dinesen and Sønderskov 2015; Legewie and Schaeffer 2016; Stolle, Soroka, and Johnston 2008) and also by a small number of…”

“This social trust can be defined as “the belief that others will not deliberately or knowingly do us harm” (Macready et al. 2020; Delhey and Newton 2005).”

“…relationship, claiming—most prominently by de Tocqueville (1832)—that civic engagement produces social trust, as being involved in communal activities reinforces norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness (Wollebæk and Selle 2002, 2007; Stolle 1998; Paxton 2007; Delhey and Newton 2003, 2005).”

“The argument is hat economic development and trust positively influence ach other (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Putnam, 1993) so 6 It should be noted that Lipset and Schneider (1987) and Inglehart 1997b, p. 231) reject the positive association between social and political rust observed by various other…”

“Using cross-country data, Delhey and Newton (2005), for example, find a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and trust as do Alesina and La Ferrara (2002) using U.S. data.”

“7While democratic regimes have been found to have somewhat higher aggregate levels of social trust (Delhey and Newton 2005), the political institutions of a country only affect this variable probabilistically.”