Social trust and Political Participation A

multilevel analysis of 25 European democracies

Maria Bck1 and Henrik S. Christensen2

1st DRAFT. PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE.

1
2

Dpt. of political science, bo Akademi University, Fnriksgatan 3A, FIN-20500 bo. E-mail: maria.t.back@abo.fi
Dpt. of political science, bo Akademi University, Fnriksgatan 3A, FIN-20500 bo. E-mail: hchriste@abo.fi

Abstract. The link between social trust and political participation has often been found to be
either weak or non-existent. However, these studies have neglected the interaction between
different levels of analysis and have instead examined them at either the aggregated level or
the individual level. These studies hereby overlook that there are good reasons to assume
that the effect of social trust on individual behaviour is context dependent. With the help of
multilevel logistic regressions, we examine how four contextual elements affect the impact
of social trust on three forms of political participation: voting, institutionalised, and noninstitutionalised participation. The data for the study comes from the fourth round of the
ESS from 2008 and include a total of 25 European democracies and 47489 respondents at the
individual level. The results suggest that the context does indeed play a significant role in
shaping the effect of social trust on political participation.

INTRODUCTION
To see social capital is an important predictor for political participation has virtually become
a truism within the study of political participation. Following the seminal work of Robert
Putnam (1993, 2000), several studies have examined the link with political participation.
Social capital is traditionally defined as having two central components: social networks,
and interpersonal trust (Putnam, 2000: 19). When it comes to political participation, most
studies find that the network component is the central element for explaining how active
citizens are (Krishna 2002; Teorell 2003; Howard and Gilbert, 2008; Maloney and van Deth,
2010; Bck, 2011). Putnam also grants primacy to voluntary associations that instil habits of
cooperation and public-spiritedness in their members and function as schools of democracy
(Putnam 2000: 338-339). All social networks do, however, not produce social trust or make
democracy work. There are organizations that do the exact opposite, creating unsocial
capital instead. Rothstein argues that it is logically contradicting if social capital creates
social traps instead of dissolving them (Rothstein 2003: 7094). Previous research has
indicated that social trust may be the very fabric of social life. While associations may
vitalise social life, social trust is the moral base, a resource that makes it possible to cooperate even if we are not certain how others are going to act (Uslaner, 1999: 122; Ilmonen,
2000: 28). Nevertheless, when it comes to generalized social trust and the link to political
participation, most studies find, only a weak or even non-significant relationship both at the
individual (Rothstein 2003; Bck 2011) and at the aggregated level (Uslaner and Brown,
2005).
However, most of these studies have only paid limited attention to how the context can
mediate the effect of social trust on political participation. This is unfortunate since it has
been noted that the impact may well be dependent on the context, thus constituting a
missing link that can help explain some of the ambiguity in past research reports. Social
capital can be both an individual asset as well as a public good, and individuals whose
personal social capital is low may take advantage of the potentially high contextual social
capital (Putnam 2000: 20). In a similar vein, generalized social trust can, at the societal level,
be seen as an indicator of social cohesion, allowing the citizens to come together and join
forces in social and political networks. Social trust may facilitate life in diverse societies,
promoting both tolerance and acceptance (Stolle, 2002; Uslaner, 2002). There are therefore
good reasons to believe that generalized social trust matters more under certain
circumstances that in others.
For this reason, this study sets out to examine how the context influences the effect of social
trust on the propensity to become active in three forms of political participation: voting,
institutionalised participation, and non-institutionalised participation. We examine the
impact of four central contextual elements at the country level: state legitimacy and
contextual social trust are both central cultural elements, whereas the effective electoral

threshold and fiscal decentralisation captures the extent of power sharing embedded in the
institutional structure of the state. Specifically, we examine the following research questions:
1.

The direct effect of social trust on political participation (individual-level).

2.

Contextual effects (an examination of the direct contextual effect on participation).

3.

Interaction effects (an examination of whether the context mediates the effect of
social trust on participation).

The data for examining these research questions come from the fourth round of the
European Social Survey from 2008 (ESS, 2008) and in all we include 25 democratic countries
and a total of 47489 respondents. The results suggest that there are indeed significant
contextual effects that moderate the impact of social trust on political participation.

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE LINK BETWEEN SOCIAL TRUST AND

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
Following the work of Putnam (1993, 2000), the link between social capital and political
engagement has been debated within political science. Most research focuses on the link
between being active in voluntary associations and being politically active (Krishna 2002;
Teorell 2003; Howard and Gilbert, 2008; Maloney and van Deth, 2010; Bck, 2011). The link
between social trust and political participation has also been the topic of interest, but there is
a certain ambivalence in the findings. While some studies find a positive relationship
between social trust and political participation (Fennema & Tillie, 2001; Kaase, 1999;
Putnam, 1993; 2000) others find the connection to be either weak, non-existent or even
negative (Bck, 2011; van Deth, 2001; Milner, 2000; Muhlberger, 2003; Pattie et al., 2003).
Hence, there is need for a more detailed study on how and why social trust may affect
political participation.
With social trust we mean generalized interpersonal trust as opposed to particularized
interpersonal trust. While the former entails the general feeling that most people can be
trusted, the latter is confined to people we already know, for example people in our own
social or demographic group. While particularized trust does not benefit the society as a
whole, but may rather harm it by creating a sense of us and them among the citizens,
generalized trust enhances the feeling of a common moral foundation, identity and norms. It
may also reduce the risk of free riding (Oskarsson, 2003; Uslaner, 2002).
When studying the link between social trust and political participation, it is necessary to
note that political participation has evolved to become a heterogeneous phenomenon that
can be conceptualized as involving everything from voting and party membership to
political consumerism and taking part in demonstrations (Norris, 2002; van Deth et al., 2007;
Christensen, 2011).Acknowledging that political participation is a multifaceted concept, we

use the definition offered by Brady (1999: 737): action by ordinary citizens directed towards
influencing some political outcomes. To capture the richness of political participation, we here
focus on three central forms of political participation in the representative democracy:
voting, institutionalized participation in close vicinity to the political system, and noninstitutionalised participation outside the formal political system (Kaase, 1999; Marien et al.,
2010).
A large battery of variables has been proposed to account for the different forms of
participation (Barnes, Kaase, et al, 1979; Norris, 2002; Dalton, 2006; van Deth et al., 2007;
Christensen, 2011). For social trust, the intuitive expectation is that it has a positive effect on
all forms of political participation. The more trusting an individual is, the more political
active she is. The literature on the topic gives some suggestions on how the mechanism
between social trust and political participation works. According to Putnam (1993: 99120) a
good society is made up of an interested and trustful citizenry and the emphasis is on civic
engagement, political equality, solidarity and tolerance. These principles are reflected in
what is presumed to be a good citizenship and what norms are perceived to characterize
such a citizenship. Community oriented citizens do not only have the right to participate in
common matters, but they are also expected to be active, both for their own sake and the
sake of the community. Among others, Oskarsson argues that interpersonal trust moderates
the free passenger-problem. What he means by this is that individuals who act rationally
tend to free ride and take advantage of the cooperation of others without participating
themselves. The idea is that we pitch in, for example by recycling, paying our taxes etc. as
long as we trust that other people do the same. Interpersonal trust is an important
prerequisite for this to happen (Oskarsson, 2003: 70; Rothstein, 2003). This leads us to
propose the following hypotheses on the link between social trust and the three forms of
political participation:
Hypothesis1a (H1a):

Social trust has a positive effect on the propensity to vote.

Hypothesis1b (H1b):

Social trust has a positive effect on the propensity to be active in

institutionalised participation.

Hypothesis1c (H1c):

Social trust has a positive effect on the propensity to be active in noninstitutionalised participation.

Although the theoretical arguments are convincing, the empirical evidence is as noted far
from conclusive. There may be several reasons for this. Social trust may work as a doubleedged sword (Pattie et al., 2003: 458). Trusting people may become politically active because
they expect that they will be successful in whatever the purpose of the activity is, but they
can also remain inactive because they believe that other people can be trusted to get the job
done. Untrusting individuals may also become politically active to ensure that the
unreliable government officials will be held accountable. Finally people can remain
disengaged if they feel that the officials cannot be controlled by the public and social trust

may therefore, according to the authors, work in an opposite or self-cancelling way when it
comes to political engagement for certain people.

This shows that uncertainties still linger when it comes to the link between trust and
participation. A pertinent question concerns how the link between social trust and
participation is affected by the context in which the political actions occur. Previous research
indicates that social trust is dependent on the context in which it is embedded (Stolle, 2002).
We therefore examine the role of contextual factors. We focus on four central aspects of the
context.
The first two aspects concern cultural dimensions of the environment. In their original work
on political culture, Almond and Verba (1963: 13) state that [W]hen we speak of the
political culture of society, we refer to the political system as internalized in the cognitions,
feelings, and evaluations or its population (Almond and Verba 1963: 13). Some of the key
aspects of political culture are support in government, trust in the political system and
political efficacy. These aspects are of central meaning for both social trust (Rothstein 2003,
2011; Bck 2011) and political participation (e.g. Booth and Seligson, 2009). Two cultural
aspects are of particular relevance for the present purposes. The first aspect concerns the
legitimacy of the state. Gilley (2006: 499) asserts that political legitimacy is a major
determinant of both the structure and operation of states and that it profoundly affects the
states behaviour toward the citizens and others. According to Gilley, legitimacy is an
endorsement of the state by citizens at a moral and normative level. Following David
Beethams (1991) theory of the legitimation of power, he makes a distinction between three
constitutive sub-types of legitimacy that together define the idea of rightfulness as it is
believed by citizens: views of legality, views of justification and acts of consent (Gilley, 2006:
502). While the latter in Gilleys measurement approach is solely focused on behaviour, we
will concentrate on the attitudinal indicators of the two former attributes.
The second cultural aspect concerns the community level of social trust. The positive link
between social trust and participation would be expected to apply at the aggregate level as
well, that is to say, a trusting community displays higher levels of political activity than
communities with scarce levels of social trust. Parallels can be drawn to Putnams study of
the Italian regions and the assumption that democracy will work better in an environment of
high social capital: Stocks of social capital, such as trust, norms and networks, tend to be
self-reinforcing and cumulative. Virtuous circles result in social equilibrium with high levels
of cooperation, trust, reciprocity, civic engagement and well-being, as well as honesty and
law-abidingness (Putnam 1993: 111, 177). There are many, albeit disputed (see e.g. Jackman
and Miller 1998), attempts to treat social capital as culture. Inglehart (1997: 188) defines
social capital as a culture of trust and tolerance and Almond and Verba (1963) identify
interpersonal trust as an important trait conducive to democracy when they find that nations

with longer tradition of stable democracy demonstrate higher levels of trust and that trust
also correlates with political activism. According to Putnam (1993: 99120) a good society is
made up of an interested and trustful citizenry and the emphasis is on civic engagement,
political equality, solidarity and tolerance.
In addition to the two cultural factors, we also examine the effects of two institutional
factors. The context of political institutions has been argued to either directly or indirectly
influence both patterns of political engagement (Powell, 2000; Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer,
2010; Christensen, 2011; Marien and Christensen, 2012) and has also been argued to be affect
levels of social trust (Freitag and Bhlmann, 2009). Following Lijphart (1999), a basic
distinction is frequently drawn between power sharing and power concentrating democratic
systems (Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer, 2010: 991). The power sharing democracies value
inclusion and the representativeness of the political majorities and therefore aim to generate
governments that are representative of a wide array of interests. Power concentrating
democracies prioritise accountability and the rule of the majority and therefore aim to
produce efficient majority governments with clear responsibility for the decision-making.
The extent of powers sharing or institutional openness plays a central role in determining
how easy it is for citizens to influence the political decision-making between elections
(Christensen, 2011: 5961).
We focus on two central institutional aspects. The effective electoral threshold captures how
easy it is for political parties to win representation in parliament (Powell, 2000). A low
effective electoral threshold increases the number of effective parties competing in elections
and thereby extends the extent of power sharing within the system. Fiscal decentralisation is a
measure for the extent of vertical decentralisation of the political system and denotes the
proportion of local and regional spending in relation to the total spending (Morales, 2009:
170). Increased decentralisation adds to the extent of power sharing by dividing decisionmaking powers between several layers of government. Both of these have been used in
previous research examining the institutional effect on political behaviour (Powell, 2000;
Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer, 2010; Christensen, 2011; Marien and Christensen, 2012).
These four contextual factors may affect political participation directly. Previous literature
has found that cultural factors affect the likelihood of being active in political activities
(Almond and Verba, 1963; Inglehart, 1997; Denk, 2009). The level of political participation is
generally higher in countries with high contextual social capital (Bck, 2011). In a similar
vein, studies have found that institutional factors affect participation in political
organisations (Morales, 2009) and protest (Dalton et al., 2010), although other studies finds
the direct effect of the institutional context on individual behaviour to be limited when
controlling for individual level factors (Marien and Christensen, 2012). Nevertheless, this
leads us to examine the following hypotheses for the direct effects of the contextual factors:

Hypothesis2a (H2a):

The context directly affects the propensity to vote.

Hypothesis2b (H2b):

The context directly affects the propensity to be active in

institutionalised participation.

Hypothesis2c (H2c):

The context directly affects the propensity to be active in noninstitutionalised participation.

In addition to a direct effect of the contextual factors, the context may also determine the
impact of social trust on political participation. To our knowledge, no previous studies have
examined this question for social trust.
Nevertheless, there are good reasons to expect the cultural factors to have a mediating effect
on how social trust affect political participation. Communities have a certain level of
(contextual) social trust, and within these contexts there are individuals with varying stocks
of individual social trust. Putnam (2000: 20) contends that there may be spillover-effects
from the societal level to individuals in the way that poorly connected individuals benefit
from a well-connected society. According to Uslaner (1999: 132) social capital will spread
more easily in contexts where the general level of social capital is already high. He further
claims that when individual social capital decreases, there will be less contextual social
capital to go around, which in turn will make its effects weaker (see also Field, 2003: 4041).
For the institutional factors, Freitag and Bhlmann (2009) find that power sharing
institutions promote social trust among citizens. Previous studies also suggest that the
institutional context may interact with individual level characteristics such as political trust
(Marien and Christensen, 2012) and political efficacy (Karp and Banducci, 2007) and thereby
indirectly shape political behaviour. Since power sharing institutions are expected to have a
positive influence on both political behaviour and levels of social trust, it is likely that there
is also a positive interaction between the two, leading social trust to have a stronger effect on
participation in power sharing democracies. In sum, we examine the following hypotheses
for the mediating effect of the context on the link between social trust and participation:
Hypothesis3a (H3a):

The context mediates the effect of social trust on the propensity to

vote.

Hypothesis3b (H3b):

The context mediates the effect of social trust on the propensity to be

active in institutionalised participation.

Hypothesis3c (H3c):

The context mediates the effect of social trust on the propensity to be

active in non-institutionalised participation.

The following section outlines how we examine the hypotheses derived from the theory.

RESEARCH DESIGN
The data for studying the nine hypotheses come from the fourth round of the European
Social Survey from 2008 (ESS Round 4, 2008). In addition to the restriction to a European
context, the study is restricted to democratic countries in order to avoid conceptual
travelling (Sartori, 1970). For this reason, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine are excluded from the
study, since they are not rated as democracies. Israel has also been excluded since it is
geographically located outside of the European context. This leaves 25 countries1 and a total
of 47489 respondents, although some respondents are excluded from the analyses due to
missing data.
Political participation is measured by three variables which gauge the involvement in three
forms of political participation that have all been the topic for previous research2:
Voting: voted or not last national election.3
Institutionalised participation: Contacting politicians, Working for a political party,
and being member of a political party.
Non-institutionalised

participation:

Sign

petitions,

take

part

in

public

demonstrations and boycott products.4

All three dependent variables are coded dichotomously. This means the study examines the
choice to become active rather than the extent of involvement. Since the questions used only
indicate if the respondent has performed each activity within the last 12 months and not
how often, any attempt to probe the extent of involvement is tentative at best (cf. Topf, 1995:
68).
The central independent variable is social trust, which is measured with the help of a
standard index based on three questions concerning the perceived trustworthiness of fellow
citizens: 1)Most people can be trusted or you can't be too careful; 2) Most people would try
to take advantage of you if they got the chance; 3) People try to be helpful (Cronbachs
alpha = 0.80). Although the measuring of a complex concept such as social trust is inherently
difficult in survey research (cf. Nannestad, 2008: 417), this measure is in line with the
standard approach and presents the best available opportunity for operationalizing the
concept. The index is coded to range between 0 and 1 with 1 indicating the highest level of
social trust.
The context is operationalized with measures that capture the central aspects of the cultural
and the institutional dimensions of the environment. The two variables used to capture the
cultural dimension are operationalised as follows:
State legitimacy (Gilley, 2006): Since we examine forms of political behaviour we use a
purely attitudinal measure that consists of views on legality and views of justification.

The variable has been coded to vary between 0 and 1 with 1 indicating the highest
extent of state legitimacy for a country.
Contextual social trust: This is the social trust measure at the individual level
aggregated to the country level. The measure has been coded to vary between 0 and 1
with 1 indicating the highest extent of contextual social trust for a country.
For the institutional dimension, the two aspects are operationalised as follows:
The effective electoral threshold: The effective threshold gauges how easy it is for
political parties to win representation in parliament (Powell, 2000). This is calculated
as 75 %/( M + 1) (M = number of seats allocated) and ranges between 0 and 37.5 as the
highest theoretical value. Values taken from Lundell and Karvonen (2008). Recoded
to vary between 0 and 1 with 1 indicating lowest effective threshold.
Fiscal decentralisation denotes the proportion of local and regional spending in
relation to the total spending (Morales, 2009: 170). The percentages come from IMF
Government finance statistics. Ranges between 0 (no decentralisation) and 100
(totally decentralised). The values are since recoded to vary between 0 and 1 with 1
denoting the highest extent of decentralisation (Switzerland =0.44) since the notion of
a totally decentralised state is unrealistic.
All four contextual variables are coded to vary between 0 and 1, with 1 denoting high
legitimacy/contextual social trust/power sharing.
The control variables are all found at the individual level and they include age, gender and
education, which are three socio-demographic aspects known to influence political
behaviour (Marien et al., 2010). The analyses also control for political interest and left-right
ideology, which has been known to affect the likelihood of engagement in different political
activities (Barnes, Kaase et al., 1979; Norris, 2002). These control variables are also coded to
vary between 0 and 1.
The appropriate method of analysis is multilevel logistic analysis since the data is nested in
countries and the dependent variables are dichotomous (Snijders and Bosker, 1999: 215216).
Since all variables are coded to vary from 0-1, the estimated coefficient for an explanatory
variable indicates increase or decrease in the logit of the odds ratio of the dependent variable
(participate or not) when the independent variable changes from its minimum to its
maximum value. As is customary, the explanatory variables are centred around the grand
mean to achieve stable models (Hox, 2002: 62). For ease of interpretation, central estimates
are translated into odds ratios by taking the exponential of the estimates.

ANALYSIS

Before examining the hypotheses, we scrutinize the distribution of the key variables among
the countries included in the study.

Table 1 Country level distribution of central variables, ESS 2008.

Political participation
Voted last
general
election

Institutional
participation

Cultural context

Noninstitutional
participation

Social trust

State
legitimacy

Percentage have done

Institutional context
Effective
electoral
threshold

Fiscal decentralisation

Mean scores

Belgium

92.1

19.2

33.3

0.53

0.57

0.76

0.33

Bulgaria

72.8

9.8

9.8

0.36

0.29

0.89

0.20

Croatia

78.9

16.7

30.0

0.42

0.34

0.85

0.23

Cyprus

93.4

24.5

11.1

0.45

0.90

0.07

Czech
Republic

58.0

17.7

19.0

0.48

0.37

0.87

0.35

Denmark

94.2

24.0

47.4

0.68

0.82

0.95

0.79

Estonia

64.7

15.2

12.3

0.54

0.39

0.79

0.32

Finland

83.2

25.1

47.7

0.63

0.74

0.86

0.58

France

77.6

17.5

48.4

0.49

0.57

0.00

0.32

Germany

83.7

19.2

47.7

0.53

0.72

0.87

0.76

Greece

87.9

15.4

18.3

0.36

0.41

0.68

0.02

Hungary

80.2

9.1

11.2

0.43

0.46

0.47

0.32

Ireland

79.4

26.2

33.1

0.59

0.78

0.60

0.21

Latvia

62.9

12.0

13.4

0.48

0.41

0.87

0.41

Netherlands

86.0

18.8

28.8

0.59

0.73

0.98

0.26

Norway

85.7

26.4

47.6

0.65

0.81

0.89

0.35

Poland

72.8

8.4

10.5

0.42

0.49

0.87

0.40

Portugal

73.7

8.5

8.3

0.42

0.65

0.83

0.19

Romania

67.8

15.2

7.9

0.36

0.24

0.87

0.46

Slovakia

77.7

8.5

25.6

0.43

0.33

0.87

0.18

Slovenia

72.6

14.7

12.6

0.47

0.39

0.80

0.23

Spain

81.9

11.7

26.8

0.49

0.63

0.74

0.58

Sweden

91.1

19.2

61.0

0.64

0.70

0.89

0.80

Switzerland

64.5

17.1

47.8

0.59

0.62

0.77

1.00

UK

70.3

18.6

46.5

0.55

0.64

0.00

0.20

Total

77.8

16.5

28.9

0.50

0.55

0.74

0.39

Note: The entries for the participatory activities indicate the percentage of the populations who indicate having been active in voting, institutionalised
participation or non-institutionalised participation. The entries for the contextual factors indicate mean scores across countries. Data weighted with design
weight.

As can be seen, there are important differences in the extent of political involvement in the
countries under scrutiny. When it comes to electoral participation, the majority indicate
having voted in the last general election in all countries. Although self-reporting does not
perfectly measure the actual extent of voter turnout, there is little doubt that this is the most
popular political activity in Europe despite the fears raised over falling levels of electoral
turnout. For the institutionalised activities, only 8.5 per cent of the population in Slovakia
have done at least one of these activities within the last 12 months, whereas the highest
active proportion is found in Norway, where 26.4 per cent have done one of these activities
within the last 12 months. Hence, even the highest level of participation is considerably

lower than the lowest electoral turnout. The participation rates are more diverse for noninstitutionalised participation, where only 7.9 per cent performed one of these activities in
Romania within the last 12 months compared to a high of 61 per cent in Sweden.
For the four contextual factors, it should be noted that there is limited variation for two
factors, namely contextual social trust and the effective electoral threshold. Whereas the lack
of variation in the effective electoral threshold is due to the limited variation in this regard in
a European context, the limited variation for contextual social trust was to be expected. The
values tend to cluster around the mean since it is unlikely that any society would consist of
individuals who completely trust or distrust other citizens. Hence, the results for these
factors should be interpreted with some caution.
Moving on to the central research question of the role of social trust at the individual level
and the interplay with the context in explaining political participation, the first three
hypotheses concern the effect of social trust on the three forms of political participation.
Table 2 displays information on the analyses concerning these hypotheses. For each form of
participation, three models are displayed. Model 0 is an empty model that decomposes the
variance into group and individual level. Model 1 only includes social trust as an
explanatory variable to examine the relationship, whereas model 2 includes the control
variables to ensure that the relationship is robust.

Table 2 Multilevel logistic analyses of individual level effects on Voting, Institutionalised

participation, and Non-Institutionalised participation.
Voting

Institutionalised

Non-institutionalised

Model 0

Model 1

Model 2

Model 0

Model 1

Model 2

Model 0

Model 1

Model 2

1.27
(0.12)***

1.29
(0.11)***

1.58
(0.12)***

-1.60
(0.08)***

-1.61
(0.08)***

-1.77
(0.08)***

-0.93
(0.16)***

-0.95
(0.15)***

-0.93
(0.16)***

0.96
(0.20)***

0.62
(0.16)***

0.25
(0.11)*

-0.12
(0.12)

0.65
(0.09)***

0.30
(0.11)**

Fixed Part
Constant
Social trust
Age

2.80
(0.26)***

0.62
(0.17)***

-1.15
(0.18)***

Gender

-0.13
(0.02)***

0.19
(0.04)***

-0.18
(0.05)***

Education

0.77
(0.12)***

0.64
(0.07)***

0.92
(0.07)***

Political interest

1.64
(0.11)***

1.83
(0.09)***

1.33
(0.08)***

Ideology

0.41
(0.14)***

-0.13
(0.11)

-0.54
(0.14)***

Random Part
Country level
Between country
error variance
Estimated intra class
correlation (ICC)
Respondents
(countries)

0.34
(0.07)***

0.33
(0.07)***

0.41
(0.09)***

0.16
(0.03)***

0.15
(0.03)***

0.12
(0.03)***

0.68
(0.11)***

0.61
(0.10)***

0.54
(0.10)***

0.09

0.09

0.11

0.05

0.04

0.03

0.17

0.16

0.14

43497
(25)

43002
(25)

37285
(25)

47143
(25)

46583
(25)

39956
(25)

47113
(25)

46546
(25)

39886
(25)

Note: The entries are estimates of multilevel logistic regression with standard errors in parenthesis. Since all variables are coded 0-1, the coefficients indicate
increase or decrease in the logit of the odds ratio of the dependent variable when the independent variable moves from 0 to 1. Data weighted with
design weight. Data weighted with design weight. ICC estimated as p = var (uj)/(var (uj) + 2/3) (Snijders & Bosker 1999: 224). *p<0.05, **<0.01, ***<0.001

10

The ICC scores in the null models show the extent of variation at the group level. As can be
seen, this is highest for non-institutionalised participation, where about 17 per cent of the
variance is at the country level, whereas it is relatively low for institutionalised participation,
where only 5 per cent is at the country level. Nonetheless, simulation studies suggest that
even modest levels of ICC can make tests of significance in traditional linear models too
liberal (Barcikowski, 1981).
As expected, the results for voting show that social trust has a significant positive impact on
the propensity to vote. The estimate of 0.62 in the model 2 corresponds to an odds ratio of
1,87, meaning those with the highest level of social trust are almost two times as likely to be
active compared to those with the lowest level of social trust when holding other factors
constant. Hypothesis 1a is therefore confirmed by the results. For institutionalised
participation, a weak propensity for social trust to enhance the likelihood of being active is
found in model 1, but the effect disappears in model 2 when controlling for other factors.
Hence, it is not possible to conclude that there is any effect of social trust on this form of
participation and H1b has to be rejected. Nevertheless, when it comes to noninstitutionalised participation, we find, in line with the expectations, a positive effect on the
propensity to become active. The initial estimate of 0.65 found in model 1 drops to 0.30 when
controlling for other factors. Although not particularly strong, this estimate equals an odds
ratio of 1.35, meaning those with the highest level of social trust are about one third more
likely to be active compared to those with the lowest level of social trust. This means that the
results validate H1c.
Moving on to the question of contextual effects for political participation and H2a- H2c,
table 3 displays the results for each of the four contextual factors for the three forms of
participation.5

11

Table 3 Multilevel logistic regression of individual and contextual effects on Voting,

Institutionalised participation, and Non-Institutionalised participation.
Voting
M3

M4

M5

Institutionalised
M6

M3

M4

M5

Non-institutionalised
M6

M3

M4

M5

M6

Fixed Part
Constant

1.54
1.58
1.58
1.57
-1.80
-1.78
-1.78
-1.78
-0.93
-1.00
-0.93
-0.94
(0.12)*** (0.13)*** (0.13)*** (0.13)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.08)*** (0.08)*** (0.12)*** (0.12)*** (0.15)*** (0.13)***

Social trust

0.64
0.62
0.63
0.63
(0.08)*** (0.08)*** (0.08)*** (0.08)***

Age

2.81
2.80
2.81
2.80
0.60
0.62
0.62
0.62
-1.24
-1.22
-1.17
-1.19
(0.09)*** (0.09)*** (0.09)*** (0.09)*** (0.17)*** (0.17)*** (0.17)*** (0.17)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)***

Gender

-0.13
-0.13
-0.13
-0.13
0.18
0.19
0.19
0.19
-0.20
-0.19
-0.18
-0.19
(0.03)*** (0.03)*** (0.03)*** (0.03)*** (0.04)*** (0.04)*** (0.04)*** (0.04)*** (0.02)*** (0.02)*** (0.02)*** (0.02)***

Education

0.78
0.78
0.78
0.77
0.65
0.64
0.64
0.64
0.97
0.97
0.93
0.95
(0.05)*** (0.05)*** (0.05)*** (0.05)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.04)*** (0.04)*** (0.04)*** (0.04)***

Political interest

1.67
1.64
1.65
1.65
1.86
1.83
1.83
1.83
1.43
1.40
1.35
1.38
(0.06)*** (0.05)*** (0.05)*** (0.05)*** (0.08)*** (0.08)*** (0.09)*** (0.09)*** (0.05)*** (0.05)*** (0.04)*** (0.05)***

Ideology

0.41
0.41
0.41
0.41
(0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)***

State legitimacy

0.89
(0.70)

Contextual social
trust

-0.11
(0.13)

-0.12
(0.12)

-0.14
(0.12)

-0.13
(0.11)

-0.12
(0.12)

-0.13
(0.11)

-0.12
(0.12)

-0.13
(0.11)

0.61
(0.39)
-0.33
(1.43)

Effective
threshold

0.33
0.31
0.30
0.31
(0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)*** (0.07)***

-0.58
-0.57
-0.55
-0.56
(0.06)*** (0.05)*** (0.05)*** (0.05)***
2.87
(0.66)***

1.29
(0.67)^
0.52
(0.53)

Fiscal
decentralisation

5.66
(1.24)***
0.11
(0.16)

-0.50
(0.54)

-0.72
(0.60)
-0.11
(0.21)

1.65
(0.54)***

Random Part
Between country
error variance
ICC
Respondents
(countries)

0.36
0.43
0.42
0.41
0.10
0.11
0.12
0.12
0.32
0.32
0.55
0.41
(0.10)*** (0.12)*** (0.12)*** (0.12)*** (0.02)*** (0.03)*** (0.03)*** (0.03)*** (0.09)*** (0.09)*** (0.16)*** (0.12)***
0.10

0.12

0.11

0.11

0.03

0.03

0.03

0.03

0.09

0.09

0.14

0.11

36331
(24)

37285
(25)

37285
(25)

37285
(25)

38960
(24)

39956
(25)

39956
(25)

39956
(25)

38882
(24)

39886
(25)

39886
(25)

39886
(25)

Note: The entries are estimates of multilevel logistic regression with standard errors in parenthesis. Since all variables are coded 0-1, the coefficients indicate
increase or decrease in the logit of the odds ratio of the dependent variable when the independent variable moves from 0 to 1. Data weighted with design
weight. ICC estimated as p = var (uj)/(var (uj) + 2/3) (Snijders & Bosker 1999: 224). ^p<0.10, *p<0.05, **<0.01, ***<0.001

The results for the direct effects do not generally confirm the importance of the context for
political participation for two of the three forms of participation.6 There are no significant
effects for voting, which is surprising given it would be expected that especially the effective
electoral threshold would have an impact since it is closely related to the electoral system of
the country. For institutionalised participation, it is only the contextual level of social trust
that has a significant effect, and this only at a lenient 0.10 cut off value. Hence, we reject H2a
and H2b. However, for non-institutionalised participation the results are more encouraging,
since three of the four contextual factors have a significant effect. For state legitimacy, the
estimate of 2.87 equals an odds ratio of about 17.6, which implies that an average citizen in a
country with the highest extent of state legitimacy is more than 17 times as likely to be active
compared to an average citizen in a country with the lowest possible of state legitimacy. The
effect is even stronger for contextual social trust, where the estimate of 5.66 equals an odds
ratio of about 286! Although these odds ratios indicate a strong contextual effect, it should
be noted that the extreme values are hypothetical values unlikely to be observed in real life
as explained above. The estimate for fiscal decentralisation is also significant and positive,
and the value of 1.65 infers an odds ratio of 5.2, meaning an average citizen in a totally

12

decentralised country is 5.2 times more likely to participate compared to an average citizen
in a totally centralised country. These findings indicate how important contextual factors are
for this form of participation and H2c is therefore verified.
However, the context does not only matter through direct effects, it can also affect the link
between social trust and political participation. To examine H3aH3c we include cross level
interaction effects for each of the contextual effects and social trust. The models are random
slope models that allow the coefficient of social trust to vary across country. For reasons of
space, we only display the significant results. These show how the propensity to be active
develops in the extreme contextual cases at different levels of social trust when holding all
other factors constant. Table 4 displays the significant interaction effects found for each form
of participation.

Table 4 Multilevel logistic regression of individual, contextual and cross-level interaction effects on
Voting, Institutionalised participation, and Non-Institutionalised participation.
Voting

Institutionalised

Non-institutionalised

M7

M8

M9

M10

M7

M8

M7

M8

M9

Constant

1.55
(0.13)***

1.51
(0.12)***

1.54
(0.13)***

1.54
(0.13)***

-1.76
(0.08)***

-1.76
(0.08)***

-0.91
(0.15)***

-0.91
(0.12)***

-0.97
(0.12)***

Social trust

0.71
(0.16)***

0.79
(0.14)***

0.73
(0.13)***

0.71
(0.15)***

-0.17
(0.12)

-0.17
(0.11)

0.26
(0.12)*

0.34
(0.11)**

0.33
(0.11)**

Age

2.77
(0.09)***

2.78
(0.09)***

2.77
(0.09)***

2.78
(0.09)***

0.63
(0.17)***

0.63
(0.17)***

-1.14
(0.07)***

-1.23
(0.07)***

-1.20
(0.07)***

Gender

-0.13
(0.03)***

-0.13
(0.03)***

-0.13
(0.03)***

-0.13
(0.03)***

0.19
(0.04)***

0.19
(0.04)***

-0.18
(0.02)***

-0.21
(0.02)***

-0.20
(0.02)***

Education

0.76
(0.05)***

0.77
(0.05)***

0.76
(0.05)***

0.76
(0.05)***

0.64
(0.07)***

0.64
(0.07)***

0.92
(0.04)***

0.97
(0.04)***

0.97
(0.04)***

Political interest

1.63
(0.05)***

1.66
(0.05)***

1.64
(0.05)***

1.64
(0.05)***

1.83
(0.08)***

1.83
(0.08)***

1.34
(0.04)***

1.44
(0.05)***

1.41
(0.05)***

Ideology

0.41
(0.06)***

0.41
(0.07)***

0.41
(0.07)***

0.42
(0.07)***

-0.13
(0.11)

-0.13
(0.11)

-0.54
(0.05)***

-0.58
(0.06)***

-0.57
(0.06)***

Fixed Part

0.84
(0.69)

State legitimacy

2.90
(0.67)***
-0.41
(1.39)

Contextual social trust

5.72
(1.25)***
0.10
(0.16)

Effective threshold
-0.52
(0.53)

Fiscal decentralisation
Social trust *
state legitimacy

2.07
(0.81)*

Social trust *
Contextual social trust

-1.93
(0.61)**
5.25
(1.47)***

-3.33
(1.19)**

Social trust *
Effective threshold

0.77
(0.30)*

Social trust *
Fiscal decentralisation

1.68
(0.61)**

Random Part: Country level

0.40
(0.11)***

0.34
(0.10)***

0.41
(0.12)***

0.39
(0.11)***

0.12
(0.03)***

0.12
(0.03)***

0.56
(0.16)***

0.33
(0.10)***

0.33
(0.09)***

Covariance

-0.15
(0.10)*

-0.16
(0.09)^

-0.11
(0.09)

-0.10
(0.09)

-0.13
(0.03)*

-0.14
(0.03)***

-0.15
(0.09)*

-0.03
(0.06)

0.00
(0.06)

Social trust slope variance

0.45
(0.17)*

0.32
(0.14)*

0.28
(0.12)*

0.36
(0.15)*

0.24
(0.09)*

0.21
(0.09)*

0.25
(0.10)*

0.15
(0.08)^

0.17
(0.08)*

0.11

0.09

0.11

0.11

0.03

Country level variance

ICC
Respondents (country)

37285 (25) 36331 (24) 37285 (25) 37285 (25) 39956 (25)

0.03

0.14

0.09

0.09

39956 (25)

39886 (25)

38882 (24)

39886 (25)

Note: The entries are estimates of multilevel logistic regression with standard errors in parenthesis. Since all variables are coded 0-1, the coefficients indicate
increase or decrease in the logit of the odds ratio of the dependent variable when the independent variable moves from 0 to 1. Data weighted with design
weight. ICC estimated as p = var (uj)/(var (uj) + 2/3) (Snijders & Bosker 1999: 224). ^p<0.10, *p<0.05, **<0.01, ***<0.001

13

Model 7 for each of the three forms of participation introduces a random slope for social
trust. The results here suggest that the effects of social trust vary across countries for all
three forms of participation, since a joint test of the two new parameters covariance and
slope variance is significant according to an approximate Wald test with 2 degrees of
freedom.
For voting, models M8-M10 show that there are three significant interaction effects,
indicating that there are differences in the effect of social trust dependent on the context
despite the lack of direct contextual effects. The first significant interaction effect is between
state legitimacy and social trust, where the interaction effect of 2.07 implies that social trust
has a stronger effect on the propensity to vote when the extent of state legitimacy is high.
However, even though the differences are significant, the practical implications are limited
since the differences are small, especially considering that the extreme values are unlikely to
be encountered in real life situations. In a similar vein, there is a significant interaction effect
for contextual social trust. In this case the significant estimate of 5.25 indicates that the effect
of social trust is weaker in a situation of high contextual social trust compared to a situation
of low social trust. The differences are more pronounced than for state legitimacy, but again,
the practical implications may be less notable given that the extreme values are again
hypothetical. There is a significant interaction effect for one of the institutional variables,
since fiscal decentralisation has a significant interaction with social trust of 1.68. This
estimate implies that the effect of social trust is significantly weaker when there is a high
extent of fiscal decentralisation. Although the practical significance of these estimates may
be limited due to the overall high levels of voter turnout and the hypothetical nature of
some of the extreme values, the results nonetheless indicate the potential importance of
considering the context when estimating the effect of social trust on voting behaviour.
Hence, these findings suggest that the context mediates the effect of social trust on voting
and H3a is therefore approved.
For institutionalised participation, we find one significant interaction effects between social
trust and the effective electoral threshold shown in model 8, even if the estimate for social
trust is not significant. This result indicates that the effect is stronger when the effective
electoral threshold is at its maximum value. In other words, power sharing increases the
impact of social trust on the propensity to be active in institutionalised activities and people
with high social trust are more likely to become active within the political system when
more parties are competing for electoral victories. Although the estimates for the cultural
contextual effects are not significant, this nonetheless indicates that the context can mediate
the effect of social trust on participation in institutionalised activities and H3b is therefore
supported by the evidence.
Finally for the non-institutionalised activities, Models 8 and 9 show the significant
interaction effects for the two cultural indicators and social trust. For state legitimacy, there
is a negative coefficient of -1.93 for the interaction with social trust. A similar result is found

14

for contextual social trust, where the negative interaction coefficient is -3.33. Since it is only
for non-institutionalised participation that the contextual factors had both significant direct
effects and interaction effects, we use these last two results to visualise the importance of the
interaction effects.

Figure 1 Interaction effects for non-institutionalised participation

Social trust * State legitimacy

Social trust * Contextual social trust

1.00

1.00

0.80

0.80

0.60

0.60

0.40

0.40

0.20

0.20
0.00

0.00
0.00

0.20
0.40
State legitimacy = 0

0.60

0.80
1.00
State legitimacy = 1

0.00

0.20
0.40
Contextual social trust = 0

0.60

0.80
1.00
Contextual social trust = 1

Note: The full lines represent the effect of social trust on non-institutionalised participation when the contextual factors are at their maximum value. The dotted
lines represent the effect of social trust on non-institutionalised participation when the contextual factors are at their minimum value. All other factors are held
constant at their mean value. See table 4 for more specific information.

As can be seen, the negative coefficient of -1.93 entails that the effect of social trust on the
propensity to be active in non-institutionalised activities depends on the legitimacy of the
state. The likelihood of being active in non-institutionalised participation is much higher
when the state is legitimate in the eyes of citizens, as indicated by the full line. Furthermore,
the effect of social trust is stronger in this situation, since the slope of the line is steeper than
the dotted line representing a situation where the state is completely illegitimate, meaning
the difference between the two lines increases as social trust rises. This entails that the
probability of participation increases from 0.53 to 0.60 as social trust moves from 01 when
state legitimacy is 1 compared to a limited increase from 0.07 to 0.09 when state legitimacy is
0. The same is true for contextual social trust, where the coefficient of -3.33 means that the
effect of social trust is much stronger when there is a high extent of social trust among
citizens. Here the probability of participation increases from 0.80 to 0.84 when the contextual
social trust is highest compared to an increase of 0.02 to 0.03 when contextual social trust is
at its lowest value. Hence these findings entail that H3c is approved.

15

DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS

The connection between social capital and political participation has been controversial in
the literature ever since the seminal work of Putnam (1993, 2000). The bulk of literature has
focused on the influence of the associational network component of the concept, whereas the
social trust component has been somewhat neglected since much research has indicated that
this dimension was less relevant for predicting involvement in different forms of
participation (Bck, 2011; van Deth, 2001; Milner, 2000; Muhlberger, 2003; Pattie et al., 2003).
In line with this, we generally found that social trust was linked positively to voting,
institutionalised participation, and non-institutionalised participation, but the link was
weakened considerably when controlling for other factors, and in the case of
institutionalised participation, even grew insignificant. This finding thus confirms previous
studies suggesting that social trust may have a positive effect on social outcomes such as
political participation, but the effect appears to be limited compared to other factors at the
individual level (cf. Nannestad, 2008: 428430).
However, this account neglects the possibility that the effect of social trust is dependent on
contextual factors. For this reason, we examined the interplay between social trust, political
participation, and the context understood as central cultural and institutional aspects. The
findings here suggested that the cultural and institutional contextual aspects were less
relevant for predicting voting and institutionalised participation, but it did promote
participation in non-institutionalised activities outside the formal political sphere. The
cultural aspects of state legitimacy and contextual social trust in particular had strong
positive impacts on being active, but power sharing institutions in the form of fiscal
decentralisation was also a significant predictor. This finding thus confirms previous results
that the context can have a significant direct impact on the propensity to be active at the
individual level (Almond and Verba, 1963; Morales, 2009; Dalton et al., 2010). Nevertheless,
the effect in particular of political institutions is often fragmentary and depends on the
form of participation under consideration and what specific institutional aspect is seen as
important (Christensen, 2011).
The most remarkable finding concerned the interaction between the contextual elements and
social trust in shaping political participation. Here the results suggested that the effect of
social trust on participation is linked to the context, but the specific effect depends both on
the form of participation and the contextual aspect under consideration. The cultural aspects
appeared to be of particular relevance, since state legitimacy and contextual social trust had
significant mediating effects for both voting and non-institutionalised participation.
However, the institutional aspects also mediated the effect of social trust, since there were
significant effects between social trust and fiscal decentralisation for voting and between the
effective electoral threshold and social trust for institutionalised participation. Although the
contextual effects on participation depend on both form of participation and contextual
aspect under scrutiny, the cultural and institutional factors both increase the effect of social

16

trust on the propensity to be active in the political activities under consideration. These
results thus show that the impact of social trust on participation to a large extent depends on
the context where the activities take place. In this sense, this study helps explain the
divergent findings in previous literature when it comes to the impact of social trust on
political participation.

17

Appendix: Coding of variables and descriptive statistics

Variable

Questions and coding

Min

Max Mean

Std

43001

0.00

1.00

0.78

0.42

Index based on three answers to questions concerning the following

activities:
1) Contacted a politician, government or local government
official.(See non-institutionalised activities for phrasing)
Institutionalised
2) Worked in a political party or action group. (See nonparticipation
institutionalised activities for phrasing)
3) Are you a member of any political party?
Coded 0/1 with 1 indicating having performed at least one of the
activities.

47143

0.00

1.00

0.17

0.37

Index based on three answers to question: There are different ways

of trying to improve things in [country] or help prevent things from
going wrong. During the last 12 months, have you done any of the
Nonfollowing?:
institutionalised 1) Signed a petition.
participation
2) Taken part in a lawful public demonstration.
3) Boycotted certain products.
Coded 0/1 with 1 indicating having performed at least one of the
activities.

47106

0.00

1.00

0.29

0.45

46918

0.00

1.00

0.50

0.20

1.278

46274

0.24

0.82

0.55

0.17

3.293

Mean country scores for social trust, coded to vary between 0-1 with 1
47489
indicating highest extent of contextual social trust.

0.36

0.68

0.50

0.09

3.961

0.00

0.98

0.74

0.26

1.135

0.02

1.00

0.39

0.24

1.574

VIF

Dependent variables

Voting

Question: Some people don't vote nowadays for one reason or

another. Did you vote in the last [country] national election in
[month/year]?
Coded 0/1 with 1 indicating having voted.

Independent variables, contextual variables and control variables

Composite index based on 3 questions:
1)Most people can be trusted or you can't be too careful;
2) Most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the
Social trust
chance;
3) People try to be helpful.
All scored on scale 0-10; Index coded 0-1 with 1 highest level of
social trust (Cronbachs alpha = 0.80)
Index of attitudes towards state legitimacy from Gilley (2006).
State legitimacy
Recoded to vary between 0-1 with 1 indicating high state legitimacy.
Contextual
social trust

Calculated as 75 %/( M + 1) (M = number of seats allocated). Ranges

between 0 and 37.5 as the highest theoretical value (Lundell and
47489
Karvonen, 2008) . Recoded to vary between 0 and 1 with 1 indicating
lowest effective threshold.
Values from IMF Government finance statistics. Ranges between 0
(no decentralisation) and 100 (totally decentralised). Since the notion
Fiscal
of a totally decentralised state is unrealistic, the max value is
47489
decentralisation
subsequently coded with the highest extent of decentralisation
(Switzerland =0.44) as the maximum value 1.
Effective
electoral
threshold

Age

Age in years divided by 100.

47335

0.15

1.23

0.47

0.18

1.066

Gender

Gender of respondent; Dichotomous 0/1, 1=male.

47467

0.00

1.00

0.47

0.50

1.023

Education

Highest level of education achieved? Coded to vary between 0-1

with 1 highest level of education.

47384

0.00

1.00

0.52

0.33

1.147

Left/rightideology

Left/right ideology where 0 left and 10 right. Coded to vary between

40683
0-1, 1 = right.

0.00

1.00

0.51

0.22

1.008

0.00

1.00

0.45

0.30

1.165

How interested in politics?

Political Interest Recoded to vary between 0-1, 0= Not at all interested, 1 = Very
interested.

47355

18

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ENDNOTES
1
2

Lithuania is excluded since the data set does not include appropriate weights.
More information on coding and descriptive statistics for all variables is available in the appendix.

Although self-reporting is not a perfect measure of actual voting (see Bck, 2011: 78), it is the best available
for the present purposes.
4
An exploratory factor analysis for the 6 items included in institutionalised and non-institutionalised
participation show that they load onto two separate dimensions in accordance with this distinction. Two items
(work other organisation and wear badge) were excluded since the phrasing of the question does not make it
possible whether the activity was aimed at the formal political system or not.
Since the VIF scores indicate that there may be issues with multicollinearity among the contextual factors (see
appendix) and there are a limited number of countries included in the study, we refrain from examining the
contextual factors simultaneously.
6 Although not shown for reasons of space, simple linear regression models suggest that more contextual
estimates have significant effects, but the effects evaporate once controlling for the individual variables.
5

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