BRIDGING AND BONDING SOCIAL CAPITAL: WHICH
IS MORE PREVALENT IN EUROPE?
CLAIRE WALLACE AND FLORIAN PICHLER
Abstract
There are a variety of ways of measuring social capital, including
social trust, social networks, social support and participation in
organisations. In this paper we use cluster analysis to show patterns
of social capital or ‘social capital regimes’ across Europe,
where the different elements are combined in various ways. The paper
then goes on to look at how this differentiates European societies.
Using the Eurobarometer 62.2, which covers a representative sample
of 27 countries, the analysis found that European countries can be
clustered according to the extent to which they have high or low levels
of bridging and bonding social capital as developed in the theories
of Michael Woolcock and David Halpern. The paper provides empirical
challenges to previous studies that have shown that social capital
reflects mainly welfare regimes and other studies that have tried
to differentiate societies according to bridging and bonding social
capital on a purely speculative basis by providing an exploratory
“bottom up” classification based upon cluster analysis.
For the full paper, see European Journal of Social Security,
(2007), 9,(1): 29-54.
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