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Generalized trust has become a paramount topic throughout the social sciences, in its own right and as the key civic component of social capital. To date, cross-national research relies on the standard question: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” Yet the radius problem—that is, how wide a circle of others respondents imagine as “most people”—makes comparisons between individuals and countries problematic. Until now, much about the radius problem has been speculation, but data for 51 countries from the latest World Values Survey make it possible to estimate how wide the trust radius actually is. We do this by relating responses to the standard trust question to a new battery of items that measures in-group and out-group trust. In 41 out of 51 countries, “most people” in the standard question predominantly connotes out-groups. To this extent, it is a valid measure of general trust in others. Nevertheless, the radius of “most people” varies considerably across countries; it is substantially narrower in Confucian countries and wider in wealthy countries. Some country rankings on trust thus change dramatically when the standard question is replaced by a radius-adjusted trust score. In cross-country regressions, the radius of trust matters for civic attitudes and behaviors because the assumed civic nature of trust depends on a wide radius.

The importance of trust has long been emphasised by social and political theorists from Locke and Tocqueville to Putnam and civil society theorists. However, individual survey data casts substantial doubt on this powerful tradition of thought. There is little evidence of (1) an overlap between social and political trust, (2) a syndrome of trust and membership of voluntary organizations, and (3) the existence of trusting/distrusting dispositions among individuals. However, at the aggregate national level there is evidence to support the theory, and the author concludes that the classic theory is correct but needs modification and qualification.

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Social capital is in danger of going the way of political culture—a potentially powerful concept that is given many different meanings by many different people for many different purposes. This article starts by picking out three different aspects or dimensions of the concept—norms (especially trust), networks, and consequences. It then considers three models of social capital and the forms of trust and democracy associated with them. Finally it discusses the role of voluntary associations as a foundation for social capital, arguing that their importance may be overstated in the classical Tocquevillean model of the 19th century, and that, in any case, modern democracy may be increasingly based on different forms of trust and association.

According to some, the modern mass media have a malign effect on modern democracy, tending to induce political apathy, alienation, cynicism and a loss of social capital – in a word, ‘mediamalaise’. Some theorists argue that this is the result of media content, others that it is the consequence of the form of the media, especially television. According to others, the mass media, in conjunction with rising educational levels, help to inform and mobilize people politically, making them more knowledgeable and understanding. This study investigates the mobilization and mediamalaise hypotheses, and finds little to support the latter. Reading a broadsheet newspaper regularly is strongly associated with mobilization, while watching a lot of television has a weaker association of the same kind. Tabloid newspapers and general television are not strongly associated with measures of mediamalaise. It seems to be the content of the media, rather than its form which is important.

Deals with three main topics: the nature and origins of social trust and its importance in society; trends in social trust in Western societies (with some comparisons with less developed societies); and the relations between social and political trust, and their implications for theories of politics and society. In terms of the main concepts and measures of the book, and as outlined in the introductory chapter, social trust is a feature of the most basic level of community, while political trust refers primarily to attitudes about political institutions and leaders. The general assumption seems to be that social and political trust are closely linked, perhaps different sides of the same coin—social trust is regarded as a strong determinant of, or influence upon, political support of various kinds, including support for the political community, confidence in institutions, and trust in political leaders. As a result it is believed that the accumulation of social capital, in the form of social trust, will also result in the accumulation of political capital. Presents theory and evidence questioning these assumptions; it includes evidence comparing social trust in communal and modern societies, and of political trust in early modern and contemporary democracies.

Is there a widespread loss of faith in the core institutions of representative democracy? Based on a comparison of 17 trilateral democracies this study examines institutional confidence from the early 1980s to the early 1990s then considers explanations based on the social psychology of trusting personalities, cultural accounts based on life experiences, and theories of institutional performance. The study concludes that at national level, social trust and confidence in government and its institutions are strongly associated with each other. Social trust can help build effective social and political institutions, which can help governments perform effectively, and this in turn encourages confidence in civic institutions.