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This article focuses on the core theory recently proposed by Putnam on the relationship between ethnic diversity and dimensions of social capital. Hypotheses are derived from this theory, but also from other theories that propose competing hypotheses on relationships between national characteristics and dimensions of social capital. Essentially, the authors propose more rigorous empirical tests of Putnam's hypotheses by including these competing hypotheses: tests of these hypotheses provide possibilities to evaluate Putnam's and these other theories in terms of general (i.e. cross‐national) tenability for the European continent. The general question is: To what extent do national‐level characteristics like ethnic diversity, next to other national characteristics, actually affect dimensions of social capital of individual citizens in European countries? The authors set out to answer this question by testing hypotheses on cross‐national data from 28 European countries. These data contain valid measurements of a number of dimensions of social capital. The individual‐level data are enriched with contextual‐ (i.e. national‐) level characteristics to be included in more advanced multilevel analyses. The main finding is that Putnam's hypothesis on ethnic diversity must be refuted in European societies. Instead, it is found that economic inequality and the national history of continuous democracy in European societies turn out to be more important for explaining cross‐national differences in social capital in Europe.

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In this research we study support for traditional female roles. We test individual and contextual explanations for differences in support for traditional female roles within and across 32 countries. Higher educated, employed people and those who do not adhere to a religion are least supportive. The higher the female labour market participation, the less traditional the average citizen is: this contextual effect is stronger for women than for men. Governmental child care expenditure does not affect average levels of support for traditional female roles. Yet, we do find a significant drop in traditional attitudes for men, when governments spend more on child care. This shows the importance of including the possibility of differences in contextual effects for men and women.

Young people in Europe face great difficulties nowadays when entering the labour market. Unemployment and temporary employment are high among youth, although considerable differences exist between European countries. In this article, we study to what extent cyclical, structural, and institutional factors explain cross-national variation in youth labour market integration. In addition, we examine educational differences in the impact of these macro-characteristics. To answer these questions, we use data on young people from 29 countries who were interviewed in the European Social Survey of 2002, 2004, 2006, or 2008 and left day-time education in the period 1992Á2008. Both unemployment and temporary employment are regarded as a lack of labour market integration, compared to the situation of permanent employment. The empirical results first of all show that high unemployment hinders young people to smoothly integrate into the labour market. In addition, economic globalisation positively affects youth labour market integration. We also demonstrate that young people experience less difficulties with labour market integration as the educational system is more vocationally specific. Intermediate and higher educated particularly profit from the positive effect of the vocational specificity of the educational system. Finally, as the employment protection legislation of incumbent workers is stricter, young people experience more difficulties with labour market integration, especially higher educated youth.