Associational memberships have become the indicator of choice for examining the formation and destruction of social capital. Memberships in associations are believed to create generalized interpersonal trust, which can be used as a lubricant that makes possible a variety of forms of social interaction and cooperation. Clearly, not all types of associations will be equally effective in their relative capacity to create generalized, or public, social capital. Each indicator of social capital that we examine is positively related to associational membership. However, some association memberships, particularly in cultural groups, are correlated with a wide range of forms of social capital. The diversity of an association also has an effect on the connection between social capital and association memberships. Homogeneous associations are less likely to inculcate high levels of generalized trust and community reciprocity among their members. These results indicate the need for further specification of the social capital theory.

The authors demonstrate that interpersonal trust is an important factor in motivating protest participation and raising the intensity of protest. They suggest that high levels of trust make individuals likely to anticipate low expected costs of participation while leading to optimistic estimates of the potential benefits of protest. Using 1990 World Values Survey data for 33 countries, a series of multinomial logistic regressions confirms that interpersonal trust plays an important role in determining both militant and nonmilitant forms of protest. These findings hold at the individual level in both free and nonfree societies. The authors also find some evidence that the same relationships hold at the national level. In addition, trust and postmaterialist values are shown to have complementary roles in fostering protest, whereas education is largely insignificant. Interpersonal trust, therefore, serves as both a personal and a social capital resource that fosters collective action in the form of protest.

Social movements frequently fail to achieve the policy changes they seek, despite impressive demonstrations of widespread support. Yet movement participation has become increasingly popular as a form of political action. The authors seek to resolve this dilemma by distinguishing between three arenas of movement success: changing policy, gaining participation in the policy process, and changing social values. It is suggested that gaining access to the policy process is the most effective path for movement organizations to have an impact on policy outcomes, because authorities are often more willing to offer inclusion in the process than they are to accept movement demands for policy change. The authors' hypotheses are examined in light of the experience of the nuclear freeze movement, which sought and failed to achieve policy change, and the movement to control hazardous wastes, in which environmentalists are having an impact on policy by gaining participation in regulatory and implementation decisions.

Political movements are an increasingly common form of mass political mobilization, and the legitimacy and authority of democratic states depends to a growing extent on the relationship between movements and states. Existing case studies of political movements neglect that relationship in favor of issues of mobilization, organization, and societal impact. These studies can nonetheless be used to show that political movements employ a mixture of confrontation and collaboration in their relationship to the state. More centralized states, which offer fewer institutional channels for movement influence, face more confrontational movements. However, political movements in all democratic settings use confrontation primarily as a strategic device to enhance their leverage in negotiations with state authorities. Movements are not a challenge to state authority so much as they are a force for change within democratic society.

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