Patterns of Formal and Informal Social Capital in Europe

Abstract

Studies of social capital have concentrated upon either formal associative behaviour or informal social relations (networks). This article looks at the relationship between these two ty'pes of social capital by examining social networks, social and family support (informal social capital) on the one hand and associational behaviour along with social trust (formal social capital) on the other. Using the Eurobarometer 62.2 covering a representative sample of 27 countries the analysis found that with this approach, regions in Europe can be grouped according to the two dimensions, whether they are high on both forms of social capital (complementarity) or whether informal social capital substitutes for formal social capital (substitution). The Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands had the highest levels of all forms of social capital. In the South and East of Europe informal social capital was more important, but whilst in the South this was mainly in the form of family support, in the East informal support outside the family was also important. Thus, we can speak of 'social capital regimes' to better understand the various cultures of participation and cohesion across Europe.

Sustainable Civil-Society Engagement: Potentials of a Transnational Civil Society in French-German, Polish-German, and Czech-German Border Regions

“…For the nation states, the differences obtained confirm well-known results from other studies, according to which-local-civil-society engagement in post-socialist countries (here in the Polish and Czech border regions) is comparatively low [69]. Differences to the German and French border regions were sizable: One-way ANOVAs with subsequent Scheffé tests were significant at p < 0.01.…”

Trends and determinants of corporate non-financial disclosure in Greece

“…Authors have indicated a comparatively weak civil society in Southern Europe (e.g. see Torcal and Montero, 2000;Van Oorschot et al 2006;Pichler and Wallace, 2007). This problem is even more strongly asserted for the formal civil society in Greece (Lyberaki and Paraskevopoulos, 2002;Mouzelis, 1995;Mouzelis and Pagoulatos, 2003) even though such poor presence is not uniformly weak (Sotiropoulos, 2004).…”

Economic Hardship and Well-Being: Examining the Relative Role of Individual Resources and Welfare State Effort in Resilience Against Economic Hardship

“…offered with a seven category response scale ranging from 'never' (0) to 'every day' (6). This survey question has been used in several studies on social networks (Pichler and Wallace 2007;Reeskens and van Oorschot 2014). 6 The second moderator variable is religious practice, which was surveyed by the question ''Apart from special occasions such as weddings and funerals, how often do you attend religious services nowadays?''…”