Economic crisis and social capital in European societies: the role of politics in understanding short-term changes in social capital

ABSTRACT

How did the economic crisis impact social capital in European societies? The empirical studies conducted so far provide contradictory conclusions about the strength and direction of its influence. We argue that to better understand the effects of the economic crisis on social capital (social trust, formal and informal networks) it is crucial to examine both its impact on people’s economic situation and the way it reshaped the relationship between individuals and political institutions and altered key political factors (political trust, the welfare state, political activism). Our analysis of European Social Survey data between 2006 and 2012 shows that changes in social trust were smaller than in formal and informal social networks. It also confirms that political factors played an important mediating role in producing these changes: changes in social trust and formal networks can especially be explained by the impact of the political factors, while variations in informal networks are mainly due to the changing economy. Moreover, the analyses show that while the economic crisis generally lowered social capital, some mechanisms such as a sense of togetherness and left-wing political activism, enhanced social capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic crisis
• social capital
• social networks
• social trust
• political trust
• political activism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The exception from this general trend represent frequent informal contacts with friends and family members in the southern European countries (Pichler and Wallace 2007).

2 Although the measures of political trust, political engagement, and political participation are often included among the indicators of social capital, we maintain a distinction between the social and political realms in order to better understand social dynamics in the economic crisis. Political variables are treated as explanatory variables rather than dimensions of social capital. In this way we also respond to criticism which claims that the prevalent use of the concept of social capital aims at depoliticizing the processes of the creation and maintenance of social bonds and solidarity in the society and masks the incompatibility of the policy aim to bolster social capital with the neoliberal political agenda (Fine 1999; Navarro 2002; Smith and Kulynych 2002; Ferragina and Arrigoni 2016). Our analysis in particular seeks to identify political and economic factors responsible for the deterioration of social capital in crisis, including increasing income inequality and dissolution of the welfare state.

3 We depart from the practice of conceiving social capital as a unitary concept (Scheeppers et al. 2002; van Oorschot et al. 2006; Ferragino 2017, Obert et al. 2019), and instead work with separate measures of social capital assuming they have different external validity, which is why their relationship with the explanatory variables could be concealed if replaced by a single construct.

4 Reeskens and van Oorschot (2014) define the extensiveness and intensiveness of social networks as follows: the former expresses how well connected individuals are, and the latter the extent to which networks embed social resources. We conceive both measures - frequency of informal contacts and membership in formal associations - as indicators of network extensiveness although there is an obvious difference between them. Membership in an association does not give us the information about how often one participates or how much time one spends working for the association. These two measures can sometimes give contradictory results, for example, it has been shown that occupational groups like managers are members of a larger number of organisations, but spend less time participating (Fisher et al. 2004). Membership is also not necessarily related to larger networks (Letki and Mierina 2014). One should be careful thus when presenting the results based on membership information.

5 We use the term 'economic crisis' when referring to economic changes generally that occur at the country and individual level. The notion of 'economic downturn' is used for falling GDP (country level) and ‘individuals' declining economic conditions’ for changes in unemployment and economic strain (individual level).

6 In a study on the welfare state and social capital, Ferragina (2017) distinguishes welfare size (social spending) and welfare generosity (decommodification) and argues they capture different things; welfare generosity refers to the actual functioning of the welfare state, and welfare size to the amount spent on specific policies and programmes (see also van Oorschot and Arts 2005). Decommodification is assumed to foster pro-social attitudes much more than social expenditures, and thus have a stronger relationship with social trust. We take a slightly different approach and include in the model the objective and subjective measures of the welfare state: welfare effort and welfare satisfaction. We suppose that when people are satisfied with the work of the welfare system they conclude from this that high levels of solidarity and cohesion characterise the society in which they live.

7 Morselli and Passini (2018) classify political movements along a continuum from pro-social and inclusive protests (enacted for the sake of the whole of society and including all social groups within the scope of justice) to anti-social and exclusive protests (enacted in favour of one's own group and excluding other social groups from the scope of justice).

8 For example, the study of volunteers by Fisher et al. (2004) shows that people who are more likely to volunteer are middle-aged, have a university education, are managers or professionals, and work part time. People who live in households with a low income and in economically deprived areas are less likely to volunteer, and when they do they prefer to participate in informal support networks than in formal contexts.

9 The argument assumes that the need for informal help leads to more extensive networks. This causal link is empirically questionable since it has been shown that people with stronger needs may not have enough resources to form and maintain more extensive networks (Wall et al. 2001), and that more extensive networks do not always mobilise more social support (Letki and Mierina 2014).

10 Note that in order to avoid over-specification we only included the relationships we wanted to test.

11 It is important to note that our results differ also from the studies using the composite measure of social capital that includes, among others, political variables such as political trust (see, for example, Ferragina 2013). Political trust has negative relationship with the disposable income inequality and it mediates the linkage between the inequality and social trust. When included in the index of social capital, political trust contributes to the negative relationship between the inequality and social capital.

12 We feared these opposite effects may have been due to the correlation between the measures (r_{welfare satisfaction, political trust} = 0.358); however, the effects remained when we left either of these variables out. The result probably reflects the fact that our variable of political activism includes very different forms of political action and not merely political protest for which we would expect a negative relationship. In addition, this result is in line with the recent findings of Katsanidou (2015) who shows that political protest is triggered by a lack of confidence in the implementing rather than the representative institutions, and with Christiansen (2014) who found that both high and low political trust can lead to political protest when coupled with subjective political efficacy.

13 Additional analysis shows that social expenditures and social trust have a weak net curvilinear relationship. The positive effects decline when expenditures increase (B_{social expenditures} = .195, B_{social expenditures squared} = -.007), indicating that the rise in expenditures did not satisfactorily compensate for the income lost due to the economic crisis.

14 The reason for our finding that individuals' economic conditions reduced informal networks probably lies in the indicator. We used a question which asks about the frequency of contacts with very strong as well as weak ties. The results might have been different if the question was distinguishing between these two types of social ties. Also, we should be careful while interpreting these results because the indicators we use do not allow us to say whether during the economic crisis networks became more or less intensive. It may well be that people engaged in more substantive exchanges of goods and information despite participating and socializing less.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ARRS-Slovenian Research Agency: [grant number Research program P5-0166].

Notes on contributors

Hajdeja Iglič

Hajdeja Iglič is a professor at the sociology department at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. Her research interests include social networks and trust, political behavior and scientific cooperation. Her work has been published, among others, in International Sociology, American Behavioral Scientist, and Scientometrics.

Jesper Rözer

Jesper Rözer is a researcher at The Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP). His research agenda revolves around the intersection of social networks, social inequalities, education, and the labor market. His works have been published, among others, in European Sociological Review, Social Science and Medicine, and Social Science Research. More information can be found at www.rozer.nl.

Beate G.M. Volker

Beate G.M. Volker is a professor at the department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University. Her research agenda covers social capital theory, networks in neighbourhoods, network changes through the life course and adult friendships. She published amongst others in Social Networks, Social Forces, Sociological Science, Network Science and Social Psychological Quarterly.