Virtuous Circle or Cul de Sac? Social Capital and Political Participation in New Zealand¹

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the New Zealand Political Studies Association Conference, University of Waikato, 22-24 November 2004. We acknowledge the helpful comments of those who participated in the discussion.

Abstract

Declining turnout in recent elections highlights the decline of political participation in New Zealand. Political participation and othe R forms of non-political civic engagement, such as membership in civic associations, are said to be part of a wider rubric: social capital. According to this theory, associations act as ‘schools of democracy’ that foster values such as civic engagement and trust. New Zealand government usage of social capital in public policy is based on overseas studies. But this theory has not been thoroughly tested. Previous individual-level analyses have simply correlated membership and/or trust with indicators of political participation. This study seeks to more precisely approximate social capital’s ‘school of democracy’ explanation by interacting individuals’ levels of associational activity with their levels of trust. We find only some very weak expected relationships between these interacted variables and forms of political participation. In the context of Putnam’s distinction between ‘bridging’ and ‘bonding’ forms of social capital, we also compare Maori and othe R New Zealanders. In the company of researchers overseas, we challenge the assumption that the decline in political participation is related to declining social capital.

• Social capital
• turnout
• political participation
• associations
• social trust

Notes

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the New Zealand Political Studies Association Conference, University of Waikato, 22-24 November 2004. We acknowledge the helpful comments of those who participated in the discussion.