Social Capital and Political Support: A Reassessment of the Putnam Thesis in East and West Germany

A sizeable scholarly literature has generally uncovered weak, statistically trivial connections between social capital and political support, in spite of its logical appeal. Much of this research, however, has adopted an overly restrictive research design. It has overwhelmingly focused on the impact of social trust on political trust, from which broad inferences about the utility of the social capital perspective have been made. Rarely, however, has the impact of social capital been systematically assessed on indicators of political support which are more diffuse in character. Using data drawn from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS), the present study analyses the impact of different measures of social capital on political support in the Federal Republic of Germany. The results strongly support the conclusion that social capital influences diffuse support.