Social cohesion: converging and diverging trends.
Green, Andy ; Janmaat, Germ ; Cheng, Helen 等
Social theorists frequently argue that social cohesion is under
threat in developed societies from the multiple pressures of
globalisation. This article seeks to test this hypothesis through
examining the trends across countries and regions in key indicators of
social cohesion, including social and political trust, tolerance and
perceptions of conflict. It finds ample evidence of long-term declines
in cohesion in many countries, not least as exemplified by the erosion
of social and political trust, which is particularly dramatic in the UK.
The trends are not entirely convergent, since on most indicators Nordic
countries have become more cohesive, yet each country faces challenges.
In the final section the authors argue that different 'regimes of
social cohesion' can be identified in specific clusters of
countries which are based on different cultural and institutional
foundations. In the 'liberal model', which applies in the UK
and the US, the greatest threat to cohesion comes not from increasing
cultural diversity, but from increasing barriers to mobility and the
subsequent atrophy of faith in individual opportunity and meritocratic rewards--precisely those beliefs which have traditionally held liberal
societies together.
Keywords: Social cohesion; trust; inequality
JEL Classifications: D63; D74
I. Introduction
This article reviews the state of social cohesion across a range of
developed countries at the beginning of the second millennium. Social
cohesion is defined in broad and non-normative terms as 'the
property by which whole societies, and the individuals within them, are
bound together through the action of specific attitudes, behaviours,
rules and institutions which rely on consensus rather than pure
coercion' (see Green and Janmaat, forthcoming). We explore a number
of questions. What are the recent and long-term (post-1980) trends in
different countries and regions on the key aspects and measures of
social cohesion? Are they converging or diverging? Do countries face
similar or different pressures on the social fabric in the face of the
economic crisis? Do some of us live in a 'broken society' --as
Prime Minister David Cameron once described the UK--or are the bonds
which bind societies still holding?
We start in section 2 by summarising some of the macro social
theories concerning the impacts of social change on societal cohesion.
These generally predict, for a variety of reasons, the increasing
atomisation of societies and a secular decline in social solidarity across the developed countries. In sections 3-4 we put these theories to
the test, examining in some detail the trends across different countries
and regions for key indicators of social cohesion, such as social and
political trust, tolerance and perceptions of social conflict. Although
confirming the general picture of declining social cohesion, these
trends shows patterns of divergence as well as convergence across
regions (and country clusters). In section 5 we posit the existence of
different 'regimes of social cohesion', each resting on
somewhat different cultural and institutional foundations, and suggest
that these are vulnerable at different points to the various pressures
of globalisation.
2. Theories of social change and its impacts on social cohesion
Contemporary macro social theories tend to equate globalisation
with the general erosion of societal bonds at the national level. Social
cohesion is undermined, they claim, by a variety of social trends,
including the erosion of national/state identities, the rise of
individualism and increasing structural inequalities in societies. These
forces are seen to impact on all developed societies, and increasingly
on the developing countries most affected by globalisation.
To Castells, a leading theorist of globalisation, the weakening of
the nation state--undermined by the global forces of transnational
capitalism, cross-border crime, and space-shrinking modern
communications--poses a major challenge to social cohesion. The national
state, and the collective state identities which it has fostered, were
historically among the chief foundations of social cohesion--at least
within states, if often not between them (and it is the intra-state
dimension that social cohesion addresses). As the power and legitimacy
of states has waned, individual and collective identification as state
citizens has weakened, removing one of the primary social bonds. With
increasing social and cultural diversification, and the modern
communication technologies which give voice to it, individuals have
ceased to identify with the national collective, replacing their loyalty
to the state with cosmopolitan supra-national loyalties or more
localised or circumscribed identities based on ethnicity, region,
religion and lifestyle. To Castells, this "dissolution of shared
identities, which is tantamount to the dissolution of society as a
meaningful social system, may well be the state of affairs of our
time." (Castells, 1997, p. 355).
Identity theorists have come to similar conclusions. Beck (1999,
2004) jettisons the nation state as a "zombie category",
castigating those who still think within its parameters as
"methodological nationalists" who hang on to a conceptual
framework which is now utterly obsolete. Both he and Giddens (1991), in
the latter's theory of 'reflective modernisation', have
written of the increasing 'individuation of society', where
individual life projects, involving multiple and shifting loyalties and
identities, become the focus of identity formation. Touraine (2000),
likewise, sees modern advanced societies as experiencing both a secular
decline in the national bonds of citizenship and a rise in communitarian allegiances. "[T]here are more and more identity-based grouping and
associations, sects, cults and nationalisms based on a common sense of
belonging, and ... they are becoming stronger." (ibid, p. 2).
Globalisation and localisation combine pincer-wise to squeeze out
identification with the national collective. With national society dead,
we look to the personal life project for solutions. "In a world of
permanent and uncontrollable change,' he writes,' 'the
individual attempt to transform lived experiences into the construction
of the self as an actor is the only stable point of reference."
(ibid, p. 11).
Castells, and other writers on globalisation such as Stiglitz
(2004; 2010), also frequently note the growing structural inequalities
in societies and see these as undermining social cohesion. The recent
phase of globalisation has been accompanied by a massive increase in
economic inequalities, not only between the richest and poorest
countries but also within countries (Wade, 2001). According to one
historical estimate, whilst the wealthiest 20 per cent of world
population was three times richer than the poorest 20 per cent in the
mid-nineteenth century, the ratio by the end of the twentieth century
was a staggering 86 to 1 (Martin and Schumann, 1996). Most developed
countries have experienced widening gaps in household incomes and wealth
internally during the past 30 years (Esping-Andersen, 2005). Income
distribution has become more unequal partly because of the effects of
the global division of labour and skills-biased technological change. As
technology has raised the demands for skills in most jobs in developed
countries, those with less education and fewer skills have found
themselves at a disadvantage in the labour market. Competition from
low-wage developing countries, combined with the weakening of trade
unions' bargaining power in some developed countries, has driven
down wages for less skilled jobs in the developed countries, thus
pulling out the wage distribution at the bottom (Hutton, 2002; Thurow,
1996). At the same time wages at the very top have escalated as the
corporate elites have exploited the relaxed attitudes towards extreme
financial rewards which have prevailed in many countries, as well the
new possibilities hiking remuneration packages through new instruments
such as bonuses, stock options, and tax-avoidance schemes. Wealth
inequalities have also soared in many countries, not only because of the
massive gaps in pay, but because of the opportunities for further wealth
accumulation for those with capital from investment in property assets
whose values have constantly inflated (Stiglitz, 2004; 2010).
Increasing inequality has been linked with a multitude of social
ills, including lower levels of public health; higher rates of crime,
mental illness and depression; and lower levels of self-reported
well-being and happiness (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009). Extreme
inequalities, of course, also produce the potential for civil conflict,
particularly when the resources to be distributed are diminished. As we
have recently seen in the aftermath of the financial crisis and global
economic recession, where countries are faced with years of austerity while governments pay back the debts incurred in bailing out the banks,
sharp conflicts can emerge over how the pain is distributed. However,
the effects of extreme inequality on social cohesion can also be more
subtle and insidious.
Inequality increases the social distance between groups,
undermining inter-group trust and reducing the sense of common
citizenship. As Reich has argued with respect to the US, with growing
income and wealth gaps disparate sections in society no longer feel they
have a common interest and a mutual responsibility for each other. They
are no longer members of the same society. At the extreme, as in the US,
the rich begin to secede from the public realm altogether. Ensconced in
their semiautonomous and privately-policed 'gated
communities', they eschew the public services on which the rest of
society depend, and become oblivious to the way most people live. At the
same time, the poor are increasingly marginalised from society; excluded
by their inability to find work, or by their meagre pay, from buying
housing or healthcare; unable to access decent schools; and in many
cases forced into urban ghettoes where they interact only with others in
similarly deprived conditions (Hutton, 2002; Reich, 2001).
Large income gaps are quite easily transformed into even larger
wealth gaps (Dorling, 2009). These lock in social disadvantage over
generations and curtail social mobility. As research has repeatedly
shown (Esping-Andersen, 2005), the most unequal societies are usually
those, like the US and the UK, with relatively low levels of social
mobility. The greater the pay gaps, the less chance of movement between
classes since there is so much further to travel between them. Wealth
inequality, as Durkheim (1964) noted, can often be more damaging to
social cohesion than income inequality, particularly where many
individuals appear to derive their wealth from inheritance or asset
price inflation rather than through ability and hard work. Incomes tend
to rise and fall during different phases of the lifecycle so that people
on low incomes at particular points in their lives can take comfort from
the hope that better times are around the corner. Capital seems to have
more permanence, and because most of it is inherited, not earned, it
locks in inequalities across generations (Dorling, 2009). The lack of it
can act as a long-term exclusionary mechanism, as in countries where
housing is so expensive relative to incomes that lack of capital then
becomes the main barrier to home ownership. Likewise social immobility can do more to undermine social cohesion than income inequality, since
it gradually erodes the belief in meritocracy and just rewards that is
at the heart of the social contract, particularly in the liberal states.
Another growing divide in advanced societies, according to Willetts
(2010), is that between generations. A sizeable proportion of the
so-called 'baby-boomer' generation--those born roughly between
1940 and 1965 in the West- were lucky. Many of them who started work in
the 1960s benefitted from plentiful jobs and rising incomes,
particularly at the lower end. They, and the boomers who came after,
bought properties when they were still affordable, saw their wealth
increase dramatically as housing prices rose, and looked forward to
retiring at 60 or 65 with generous company pensions based on their final
salaries. They had smaller families than their parents' generation
and this, combined with their much higher, often dual, incomes, allowed
vastly greater household consumption (Willetts, 2010). They were a large
cohort and commanded considerable political power, the strength of their
'grey' vote later ensuring few governments would dare
challenge the advantages they received from the inflation of their
housing assets or from generous public health care they received when
they were older.
Many members of the generations that succeeded them were less
lucky. With birth rates declining in most countries, they were less
numerous and had less electoral clout. They benefitted from rising
incomes but were born too late to claim the windfall from the housing
boom enjoyed by their parents. The latest generation will be the worst
off, according to Willetts (2010). In most countries those leaving
education now will find it hard to get jobs, and the jobs they do get
will be less secure. Graduates must often pay back substantial student
loans and are unlikely to see the same return to graduate qualifications
as previous generations. They will find it hard to afford to buy a house
and even those who can are unlikely ever to pay off their mortgages.
They will effectively be permanent renters of their properties from
their loan companies. But at least they will be more secure than those
renting in the private market or relying on the much reduced stocks of
social housing. And all of them will be paying the higher taxes
necessary to pay off the vast public debts incurred by governments
bailing out the bankers of previous generations. They will no doubt have
to work until they are 70 and will rarely receive the generous company
pensions enjoyed by their parents--for which, in many countries, the
young have been paying through their taxes or pension contributions. In
many countries, for the generation reaching maturity now, their
prospects relative to those of their parents' generation are
arguably worse than those for any generation since the one that went to
fight in the First World War. Of course, some will be better off than
others, depending on what they have inherited from their parents, and
the advantages they have received from their education. But the
potential for conflict between generations has never been greater.
3. Convergence or divergence?
These general theories posit universal shifts. They argue that
secular changes are occurring in the fundamental structures of all
advanced societies and assume that these are more or less convergent--or
at the least unidirectional--trends. But how far does the empirical
evidence support this thesis? We look here at long-term trends in
measures of social trust, political trust, tolerance and perceptions of
conflict between groups.
Trust
Interpersonal or 'social' trust has often been considered
one of the key measures of social cohesion (Green, Preston and Janmaat,
2006; Reeskens, 2007; Uslaner, 2002). It relates to people's
willingness to place their confidence in a wide range of others,
including people they do not know. And it is widely considered to be an
important precondition for the functioning of modern societies where a
highly evolved division of labour means that everyday activities often
involve interactions with strangers. Trust is necessary for the
legitimacy of democratic systems which require that we trust the
politicians we elect to deliver their pledges. It is also a precondition
for welfare states which redistribute resources towards the needy
because they depend on people trusting that if they pay their taxes to
support others in need, these will not abuse the system, and others in
turn will pay theirs to support them if they are in need (Canovan,
1996). Trust is also essential for efficient economic activity which
depends on people sticking to what they have agreed and performing their
contracts. The higher the levels of trust and trustworthiness the less
the need for legal contracts and lawyers for every transaction and thus
the lower are transaction costs (North, 1990). Above all, trust is what
allows people to go about their daily business without constant fear of
being let down or cheated. This general form of trust has been widely
identified as necessary for a substantial range of private and public
goods in society. If we believe the correlational evidence, it is
closely associated with economic and social outcomes as diverse as
economic growth (Knack and Keefer, 1997), innovation (Osherg, 2003),
public health (Wilkinson, 1996), better government (Putnam, 2000) and
general well-being and happiness (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009).
Social trust is usually measured by the survey question which asks:
'Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted
or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?' It
can be objected that the question is not entirely clear about the range
of people in question, but factor analysis suggests that respondents do
indeed interpret the question in terms of how much they trust strangers
(Uslaner, 2002). Other statistical tests also suggest that the measure
is relatively robust. For instance, 'Dropped Wallet'
experiments conducted in different countries show that in countries with
high levels of measured trust more of these wallets are returned. There
is also a strong correlation between measured levels of trust in
particular countries and the perception of foreigners as to how far
people can be trusted in these countries, suggesting that trust and
perceptions of trustworthiness are closely related (Green, Preston and
Janmaat, 2006). Results from repeated surveys in different countries
over 50 years do show considerable consistency in the international
patterns of trust. There are very large differences between countries in
how far people say they trust each other and these differences remain
relatively stable over time.
We know relatively little about how trust arises. Putnam (2000) has
argued that trust derives from participation in groups; that it arises
out of the repeated interactions between individuals in associations
bound by collective norms. We learn to trust through successful
cooperation with others in pursuing common objectives. He supports this
with evidence from the US that people who join associations are more
likely to be trusting. However, as others have shown, this correlation
does not hold in all countries (Newton, 1999), let alone across
countries (Green et al., 2006; Uslaner, 2002). There is no significant
relationship between levels of trust in a country and the frequency with
which its people join organisations. Even if the US data do show a
correlation between trust and association, Putnam is unable to show
which way the causality runs. It may well be that it is because people
trust that they are more willing to join associations, rather than the
other way around.
Uslaner (2002) provides a more nuanced analysis of the nature of
trust. He distinguishes between 'strategic trust', which
depends on a calculation of whether given others are trustworthy, and
'moral trust,' which is based on fundamental character traits,
such as optimism and 'sense of control,' which encourage
people to believe that people should be trusted. The first is contingent
and subject to change depending on the context and the experience of the
others in question. The second does not depend so much on social context
and experience and is more stable over time. Moral trust, he says, is
learnt early on in life from parents and will be relatively enduring.
"Collectively," he writes, "the most optimistic person--who wants a fulfilling job, thinks about the future, and
believes that she can make it regardless of luck, connections, or
current circumstances--is 36 per cent more likely to trust others than
the most convinced pessimist." (Uslaner, 2002, p. 13).
Research from the field of psychology provides some evidence to
confirm the conjecture that early childhood experiences have a
significant influence on adult trust. Studies using UK longitudinal
datasets such as the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the
British Cohort Study (BCS70) find that levels of adult political trust
are predicted to some extent by parental class at birth and intelligence
measured during childhood (Deary et al., 2008; Schoon et al., 2010;
Sturgis et al., 2010). In another study based on these datasets Schoon
and Cheng (in press) also found a significant association between school
motivation at teen age and political trust in early adulthood in both
NCDS and BCS70 cohorts born in 1958 and 1970 (r = 0.23 in NCDS and r =
0.24 in BCS70, p<0.001). In our own recent work we have looked at the
associations between family social class, childhood and teenage
emotional disorder, and adult social trust in the British cohort studies
NCDS and BCS70. As can be seen from table 1, both parental social class
and early emotional disorder tended to influence adult social trust in
an expected direction: participants from higher social class families
tend to score higher on social trust in their early adulthood;
participants' childhood and teenage emotional disorder tended to
have negative effects on their social trust later on. Further, in both
cohorts, women had higher scores on social trust in both NCDS and BCS
cohorts.
Unfortunately, the UK longitudinal data cannot tell us whether
trust remains stable over the life course. NCDS does ask about trust at
two points, at 33 and 46 years, but the questions are asked differently
and the answers cannot be compared. Uslaner provides some evidence, from
a US panel survey conducted in 1965, 1973 and 1982, (1) which indicates
the relative stability of trusting attitudes. On his analysis, almost
two thirds of young people and more than 70 per cent of their parents
were consistent 'trusters' or 'mis-trusters'
throughout the very different decades of the 1960s and 1970s (Uslaner,
op. cit., p. 10). On the other hand, the data also suggest that context
and experience may have altered levels of trust in a third of cases,
which could have quite substantial effects on aggregate trends if the
changes are mostly in the same direction. Cohort analysis using
cross-sectional data doesn't really help us to answer the question
either, since we never know whether differences between cohorts at
different times are due to period or life-cycle or cohort effects. In
any case the findings from studies differ. Cross-country data for 1959
provided by Almond and Verba (1963) suggested that older and younger
people were equally likely to trust. However, Hall (1999), using data
from the repeated waves of the World Values Survey, found that people
over 30 years were more trusting in 1981 than people under 30 and that
the age differential had increased by 1990.
What we do know--and what must considerably qualify any explanation
of trust based purely on the effects of early parenting--is that levels
of trust vary massively across countries, from less than 10 per cent in
Brazil and Turkey, for instance, to over 60 per cent in Norway and
Sweden (Delhey and Newton, 2005). Aggregate levels of trust in different
countries do change over time, but the patterns across countries show
considerable regularity. We also know that average levels of trust tend
to vary by social class, with the more affluent more inclined to trust
than others lower down the income scale (Hall, 1999). These social
variations suggest that, although being trusting is an individual
disposition, which may well owe in part to deep-seated personality
traits, it is also strongly influenced by societal contexts. People are
more likely to trust as adults if others are trustworthy. So trust is
not only fundamental to the functioning of societies. It is also a
product of how societies function.
What the trend data on aggregate levels of social trust in
different countries show is quite startling and extremely worrisome from
the point of view of social cohesion. Figures I and 2, drawn from
different data sets, show the trends in aggregate levels of trust
between 1981 and 2009. Figure 1, based on World Values Survey data,
averages the aggregate levels of trust for countries in a number of
country groups, and shows that for three out of five of them--the
'liberal', 'southern European' and 'east
Asian' groups--trust declined significantly between 1981 and 2005,
while it remained flat in the 'social market' group.'-
For more recent years we only have data from European Social Survey and
Eurobarometer for a small number of countries. These surveys use the
same question as the World Values Survey, but, unlike the latter, which
demands dichotomous yes or no answers, allow answers on a scale. (3)
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Figure 2, which standardises the scales, provides values for the
period 2002 until 2009 for a few individual countries. In most cases
there is a further dramatic decline in levels of trust. Following a
period of reasonably stability from 2000 to 2005, there is a sharp
decline in average levels of trust in Germany, Spain, and the UK. Even
Sweden shows declining levels of trust after 2008, coinciding with the
economic crisis.
We cannot compare the values on the two graphs, since they are
based on surveys using different scales, so we cannot say exactly how
far trust has declined overall. But what we can see is that there was a
general decline in levels of trust (albeit with some fluctuations) in
the 24-year period from 1981 to 2005 in the English-speaking and
southern European groups of countries and that in certain countries from
each group (the UK for the English-speaking countries and Germany and
Spain for the continental European countries) this continued over the
next decade, although France defies the trend in the final two-year
period. The countries with the most severe declines in trust appear to
be the US and the UK. If we include in the time series Almond and
Verba's (1963) 1959 figures for the UK and the US (figure 3), again
based on comparable survey questions, we can see that trust in the UK
dropped catastrophically from just under 60 per cent of people saying
they generally trusted others in 1959 to around 30 per cent in 2005
(30.4 per cent). The figure for the US dropped from around 60 per cent
to just over 40 per cent. (4)
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]
In as much as trust is an important measure for social cohesion,
these trends in levels of trust would appear to confirm, at least
partially, the general theories discussed above which posit universal
and convergent changes in levels of social cohesion. However, there is a
major exception. Levels of trust rose significantly in the Nordic group
of countries between 1985 and 2005 and continued to rise after this in
Sweden until 2008.
The same divergence between the Nordic and other countries also
seems to apply with respect to the trends in political trust. Political
trust, or trust in (government) institutions, is generally thought to be
closely linked to general or interpersonal trust (Delhey and Newton,
2005; Inglehart, 1997; Putnam, 1993; Uslaner, 2002). At the individual
level, it may have some common origins in early childhood with general
trust, but it is also subject to changes throughout the life course due
to learning and experience. Some longitudinal studies find it declines
with age (Schoon et al., 2010). But it is most certainly also affected
by societal context and, like social trust, varies substantially across
countries.
As with social trust, political trust--measured here in terms of
confidence in parliament--has declined markedly over the past three
decades in many advanced countries. Figure 4 shows large declines in the
liberal and social market groups between 1981 and 2005. Figure 5 shows
continuing declines after 2001 in Germany, France, Spain and the UK,
with the steepest declines after 2008, as one would expect. The major
exception again appears to be the Nordic countries. The average level of
political trust for these countries increased during the 1981-2005
period, when it was falling in most other countries, and it stabilised
in Sweden right until the end of 2009. Sweden thus did not experience
the sharp decline in political trust that the other countries did in the
year that the crisis kicked in.
[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]
It is also interesting to examine trends in trust by birth cohort
as the economic crisis is likely to have affected age groups
differently. The young, who are often working in temporary jobs, are
much more likely to have lost their jobs than the older generations
because cutting back on temporary staff is usually one of the first
measures that employers take when confronted with an economic crisis.
Because the crisis is likely to have hit the young harder, we would
expect them to show the steepest drop in trust. Figures 6 and 7, which
are based on the pooled data of the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany,
France and Spain, show that social and political trust have indeed
declined most in the younger age groups from 2006 to 2009. Social trust
declined in all age groups to levels below the midpoint of the scale
(indicating on balance more distrust than trust), but the fall was
particularly pronounced in the cohorts born after 1964. Political trust
was already at levels below the midpoint of the scale in 2006 and has
fallen even further in 2009 in all age groups. Again the younger
generations show the most significant drops, particularly those born
between 1965 and 1984. In fact, while the younger age groups showed
slightly higher levels of both social and political trust in 2006, the
correlation was decidedly reversed in 2009 with the older generations
exhibiting higher trust levels.S
[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 8A OMITTED]
[FIGURE 8B OMITTED]
[FIGURE 9A OMITTED]
However, the pooled data of figures 6 and 7 is likely to hide
important differences between countries. Because of differences in
labour market institutions and policies the young in different countries
are likely to be affected in different ways by the economic crisis. In
the United Kingdom, for instance, with its flexible labour markets, many
youngsters with fixed-term contracts may have become unemployed but they
may have had less difficulty in finding new work. By contrast, in the
more regulated labour markets of the social market and southern European
countries, where youth unemployment was already at relatively high
levels, the crisis is likely to have prolonged the long-term
unemployment of youngsters and thus to have given rise to widespread
feelings of exclusion and discontent (see also the discussion of the
social market regime further below). Figures 8 and 9 indeed show
remarkable differences between--in this case--Germany and the United
Kingdom. While both social and political trust levels have fallen at
practically the same rate in all age groups in the United Kingdom, trust
has declined markedly more among the younger cohorts in Germany. Here,
political trust among the oldest age group has even increased.
[FIGURE 9B OMITTED]
Tolerance
Tolerance is another characteristic often associated with socially
cohesive societies, although it has arguably received more emphasis,
historically, in liberal political philosophy than in other traditions.
The contemporary empirical evidence suggests that it is a highly
context-contingent characteristic, varying considerably by social group
within countries, and subject, at the national level, to considerable
swings over time (Green, Preston and Janmaat, 2006). Although in some
countries tolerance and other measures of social capital seem to go hand
in hand at the individual level (Putnam, 2000), this is not true in all
countries. Aggregate national levels of trust and tolerance do not
co-vary across countries (Green et al., 2006). Nevertheless, for many
people tolerance would be considered a sine qua non of social cohesion.
The World Values Survey measures tolerance by asking respondents if they
mind having immigrants as neighbours. The question might be thought to
go pretty close to the heart of the matter, thus providing a fairly good
proxy for tolerance. But it only taps attitudes towards immigrants and
not towards other minority groups.
The World Values Survey data show that the trends on this measure
are, indeed, quite country specific. Between 1981 and 2005, tolerance
increased substantially in Germany until 2001, before falling off
slightly, whereas it declined precipitously in France, particularly
after 2001. The US shows a steady but small decline, and likewise the
UK, after a small rise in the 1980s. Sweden, on the other hand,
manifested a decline in tolerance in the 1980s but subsequently showed a
substantial rise which left levels higher in 2005 than in 1981. If we
average the values for different country groups (see figure 10), we can
see a very slight decline for the liberal group, a sharp decline for the
social market group (presumably driven to a considerable extent by
France), but a small rise for the social democratic countries, due to
the significant increases after the 1980s. Although some variation
between countries in each group warns against placing too much stress on
the regional patterns, there is some evidence again of divergent trends
between the Nordic and other groups of countries.
[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]
Conflict
Another useful measure of social cohesion is the perceived level of
tension between different social groups. We have 2009 data from
Eurobarometer for a sizeable number of countries on perceived tensions
between rich and poor, managers and workers, generations and different
ethnic groups. Figures 11-14 show the average for each country group,
with the bars showing confidence intervals.6 The values range between 1
(no tension) and 3 (a lot of tension). The mean values and confidence
intervals show that perceptions of tension are significantly lower in
the social democratic countries by comparison to the other groups in the
first three figures but not in the fourth.
[FIGURE 11 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 12 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 13 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]
Figure 11 shows that tensions between the rich and poor are
perceived to be highest in the transition and social market countries
but substantially lower in the Nordic countries. Figure 12 again shows
that perceptions of tensions between managers and workers are highest in
the social market group of countries, southern Europe and in the
transition group (eastern Europe). They are somewhat lower in the
liberal group and substantially lower in the social democratic group.
The perception of tensions between generations (figure 13) is also
highest in the transition countries and lowest in the social democratic
group, with the liberal and the social market groups lying somewhere in
between.
When it comes to perceptions of tension between ethnic groups
(figure 14), however, the social democratic group tops the ranking
order, along with the transition countries. The social market group
follows shortly after. Levels of perceived tensions between ethnic
groups are relatively low in the liberal and southern European
countries.
On three of the four measures of perceived conflict, then, the
Nordic countries again show themselves to be quite distinctive. The
social democratic regime appears to have maintained greater solidarity
than the others between social classes and generations. However, this is
not extended to ethnic groups.
4. The decline of social cohesion and the Nordic exception
The major theories of social change identify powerful forces which
undermine social cohesion in modern developed societies. Globalisation,
increasing social inequality and generational division, and the
proliferation of individualism and identity politics, all, it is argued,
portend an ongoing fracturing of society and the weakening of collective
social bonds. Trends on some of the key measures of social cohesion,
analysed above, generally support this contention. Trust in others,
trust in parliament and tolerance of immigrants all appear to be in
decline in most regions of the developed world. With the social effects
of the global recession still unfolding, it is likely that other
measures of social conflict and division, such as industrial conflict
and civil unrest, will also be on the rise. However, our analysis
suggests that this is not an entirely convergent trend. In one region at
least, social cohesion appears to have been sustained, if not
strengthened. The Nordic countries seem to be substantially more
trusting and slightly more tolerant than they were 30 years ago.
Perceptions of conflicts between social groups and generations seem also
to be lower in this region than elsewhere. How can we explain this
apparent exceptionalism?
Scholars and commentators have given most attention to the question
of trust--the area where Nordic exceptionalism is most pronounced.
Popular wisdom has it that small and homogenous societies are more
likely to be trusting and that we should not therefore be surprised that
the Nordic countries have a greater propensity towards trusting than
other more populous and more diverse societies. Statistical analysis
only partially supports this explanation, however. In cross-country
analysis population size and density do not correlate with levels of
social trust (Delhey and Newton, 2005). Some less populous countries,
like Denmark, do have high levels of trust. Others, like Portugal, do
not. Conversely, some very populous countries, like Brazil, have very
low levels of trust, whereas others, like Japan and Canada, are amongst
the most trusting. Analyses of the relations between ethnic and cultural
diversity and trust have also to date produced rather contradictory
results. In a series of cross-national and cross-area analyses, Alesina
and Ferrara (2003), Knack and Keefer (1997), Putnam (2000, 2007),
Uslaner (2002) and Helliwell (2003) all find that increasing diversity
reduces average levels of trust. Putnam (2007) claims, in his analyses
across areas in the US, that diversity reduces trust both within and
across groups, even when we control for other factors, such as income
inequality. However, other studies, using appropriate controls, have
found no relation between diversity and trust, either at the
cross-national level (Green, Preston and Janmaat, 2006; Hooghe et al.,
2009) or in cross-area analyses in Canada (Johnson and Soroka, 1999) and
the UK (Lekti, 2006).
One of the most exhaustive analyses of trust and diversity, which
explicitly seeks to provide an explanation of Nordic exceptionalism, is
the study by Delhey and Newton (2005). In an analysis of 55 countries
with data from the World Values Survey, they find that high trust
societies are generally: wealthy, egalitarian, well-governed, protestant
and relatively homogenous. Even when the Nordic countries are removed
from the sample, these correlations remain significant, although they
are weaker. Delhey and Newton (2005) claim that Protestantism and ethnic
fractionalisation together explain 46 per cent of the variance in trust
across countries. However, as they admit, when you control for good
governance and social spending, the significance of these factors
declines markedly.
The explanations of Nordic exceptionalism based on cultural
homogeneity in cross-sectional analyses are somewhat inconclusive. If
you look at the trends, they appear even weaker. Nordic countries have
become more trusting over a period when they have become substantially
more diverse. Immigrants in Denmark were only 3.1 per cent of the
population in 1980 but 10.6 per cent in 2009. In Sweden the proportion
rose from 4 per cent of the population in 1960 to 13.8 per cent in 2009
(Larsen, 2009). By 2008, 18 per cent of the Swedish population had
foreign origins (9 per cent if you exclude Finns) and 14 per cent were
foreign-born. Sweden has a higher proportion of people of migrant stock
than all but eight of the 26 OECD countries for which we have
data--higher than France, Germany and the UK. Yet it ranked second
highest on levels of trust (1999 wave) far higher than other less
diverse societies.
[FIGURE 15 OMITTED]
The most convincing explanations of Nordic exceptionalism seem to
relate to the fundamental characteristics of social democracy. Nordic
countries are substantially more egalitarian than most developed
countries. Despite small rises in household income inequality in the
past two decades, Nordic countries remain the most income-equal in the
developed world, and substantially more equal as a group than any of the
other groups (see figure 15). They also have the most universalistic
welfare states.
As we have seen, many cross-national studies of trust find a
positive relationship to egalitarianism (Green, Preston and Janmaat,
2006; Uslaner, 2003). As Uslaner has argued, relative equality promotes
solidarity because people feel more or less in the same boat. Inequality
increases the social and cultural distance between groups and makes
trusting more difficult. Likewise, universalistic welfare systems,
because they include everyone on the same terms, promote the sense of
solidarity and connectedness between social groups. Indeed, they also
depend on it since such welfare systems can rarely be won politically if
such solidarity does not exist. This creates a circular, mutually
reinforcing syndrome of social responsibility which makes trusting more
likely. It also promotes trust in the political system which is seen to
help everyone. A more psychological explanation of the relationship
between equality and trust is also plausible. As Wilkinson argues
(1996), inequality increases high stakes competition in society which is
likely, in turn, to lead to greater status anxiety and stress. Stress
has been shown to underlie many manifestations of poor physical and
mental health. It may also be un-conducive to trusting. It is quite
possible, as our longitudinal data for the UK suggest (table 1 ), that
children growing up in highly stressed family environments acquire
personality traits (such as anxiety, introversion and pessimism) which
inhibit the development of trust. Trusting probably occurs through a
combination of early childhood learning and adult experiences.
5. Social cohesion regimes and the global economic crisis
The analysis, above, of key indicators of social cohesion suggests
both convergence and divergence across countries and regions. There is
ample evidence to suggest that overall cohesion in the advanced
countries and regions in the West is in decline. However, the trends are
not uniform. In the Nordic region, at least, the trends on a number of
key indicators suggest a consolidation, if not strengthening, of social
cohesion.
However, this approach, which compares countries along linear
scales for particular indicators, only just begins to capture the
complex changes in the nature of social bonding which are occurring in
different societies and regions, because what holds different societies
together is never identical. As we have argued elsewhere (Green and
Janmaat, forthcoming) there are actually quite different historical
traditions of social cohesion in the West, each based on distinctive
institutional and cultural foundations. For specific historical periods,
defined by relatively stable institutional and ideological conditions,
we can refer to these as 'regimes of social cohesion' where a
regime is an 'ideal type' in Weber's sense of a stylised model which captures the key and defining characteristics of a
particular set of actual social forms. Using statistical analysis of
cross-country data on institutional and attitudinal characteristics of
countries--including through cluster analysis, factor analysis and
composite indicators--we can identify at least three distinctive
contemporary 'regimes of social cohesion.' These are typically
manifested in countries which comparative political economy identifies
as 'liberal', 'social market' and 'social
democratic' in their types of social and economic organisation.
Arguably, each of these regimes is facing stresses and strains in the
face of global trends, but each is vulnerable in different ways.
Historically, liberal societies, such as the UK and the US, have
tended to see social cohesion as resting on the triple pillars of the
free market, active civil society and their core beliefs in individual
freedoms, opportunities and meritocratic rewards. A wider set of shared
values has not been seen as essential for a cohesive society. Nor, in
the UK case at least, has a strong, or tightly defined, sense of
national identity and national culture been deemed as central. The role
of state in welfare and redistribution has also been played down as a
precondition for cohesion.
The social market regime of social cohesion differs from the
liberal regime in the greater emphasis placed on maintaining a wide set
of shared values and active participation in national formal political
activity. It also relies more on the state to generate the conditions
for social cohesion through welfare and labour market institutions. The
social market, it could be said, tends to institutionalise the sources
of social cohesion.
The social democratic regime of social cohesion relies, like the
social market regime, on solidaristic labour market organisation and
generous social benefits. As in the social market regime of social
cohesion it is state-led and highly institutionalised. However, the
social democratic regime differs in the crucial respect that it places
equality at the centre of its social philosophy. Each of these models
exhibits different fault lines under the pressures of globalisation and
economic crisis.
In several respects social cohesion in liberal societies should not
be overly vulnerable to the forces of globalisation. Markets have become
broader and more dominant under the dominant neo-liberal paradigm of
globalisation. Civic association may have changed its forms but still
seems relatively robust in countries like Britain and America. And
without the need for a broad set of shared values, increasing social and
cultural diversity should not seem such a threat to liberal societies.
Indeed, despite racism and xenophobia persisting in some sections of
societies, and despite sporadic eruptions of inter-ethnic conflict,
these societies do seem to remain relatively tolerant. However, social
cohesion in these societies is, arguably, under severe threat from
another quarter--from the atrophy of those core beliefs which unite its
citizens. As inequalities widen, opportunities diminish, and rewards
appear ever more detached from effort and merit, fewer and fewer people
are likely to hold to the belief that they live in an equitable,
meritocratic society. If these beliefs are, indeed, the main glue which
holds liberal societies together, social cohesion may be severely tested
in the coming years of austerity.
In the social market economies the fault lines of social cohesion
are different. The countries of north-west continental Europe, which
adhere broadly to the social market socio-economic model, have sought to
balance the goals of economic growth and individual opportunity with
other more social goals. In this context, a period of economic
stagnation perhaps comes as less of a shock, particularly when the
burden of belt-tightening is shared more equally. For the most part
these countries are less unequal than the liberal societies and social
mobility have been higher in recent years (Blanden et al., 2005). Here
the strains on social cohesion appear to be coming primarily from a
different quarter.
Most of these countries have historically placed a high premium on
shared values and 'national' culture. In the republican
tradition of France, this was based mostly on political ideals, derived
from the French Enlightenment and subsequent Revolution, but also on a
strong sense of identification with the French language and way of life
(Brubaker, 1992). Historically, in Germany, and in the countries
proximate to it, excepting perhaps Holland, ethno-cultural identity
tended to prevail over state identity, since nationalism arose before
territorially secure sovereign states were established, and when the
nation and state could not easily be made to coincide (Kohn, 2008). In
the postwar years a more civic identity has emerged but a broad set of
common values and beliefs still tend to be important, in a way that they
are not in the UK. The problem for these countries is that these
identities are now challenged by rising social and ethnic diversity and
by increasing value pluralism (see Green and Janmaat, forthcoming). This
is where social cohesion appears to be most vulnerable.
The Nordic countries are widely considered to be amongst the most
socially cohesive in the world. On most of the usual measures of social
cohesion they score highly relative to other countries. Social trust and
political trust have both been far higher within the social democratic
Nordic countries than in social market and liberal countries since the
1980s. Levels of violent crime are generally lower, although Finland
differs from the other Nordics in having quite high homicide rates.
People in Nordic countries perceive less tension between rich and poor,
workers and managers and between the generations than in the other
country groups. Perceptions of tensions between ethnic groups are
relatively high but on one measure at least--the proportion saying they
have no problem with having immigrants as neighbours--Nordic countries
are on average more tolerant than countries in the other groups. What is
more, while other country groups show declines over recent decades on
key indicators of social cohesion, the Nordics post substantial rises.
Social trust and political trust were considerably higher in 2005 than
in 1981. People in the Nordic countries seem to have become more
tolerant during the 1990s and are probably still more tolerant than they
were in 1981. But the Nordic countries also face threats to their
strongly solidaristic cultures.
The main challenge to social cohesion in the Nordic states comes
from the long-term pressures on public spending and thus on the welfare
state. Generous welfare provision is a key part of the social contract
between the state and its citizens in Nordic countries and people are
willing to pay the necessary price (in taxes) for this. However,
demographic change and global economic forces make the contract ever
harder to sustain.
Mounting global economic competition places pressure on all states
to constrain public spending so that taxation does not rise to levels
which would deter foreign investors and undermine market confidence.
Population ageing in the Nordic countries, as elsewhere, raises the
costs of the welfare state, particularly in health and pension costs. So
far the Nordic countries have resisted abandoning their welfare model.
After its banking crisis, Sweden was forced to rein in public spending
in the 1990s, although not to a point which put its welfare system in
jeopardy. A degree of privatisation was allowed which curtailed, to a
small degree, the universality of provision. Other countries have
trimmed spending in certain areas. But generally electors in Nordic
countries have continued to support high taxes for their welfare
systems.
However, tensions clearly exist around immigration and its
associated social costs which have periodically flared up into political
controversy. Can the social contract around taxes and welfare be
maintained with the additional social costs associated with rising
immigration? Is the native population willing to extend its solidarity
to immigrants?
The issue has been particularly acute in countries like Denmark,
whose immigration policies were traditionally based more on humanitarian
than skills-related criteria and which consequently had high rates of
unemployment amongst immigrant groups, with substantial associated
social costs. It was opposition in Denmark to the Social Democrats'
open-door immigration policies, which saw 60 per cent of asylum
applications granted in the late 1990s, which fuelled the rise of the
far-right Danish People's Party in the early 2000s. This party
joined the Conservatives and Radical Liberals in a new coalition
government in 2001 and this coalition government then passed some of
Europe's strictest immigration laws in 2002 (BBC News, 19 February,
2005). Sweden's Social Democrat government castigated the Danish
government for undermining Scandinavian solidarity, as Denmark's
share of successful asylum applications to Scandinavian countries
dropped from 31 per cent in 2001 to 9 per cent in 2003, while
Sweden's rose from 41 to 60 per cent. Sweden, meanwhile, with a
more skills-based immigration policy, passed new laws in 2008 making it
easier for skilled European migrants to obtain work permits.
The immigration debate in the Scandinavian countries well
illustrates the social democratic dilemma of how to maintain
humanitarian immigration policies at the same time as providing generous
welfare. Whether the adoption of more economically viable, skill-based
immigration policies will settle the issue remains to be seen. In any
event, it would seem that the immigration issue defines the limits of
social solidarity in the social democratic regime. Social cohesion in
the Nordic countries is based on a social contract which operates within
national borders. If globalisation were to erode state sovereignty to
the point where such national contracts were no longer viable, it too
would be vulnerable, even in Scandinavia.
DOI: 10.1177/0027950111401140
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NOTES
(1) Parent-Child Socialisation study conducted by M. Kent and
Richard G. Niemi.
(2) In order to avoid the more populous countries dominating the
country groups we gave the country aggregate scores equal weight when
calculating the group means.
(3) In ESS the item had a 0-10 scale (0 'can't be too
careful'--10 'most people can be trusted') while in the
EB it had a 1-10 scale (I 'can't be too careful'--10
'most people can be trusted'). To make the answers comparable
we subtracted the EB scale with 0.5. As a result, the midpoint in the
scale for both the ESS and EB item is 5.
(4) It could be argued that in order to control for the effect of
short-term economic fluctuations on trust one should ideally measure
long-term trends in trust using points in time when the economy was in
similar states (i.e. using either moments of boom or moments of
recession). However, data limitations prevented us from doing so.
Moreover, it cannot automatically be assumed that trust always declines
in periods of recession and always rises in periods of growth. Actually,
if an economic fluctuation effect does exist, the long-term declines in
trust for the liberal and southern European groups recorded in figure I
would become even more pronounced as the start of the time series ( 1981
) fell in a period of recession (depressing trust levels) and the end of
the time series (2005) marked a period of economic growth (enhancing
trust levels).
(5) It could be argued that these findings are nothing special if
attitudes like trust are generally more fluctuating among younger
cohorts. However, other research investigating long-term trends in
social attitudes finds younger and older cohorts to show the same
short-term variations in attitudes (e.g. Inglehart 1997: famous graph).
This further underlines the significance of the current findings.
(6) The EB asked the following question: "In all countries
there sometimes exists tension between social groups. In your opinion,
how much tension is there between each of the following groups in
[COUNTRY]?" [1 no tension; 2 some tension; 3 a lot of tension]
Andy Green, Germ Janmaat and Helen Cheng, Institute of Education,
University of London. e-mail: Andy.Green@ioe.ac.uk. This work was
supported by the Economic and Social Research Council Centre for
Research on Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and
Societies (LLAKES); grant number RES-594-28-0001.
Table 1. Pearson correlations among parental social class, childhood
and teenage emotional disorder, and adult social trust in NCDS and
BCS70
Variables Mean SD Gender
NCDS (N = 8,663)
1. Gender 0.51 -0.50 --
2. Parental social class(a) 3.22 -1.21 -0.25 *
3. Emotional disorder(b) (age 11) 1.50 -1.34 0.30 *
4. Emotional disorder (age 16) 0.88 -1.14 0.153 ***
5. Social trust(c) (age 33) 2.75 -0.68 0.067 ***
Variables Parental Emotional
NCDS (N = 8,663) social class disorder
(age II)
1. Gender
2. Parental social class(a) --
3. Emotional disorder(b) (age 11) 0.005 --
4. Emotional disorder (age 16) 0.004 0.369 ***
5. Social trust(c) (age 33) 0.057 *** -0.032 ***
Variables Emotional Social trust
NCDS (N = 8,663) disorder (age 33)
(age 16)
1. Gender
2. Parental social class(a)
3. Emotional disorder(b) (age 11)
4. Emotional disorder (age 16) --
5. Social trust(c) (age 33) -0.039 *** --
Variables Mean SD Gender
BCS70 (N = 8,696)
1. Gender 0.52 -0.50 --
2. Parental social class 3.36 -1.21 -0.01
3. Emotional disorder(b) (age 10) 25.76 -19.28 0.043 **
4. Emotional disorder (age 16) 0.90 -1.13 0.139 ***
5. Social trust(c) (age 34) 2.78 -0.66 0.038 **
Variables Parental Emotional
BCS70 (N = 8,696) social class disorder
(age 10)
1. Gender
2. Parental social class --
3. Emotional disorder(b) (age 10) -0.031 * --
4. Emotional disorder (age 16) -0.029 * 0.375 ***
5. Social trust(c) (age 34) 0.121 *** -0.024
Variables Emotional Social trust
BCS70 (N = 8,696) disorder (age 34)
(age 16)
1. Gender
2. Parental social class
3. Emotional disorder(b) (age 10)
4. Emotional disorder (age 16) --
5. Social trust(c) (age 34) -0.078 *** --
Note: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001. Standard deviations (SD)
are given in parentheses. Variables were scored such that a higher
score indicated high status on parental social class at birth, greater
emotional disorder in childhood and at age 16, and high social trust
at age 33 in NCDS and 34 in BCS70.
Measures
(a) Parental social class. In both NCDS and BCS70 social class is
measured by the Registrar General's measure of social class where
class is defined according to job status and the associated education
level, prestige (Office of Population Censuses and Surveys and
Employment Department Group, 1980) or lifestyle (Marsh, 1986) and is
assessed by the current or last held job. It is divided into six
ordinal categories (I Managerial, II Professional, III non manual, III
manual, IV semiskilled, V unskilled). Class I represents the highest
level of prestige or skill and class V the lowest Where there was no
father in the household, the social class of the mother was used.
(b) The emotional disorder scale comprised of three items from a
modified version of the Rutter A Scale (Rutter, Tizard and Whitmore,
1970). In the BCS70 cohort, at age 10 only, the parent was asked to
complete the items of the Rutter A scale on an analogous scale which,
using an automated marking system, yielded a score between 0 (does not
apply) and 100 (certainly applies) for each item. The emotional
disorder score is obtained by summing the score of three items: is
'tearful or distressed', is 'often worried-worries about many
things', and is 'fearful-afraid of new things' (range 0-6).
(c) Social trust was captured in the NCDS at age 33 with a
single-item measure. Cohort members were asked 'Generally speaking,
would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too
careful in dealing with people?' The item tapping social trust in the
BCS70 at age 34 was worded differently. Cohort members were asked,
'How much do you trust people in your local area?' (I = not at all, 2
= not very much, 3 = a fair amount, 4 = a lot).