“Leaven” and “Yeast”: Social Capital and the Social Foundations of Democracy in Germany.

Does social capital stimulate political support? Although scholars have arrived
at equivocal answers to this question, the vast majority of this research has
been overly restrictive in its measures of social capital and democratic
attitudes, focusing almost exclusively upon connections between social and
political trust from which broad inferences about the social capital perspective
have been made. Rarely, however, has the impact of different manifestations of
social capital been examined on a range of democratic attitudes. Using ALLBUS
data from the Federal Republic of Germany, this study subjects the social
capital perspective to empirical testing, by systematically examining the
impact of five manifestations of social capital on two measures of political
support. The results strongly confirm that social capital influences democratic
attitudes which are more diffuse in character.