The Importance of Trust-Building in Transition: A Look at Social Capital and Democratic Action in Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT:

This paper uses data from the 1995 and 2000 World Values Survey to examine and compare the relationship between social capital, education and political participation in Western and Eastern Europe. The concept of social capital is measured using indicators of trust and membership in voluntary organizations, while the concept of political participation is put into operation through indicators of political action. The research uncovers clear indicators showing that social capital is a factor in political participation in Eastern Europe and that the existence of general social trust is a characteristic of the most successful transitions. The paper finds evidence to support the theory that a trust-building mechanism based on reciprocity and a "critical mass" is indeed at work in the democratization process and that social capital is an integral part of transition for the Eastern European states.

Social capital became a buzzword in the academic world with amazing speed in the early 1990s and remains hotly debated even now, more than a decade later. Within the social sciences the concept has been used in a wide range of research including democratization studies. Scholars in this field posited that social capital is primarily a function of culture-and that the presence (or lack) of social capital has direct consequences for the effectiveness of democracy.1 Social capital is generally defined as the networks, norms and trust surrounding social relationships.2 However, variations on this definition exist and research in the area has been marked by problems and criticisms.

The wide conceptual reach of this concept has been criticized for attempting too much and for intruding into theoretical space already occupied by civil society research and network analysis. One of the most pervasive critiques is that many studies a priori cite social capital as a prime causal factor in democratization even though there is no agreement in the literature over social capital's correlation with democratization, much less its role as a causal factor. In reaction to this common a priori assumption, research has been conducted that has attempted to disprove the link between social capital and democracy.3 Indeed, there is enough doubt in the literature as to the validity of the link between social capital and democracy that it can be treated as a disputed hypothesis.

This study will address this dispute by comparing the relationship between social capital and democratic participation at both the individual and the crossnational levels, using data from two waves of the World Values Survey (WVS).4 This relationship and its cross-national comparison have not yet been tested elsewhere and represent an attempt to move beyond the small case studies of social capital in order to situate the concept within a more global arena. The paper will conclude that social capital and democratic action are indeed positively related at the individual level and that in cross-regional and cross-national comparisons the relationship is stronger in the West than in Eastern Europe, and stronger in the leading reformers of Eastern Europe than in the other transition states. Also, it will be demonstrated that the strength of the relationship increases across waves in Eastern European states that have successful transitions. From the data a specific form of trust reciprocity can be deduced in Eastern Europe. Trust generation begins as a tit-for-tat reciprocity mechanism; however, after a "tipping-point" or when a "critical mass" of people identifies itself as "trusters," then a "thick" interpersonal trust-building mechanism is replaced by a "thin" general trust building mechanism, one that is not based on personal experience. This is a crucial finding because without knowing how to generate social capital it is difficult to apply the concept as a useful tool in democratization studies.

COMPETING VIEWS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL

A vast amount of literature exists on the topic of social capital. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the concept, the definition has most often varied by the field of the researcher. In the political sciences, two polarized views dominate: Robert Putnam's and the response to his work by Michael Foley and Bob Edwards. In his seminal interpretation of the concept, Putnam argues that social capital is an attribute of society that creates social cooperation without which democracy would be overwhelmed by its own inefficiency.5 On the other hand, Foley and Edwards argue that Putnam has stretched the concept of social capital too far. They argue that social capital is not an attribute of societies but rather individuals and is context specific-not general.6 The research on social capital in Eastern Europe has focused on testing a Putnam-like model in case studies of single states, usually Russia, as Christopher Marsh and Richard Rose have done.7

TRUST-BUILDING: BOTTOM-UP OR TOP-DOWN?

In the research on social capital the idea of trust building is a key concept. Some authors, such as Rose, believe that trust is built through a top down process, where either institutions sponsor and nurture trust in citizens or cultural traditions perpetuate trust.8 Other authors, such as Putnam, flirt with the idea of a bottom-up, a tit-for-tat trust reciprocity mechanism. These two opposite concepts are embodied in the debate on whether social capital is culturally "fixed" or "malleable." It is fixed if social capital is the result of a slow process of cultural evolution; it is malleable if the individual can acquire it independently in a shorter period of time. If social capital displays cultural fixity then it cannot be an effective tool for use in promoting democratization since it evolves over too long a period of time. However, if social capital can display cultural malleability, then it can be harnessed as a tool in democratization. In that case, it is important to identify the mechanism of trust building, most importantly whether it displays a bottom up or top down dynamic.

A recent study by Raymond Fisman and Tarun Khanna looks at the controversial issue of what creates trust: is it historical factors or the result of repeated interactions with other individuals?9 If historical factors are most influential, then trust has a high degree of cultural fixity; whereas, if trust is a product of certain repeated interactions, then it is malleable. Fisman and Khanna test this proposition by empirically examining the relationship between trust and information flows. Their results find that there is a cross-national, robust positive relationship between levels of trust and two-way information flows (as measured by statistics on the number of telephones per capita). The authors conclude that this relationship gives strong support to the theory that trust is not a historical residue or fixed cultural property, but rather that trust will emerge in the presence of information. Fisman and Khanna identify several different theories of trust creation through reciprocity; however, their results are too limited to allow them to distinguish between the mechanisms of trust generation. These theories include deterrence-based trust, knowledge-based and identification-based trust.10 The authors believe all of these types of trust are generated through reciprocity and account for the creation of trust in societies across the world.

Claus Offe explains the concept of trust reciprocity-for which Fisman and Khanna find supporting empirical evidence-in more detail. Offe describes trust reciprocity (the bottom up approach to trust building) as arising out of two factors: a person's concrete experiences and a sense of obligation. The first factor arises out of "past experience [that] develops a present orientation concerning the anticipation of future behaviour."11 The second, a sense of obligation, regards a person's "reflexive awareness" of a history of interactions, and the reasons to uphold that continuity of trust: breaking continuity carries a stigma of betrayal or exploitation.

VARIABLES

The model used to test the hypothesis that social capital is important for democratic action is built on the theoretical framework of social capital generally used by the Putnam school. The model consists of the two social capital dummy variables (trust12 and membership in voluntary organizations13) and the nine-point education control variable.14

The concept of democratization is put into operation at the individual level using a variable testing "willingness to take democratic action." Democratic action has been linked to democratic functioning by many scholars in the research area.15 In order for democratization to progress and consolidation to occur, the process must engage its citizens in numbers large enough to be meaningful and widespread. Active participation of citizens is the underpinning of democracy; without it, not only elections but also all other manners of civic life are inherently unsustainable.16 This citizen participation is measured using a democratic action index, which is a continuous variable with a normal distribution produced from a factor analysis.17 This index involves citizen participation such as signing a petition, joining a boycott and attending a lawful demonstration.

The model was run in each wave at the individual level, the regional level and the country level in order to establish regional and country trends across the years. The hypothesis is tested using multivariate Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis.

In both waves, people who respond as "trusters," and people who are members of at least one voluntary organization have higher means of democratic action than "non-trusters" and non-members. When broken down, the results show that "trusters" and members still have higher means of democratic action regardless of the region they live in. An interesting point to highlight is that the mean levels of democratic action for "trusters" in Eastern Europe had a steep increase from 1995 to 2000, which means the relationship between trust and democratic action is stronger in 2000 than it was in 1995.

Analysis of the social capital variables across regions reveals that in the 2000 wave, in the West,18 36% of individuals responded as "trusters," while in Eastern Europe19 only 20% did. The membership variable evinces a similar pattern; in the West 53% of people belong to some type of voluntary organization, while in Eastern Europe the number is only 34%. When broken down by country in both waves for both trust and membership we see that the Western countries generally have higher percentages of people who are "trusters" and are members of voluntary organizations.

The model is run in three repetitions. The first run consists of only the social capital variables; the second-only the education variable, and then the third run is combined. This is done to verify that social capital is not a spurious reflection of the relationship between education and democratic action. However, not only does social capital remain statistically significant upon the addition of education to the model but also the coefficients remain strong and are not weakened by the addition of education.

One of the main concerns of researchers examining political action in Eastern Europe is whether or not that political action is indeed democratic. If individuals take political action based on extremist political views, then that action is likely to be non-conducive to democracy and perhaps even a threat. Political action as measured in this survey by the three variables asking about democratic action (petitions, boycotts and legal demonstrations), appears indeed to be measuring political action conducive to democracy. The democratic action variable correlates positively with support of democratic values and tolerance of minorities.

RESULTS OF MODEL

The results of the regression model at the individual level for the 1995 and 2000 waves are strikingly close (for 1995 results see Table 1, for 2000 Table 2). Both waves have similar R-squared values and all three independent variables (trust, membership and education) are statistically significant factors in predicting democratic action. Thus we can confirm the hypothesis that social capital has an independent effect on democratic action from that of education.

The subsequent analysis moves from the individual level to the regional level. Because we are interested in social capital's effect on democratization, the regions that will be compared are the consolidated democracies of the West and the newly democratizing states of Eastern Europe. In both the 1995 and the 2000 waves, the model will confirm the hypothesis that there is indeed system interference when it comes to social capital's effect on democratic action.

For both waves, Eastern Europe shows comparatively lower R-squared factors than the West. In 1995, Eastern Europe has an R-sq of .054 and the West of .213; and in 2000 the East is at .080 and the West is at .168. These results tell us that social capital and education are much more important factors in predicting democratic action in the West than in Eastern Europe. Obviously, other factors not considered in this model have an impact on democratic action in Eastern Europe.

The most significant result at the regional level is the difference between the relative strength of the three variables in the West compared to Eastern Europe. In the West we see two things happening: first, the strongest predictor of democratic action is education; and second, the unstandardized coefficients for the two social capital variables are quite close in value. In other words, in the West, both trust and membership are equally important for predicting democratic action.

In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, education is not as strong a predictor and we also see that the importance of the trust aspect of social capital is far below that of the membership aspect. Thus we can conclude that education and trust act as important predictors of democratic action in the West, although they are not important predictors in Eastern Europe. Keeping these two patterns in mind, we now turn to a cross-national comparison within the region of Eastern Europe to see how the model behaves at the country level.

Table 1 displays the country level results for Eastern European states in the 1995 survey.

The table reveals an interesting trend: some Eastern European countries show results that are closer to the pattern displayed by the West. In Poland, East Germany, Slovenia and Bulgaria, education is a strong factor in predicting democratic action, and trust and membership have close to equal effects based on their unstandardized coefficients. For the other countries in Eastern Europe (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Croatia, Bosnia, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia), the most striking characteristic is the weak and often insignificant coefficient for trust. From this data we can conclude that the effect of trust on democratic action appears to be the key factor in differentiating between the two patterns.

When the model is repeated in the 2000 wave it gives further corroborating evidence to this trend (see Table 2). In 2000, we see an expansion in the number of Eastern European countries for which trust is an important factor in predicting democratic action. Now Bulgaria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, and Slovakia all follow the Western trend, while Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Poland, Latvia, Croatia and Bosnia retain the Eastern European pattern of low or even negative coefficients for education and trust and strong coefficients for membership.

The model shows a rise in the regression coefficient of trust for certain democratizing states between waves. Based on this trend, the strength of the trust coefficient appears to be the defining difference between the two patterns. Interestingly, not only does the ability of trust to predict democratic action increase in certain states but the absolute levels of trust also increase. We see that those states with an increase in the coefficient for trust overlap to a large degree with those states experiencing an increase in absolute levels of trust between waves. Unfortunately, not all the 1995 Eastern European states appear in the 2000 wave, and the 2000 wave includes states not previously appearing in the 1995 wave; for this reason, the analysis cannot examine changes for all of the states the model was run in. However, for the states that are repeated between waves there emerges a clear trend. All of the states that follow a western pattern in 2000 have experienced a rise in absolute trust levels, while most of the states that continue to follow the Eastern European pattern do not. There are several cases that do not fit the trend (such as Macedonia, Montenegro and Belarus); however, the predominant number do and a trend is visible.

TRUST IN THE DATA

In order to ascertain that trust precedes democratic action, absolute levels of democratic action are measured using a simple summation variable. On average, countries in the West have a mean score one point higher than countries in the East in both 1995 and 2000. Also, by 2000 there has only been a very limited increase in absolute levels of democratic action in some countries in Eastern Europe. Most countries have not seen an increase in democratic action levels. So while trust increased and the relationship between trust and democratic action strengthened, there was not a concurrent increase in levels of democratic action.

Figure 1 is a graphie depiction of the change in the relationship between trust and the factor scores for democratic action from 1995 to 2000 by country (again including only the countries that were included in both waves). It plots the difference between mean levels of democratic action for "trusters" and "nontrusters" by country from 1995 to 2000. For example, in 1995 "trusters" in Slovenia had a mean level of democratic action 0.4 points higher than "nontrusters." This difference went down slightly in 2000. Overall, the graph shows that the relationship between trust and democratic action strengthened or stayed the same in Slovenia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Russia and Montenegro. This data shows that other than Poland,20 all the countries that followed the western pattern in the regression model experienced a strengthening of the relationship between trust and democratic action from 1995 to 2000.

BUILDING A THEORY OF TRUST GENERATION

The findings show that social capital is positively related to an individual's democratic action and the levels of social capital are higher for democratic nations. At the individual level, in 1995 and 2000, both of the social capital variables are positively related to democratic action. Those individuals who responded as "trusters" or as members of voluntary organizations were more likely to score higher on the democratic action index. This tells us that social capital and democratic action are related, but it does not tell us the nature of that relationship nor its causal direction.

The data also confirms that levels of social capital are higher in the democratic West. Once the analysis is broken down by region we see that the consolidated democracies of the West have higher levels of trust, membership in voluntary organizations and democratic action. Evidence of higher levels of social capital in the consolidated democracies supports the basic premise of Putnam's thesis, which argues that social capital is a primary causal factor in democratic functioning.

These findings confirm our hypothesis that there is system interference in social capital's effects on democratic action. Analysis at the cross-national level further reveals an insightful trend: several countries of Eastern Europe have moved away from the Eastern European pattern and towards the pattern of the West from 1995 to 2000. For these countries the coefficients of trust and education gained in strength between waves. However, as mentioned earlier, it is crucial to note that not only did the coefficients increase but so did the absolute levels of trust, and the relationship between trust and democratic action, while there was no simultaneous increase in levels of democratic action.

The question of social capital's ability to predict democratic action raises the important issue of causal direction. While social capital may be able to predict democratic action it does not mean social capital causes it. There are two questions to ask here: first, is there any evidence which shows that increases in the levels of trust preceded increases in levels of democratic action; and second, did those post-communist countries that developed a western pattern in their regression model do so before or after the bulk of their reforms? In other words, did the change in trust precede democratization or follow it?

Regarding the first question, it is difficult to address this issue in a comprehensive manner since the data is not longitudinal. But based on data from the two waves, the findings do show that while absolute levels of trust increased and the relationship between trust and democratic action strengthened, absolute levels of democratic action stayed relatively the same for most countries. Since no rise in democratic action is observed, the data seems to be showing that an increase in trust has preceded an increase in democratic action. Presumably, in the next wave after 2000 we would begin to see increases in democratic action. Thus the results would be more conclusive if there were more waves of the survey from which to track the changes in trust and democratic action against one another. Alternatively, one possibility is that democratic action levels already reached some acceptable level in a wave previous to 1995 and we are now seeing the resulting rise in trust. These possibilities highlight the fact that causality is extremely difficult to prove without extensive longitudinal data; barring that, it is only possible to speculate on causation.

While it is certainly likely that social capital and democratic action arise simultaneously, fostering and reinforcing one another, this study extrapolates from the data available and posits that some critical level of social capital may be necessary for a successful democratization to begin; in other words, some level of trust must precede a successful transition and only once a successful transition has been initiated, can trust and democratic action begin to strengthen each other. This conclusion is made based on the confluence of data showing that a) trust increases in importance as a predictor of democratic action in successful transitions; b) absolute levels of trust are increasing in successful transitions; and c) there is no evidence that a rise in democratic action levels precedes a rise in trust levels or occurs simultaneously, while there is some, albeit limited, evidence that increases in trust precede increases in democratic action-since trust levels rose in certain Eastern European countries while their democratic action levels did not.

The second indicator of causality mentioned earlier-i.e., whether those post-communist countries that developed a western pattern in their regression model did so before or after the bulk of their reforms-is also only a matter for speculation. In 1995, the East European states were largely still battling economic and political woes. Poland, for example, was still having problems working out the division of powers between the president and parliament. Then president, Lech Walcsa, was committed to putting more and more power in his own hands at the expense of the parliament. Walcsa's attempts to undermine the system eventually led to his downfall in 1995.2' Slovenia, also part of Richard Rose's "first flight," had made good progress on its transition by 1995, but was still dealing with outstanding issues of corruption and parliamentary deadlock due to the formation of non-viable coalitions. Political parties in Slovenia had trouble making the switch from oligarchic practices of favouritism and nepotism towards openness and transparency, as a result, irregularities in parties' financial affairs abounded. After dealing with many of these problems, Freedom House labelled Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Estonia as "Free" in 1997.22

Countries in the second flight, such as Slovakia and Bulgaria, were generally recognized as making significant headway in their democratization only in the late years of the 1990s and early 2000s. Throughout the 1990s, Slovakia was criticized for its lack of democracy, nationalistic policies and corrupt privatization. Much of this can be attributed to one man, Vladimir Meciar, who held power in Slovakia as Prime Minister from 1993 to 1999. Only when Meoiar was arrested in 2000 did Slovakia begin to turn around its democratization and begin its path to the EU.23 Bulgaria, as another example, struggled to establish democracy throughout the 1990s. Economic decline, inflation, lawlessness, corruption and institutionalized ethnic discrimination abounded until the end of the decade.24

It appears that in each of these cases, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and Bulgaria, the rise in absolute levels of trust, and the rise in the importance of trust in explaining democratic action, preceded the point in time when each countries' democratization process stabilized and the transition was deemed successful. Based on these few case studies, it does appear that there is a trend supporting the view that trust, as a vital component of social capital, preceded the successful democratizations. The countries that are experiencing difficulties with getting their transitions off the ground are those that have not yet had an increase in their levels of trust. Countries such as Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova had non-existent democracies in 2000. Ukraine seems to have recently reached a turning point in 2004 with its presidential elections; however, Belarus' President, Alyaksandar Lukashenka, consistently and openly derides democracy as the path for his country.

It could be argued that those countries that are experiencing slower, more punctuated, transitions do not experience an increase in trust because an effective democracy, rather than a bottom-up trust reciprocity mechanism, is what creates trust.25 This view argues for a reversal of the causal direction; instead of trust causing democracy, effective democracy creates trust, which subsequently supports democracy. While this is certainly true (that effective democracy breeds trust and the two reinforce each other) this argument cleanly sidesteps the question of what causes the rise of an effective democracy in the first place. Effective democracy does not rise out of a vacuum, and certainly any factor that is in a proposed reciprocal relationship with democratic institutions (such as trust) is also capable of causing a rise in democratic institutions.

THE NATURE OF TRUST IN EASTERN EUROPE

From the analysis of the models presented in the findings, we concluded that social capital is indeed a relevant factor in predicting democratic action. The model confirms that social capital is not knocked out of the equation when education enters, and shows that there is a social capital effect that is not merely an effect of education. However, in Eastern Europe the components of social capital seem to have a varying degree of importance. Whereas in the West both trust and membership are important for predicting democratic action, in Eastern Europe, trust has less of an effect on predicting democratic action than membership. This leads us to question how the nature of trust in Eastern Europe differs from that in the West.

In Eastern Europe the model varied cross-nationally in a predictable trend: the countries that adopted a Western-style pattern were overwhelmingly those that had successful transitions culminating with their accession to the European Union in 2004. What is truly significant about this trend is that all the countries that follow the western pattern in their relationship between social capital, education and democratization are those that were considered to be in the leading ranks of reformers in the late 1990s.

In 1999, Richard Rose identified ten Eastern European countries as being the leaders in reform. The "first flight" was composed of Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Estonia, while the "second flight" consisted of Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia.26 These two "flights," as Rose termed them, correspond to the Eastern European countries that follow the Western pattern. We get a glimpse of the "first flight" in those countries following that pattern in the 1995 wave and the "second flight" leaders correspond closely with those in the 2000 wave. It appears that from 1995 to 2000, almost all the countries that would eventually accede to the European Union in 2004 developed certain characteristics already held by consolidated democracies.

Steven Fish further supports this categorization of democratizing states. He considers countries such as Slovenia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to be "progressive reformers." The second category encompasses so-called democratic "backsliders." This category refers to states that have made progress but are continuously running into difficulties that have the potential to threaten the transition process. This includes states such as Croatia and Romania, which have made fitful progress in their transitions. The third category refers to stalled transitions where the democratization process never fully took off. States that fall under this category include Serbia, Belarus and Azerbaijan.27

These results raise the question of why trust is not initially a strong indicator of democratic action in Eastern Europe. One might conclude that the trust in Eastern Europe is of a different nature or that the variable is measuring something other than generalized trust. However, upon a closer examination of the nature of trust it is found to be similar to the trust being measured in the West. In both 1995 and 2000 the trust variable in Eastern Europe correlates with what we would expect if it was measuring generalized trust as opposed to socially exclusive trust.28 Those individuals who respond "most people can be trusted" are more tolerant of minorities,29 have a higher level of confidence in government30 than "non-trusters," and have a higher level of democratic values.31 This refutes the argument that trust in Eastern Europe is some type of xenophobic, negative trust and for that reason is not an important predictor of democratic action. In fact, while levels of democratic values were relatively close for "trusters" and "non-trusters" in Eastern Europe in 1995, in 2000 "trusters" display an important increase in democratic values.

Although the nature of trust in Eastern Europe proves to be the same as that in the West, the question remains why trust is not as important of a factor in explaining democratic action. The answer to this question can perhaps be found by looking at the history of Eastern Europe and its people's mindsets and attitudes prior to democratization.

One of the most profound legacies of communism in Eastern Europe was the effect years of repression had on the attitudes and mindsets of the population. The state, and politics in general, was an object of fear for most ordinary citizens. State repression for acts of suspected dissension left citizens perpetually fearful of informers and fatigued by paranoia. In such a climate, trust was limited to one's close circle of family and possibly a few friends. The concept of generalized trust was dangerous for the citizen, as one could never know who was an informer or true believer in the Party and who was just feigning allegiance to the Party to get by. In many ways, much of life under communism was a theater of sorts: intimidated citizens competed to see who was a better comrade and who would have a bigger red star in their window for Mayday. Consequently, generalized trust was almost non-existent under communism and was a very foreign concept to Eastern Europeans. This put the post-communist states in a difficult position once democratization was underway and it became necessary for governments to engage citizens in the transition process. Distrustful citizens shied away from participation, mobilization and government.

The data findings on Eastern Europe show us that generalized trust of the kind in the West exists, however it exists at much smaller levels. Extrapolating from these findings, it is possible to theorize that if general societal trust is too diffuse, then it cannot be beneficial in a transition. Perhaps only when absolute levels of trust increase and become sufficiently widespread (at some critical mass) can an effect on democratization become perceptible? As indicated above, many social capital theorists argue that social capital depends on culture and that it changes through a long, slow and painful process.32 Since increases in trust appear to precede increases in democratic action, a non-cultural mechanism of change appears to exist, one that is based on the concept of trust reciprocity.

Trust reciprocity is the idea that trust depends on an individual's past experiences, information and communication. Trust is created through concrete experiences with other people, the more trusting individuals a person encounters, the more likely they are to reciprocate with trust themselves. So after reaching a certain critical level of trusting people, one would expect to see these "trusters" begin to have an effect on other citizens and levels of trust would begin to rise as others began to reciprocate. The model in Eastern Europe seems to support this theory since the states for which trust became an important predictor of democratic action in 2000 were those that experienced an absolute rise in levels of trust. So, plausibly, it is not that the nature of trust changed and caused it to become an important factor but rather that the absolute numbers of people who self-identify as "trusters" changed, and as trust became more widespread this caused a change in the effect of trust on democratic action.

The implications of this research for social capital theory suggest that trust is an integral component for democratization and perhaps more important than membership in voluntary organizations. This conclusion is reached based on the evidence which shows that while membership may have a strong effect across all countries, it is only in the successful transitions that trust has a strong effect. Almost all the Eastern European states had similar levels of membership in voluntary organizations, but only those progressive reformers that would eventually accede to the EU had an increase in the level of trust and the strength of the trust coefficient.

There are two possible implications of this conclusion. Either social capital does not function when either component (trust or membership in voluntary organizations) is missing, or trust is a more important component than membership when it comes to influencing democratic action. These two possibilities will be considered separately.

If we assume that social capital requires the presence of both components (trust and membership) to function, the resulting implication is that trustreciprocity does not fully function in the absence of voluntary organizations. This idea is supported by the research of Brehm and Rahn,33 who concluded that trust and civic associationalism had to coexist in a symmetrical relationship to function and that membership was the stronger factor. This paper lends credence to Brehm and Rahn's conclusion since the results of this paper's regression models show that membership was a strong variable in Eastern Europe before trust was. But it is very difficult to draw conclusions on causality with this type of data. Additionally, the question of what environment facilitates trustreciprocity is secondary to the question of whether trust-reciprocity is evidenced in the data on individual trust, and clearly Brehm and Rahn have found evidence of this reciprocity.

Putnam perfunctorily describes trust building as a rational actor game, using the form of reciprocity found in a "tit-for-tat" Prisoners Dilemma situation, but he avoids an in-depth consideration of what the implications of such a mechanism might be.34 But if a simplistic "tit-for-tat," person-by-person, mechanism were at work, we would expect a very slow increase in levels of general social trust. The "trusters" of society would find it extremely slow progress to convert one person at a time from a "non-truster" into a "truster." As we know from tit-for-tat experiments, it often takes many reiterations of the experiment to establish trust and cooperation in a dyad. Consequently, the assumption that trust-building happens solely through a rational actor framework is an extremely labour intensive and difficult proposition. Societal trust would be created and would increase much slower than the actual rise in trust the data shows during the five year period from 1995-2000.

Perhaps an alternative to the exclusively rational actor framework of trustbuilding that Putnam describes is at work here. Reciprocity may take the form of tit-for-tat early on in a society's attempts at building trust, but to bring about a substantial increase in the number of "trusters" there must be another process at work. A more likely mechanism is that trust-building starts off with simple titfor-tat dynamic but at some, as yet undetermined, point when a critical mass of "trusters" is reached, it is no longer necessary for people to trust only those with whom they have had specific past experiences. Instead, people start to trust based on an expectation that there are now "enough" trustworthy people out there to make it worth the risk to trust strangers. The critical mass is the point where people stop using simple rational choice and start to cultivate general social trust and expect their trust to be returned by strangers. Trust moves from an intensely personal "thick" form to a more loose "thin" form with the creation of the thin social trust spurred by and rising out of the thick. This trustreciprocity mechanism explains how the trust in family and friends that existed in Eastern Europe could eventually evolve into a general social trust. This situation is especially plausible for Eastern Europe as there is no reliable topdown mechanism since government institutions are weak.

Trust and membership represent two different sides of the social capital theory: the first is attitude and the latter is activity. If trust is the more important of the two components, it is possible that without a positive attitude of generalized trust accompanying civic associationalism, the activity becomes ineffective in terms of the expectations social capital theory has. If trust reciprocity is the mechanism of building social capital, then a civic association with no trusting members will not build social capital until some critical mass of "trusters" arrives and instigates the mechanism of change. To draw on Putnam's example, a bowling league full of edgy individuals who consistently cheat on the scorecard because everyone else cheats will not instil members with social capital. The league requires a critical mass of individuals who will stop cheating in order for other cheaters to start reciprocating the trust. Without that attitude of trust, the civic association only breeds more mistrust, which is hardly useful in promoting democratic functioning.

CONCLUSION

The findings of this study point to two important contributions that should be further points of research for democratization studies. First, the study has uncovered an interesting relationship between trust and civic participation in voluntary organizations and how these two interact with democratic action. Second, the study points to the fact that the nature of general trust in Eastern Europe appears to be similar to the nature of general trust in Western Europeand in both cases it is an important factor influencing democratic action.

Through extrapolation of the data analysis, this study finds support for the existence of a "bottom-up," "trust-reciprocity" mechanism which generates social capital. The significance of this for the literature is that without evidence of some type of change mechanism, the concept of social capital is useless for examining and explaining democratization. If we cannot explain how such a factor evolves and changes, then we cannot fully explain how it acts as a force upon other phenomena and we cannot explain how it might be fully utilized as a tool to improve democratization. By attempting to identify how social capital is generated, we can begin to examine at a more in-depth level how social capital influences democratization in Eastern Europe.

Despite the "slipperiness" of the social capital concept, this research has discovered clear indicators that there is a meaningful dynamic between social capital and democratic action. This is by no means conclusive proof. However, to get such clear findings from a dataset as large and varied as the World Values Survey constitutes a significant achievement, and for this reason we cannot disregard the results.

[Author Affiliation]

ANA LUKATELA is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include democratization, UN transitional administrations in the Balkans and gender equality. Ms. Lukatela has spent the last year overseas with the UN in Kosovo, gaining firsthand experience in institution and state-building. Her past publications include work on conflict resolution in Croatia and her current dissertation research focuses on the pilot project of UN reform in Albania and its effects on gender equality.