Political participation (PolPartic) – Social Capital should lead should to
greater political participation;
Agency – Social Capital should result in greater Agency;
Support for Democracy (Democracy) – Social Capital should be associated
with greater support for democracy;
Political trust (PolTrust) – Social Capital should lead to greater political
trust.
Results
Table 1: Correlations between measures9
Firstly, what are the associations between Social Capital and the other measures of sociopolitical participation?
Variable
Correlated variables
Age (1.00); Social Capital (0.206); Freedoms
(0.097); Political participation (0.091); Support
for Democracy (0.046); Political trust (0.18)
Rural
Social capital (0.79); Freedoms (0.071); Political
participation (0.064); Support for democracy
(0.70); Political trust (0.068)
Age
Freedoms 90.167); Political participation
(0.044); Agency (0.191); Support for
Democracy (0.239); Political trust (0.275)
Social Capital
Close to political party 90.281); Tertiary
Access to information education (0.38)
Agency (0.036); Support for democracy 90.147);
Political trust (0.258)
Freedoms
Agency (0.70); Support for Democracy (0.46);
Political participation Close to political party (0.55)
Support for democracy (0.45); Political trust
(0.97)
Agency
Political trust (1.00); Close to political party
Support for
(1.00); Employed (0.999)
Democracy
Close to political party (1.00); Employed (0.999)
Political trust
Close to political
Employed (0.999)
party
Tertiary education (0.83)
Employed
As can be seen in Table 1, Social capital is significantly correlated with the following:
Freedoms; Political participation; Agency; Support for democracy; and Political Trust.
Urban residence is negatively correlated. As was indicated above (van Deth. 2001), trust and
political participation are weakly related, which was replicated here with a weak (nonsignificant) relationship between political trust and political participation. It is also important
to note that Social Capital was strongly associated with political participation, but on closer
inspection this was with attending campaign meetings or working for a candidate rather than
voting in the last election.10 This is interesting because the general finding has been that
9
Pearson’s r.
Voting in last election (0.006; ns); Attending a campaign rally or meeting (0.097; p=0.01); Working for a
candidate (0.108; p=0.001).
10
10