All for All: Equality and Social Trust
All for All: Equality and Social Trust
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一切为了所有人：平等和社会信任
DOI：
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发表时间：
2005
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
E. Uslaner
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Bo Rothstein;E. Uslaner
社会信任的重要性在社会科学中已被广泛接受。对于各国之间社会信任的巨大差异，人们提出了多种解释。其中，参加志愿协会受到的关注最多。然而，很少有证据表明参与可以带来信任。在本文中，我们将研究一个变量，它在关于广义信任的来源的讨论中没有得到我们认为应该得到的关注，即平等。我们从两个方面来理解平等：一个是经济平等，另一个是机会平等。在社会资本文献中，这两个平等维度的遗漏是特殊的，原因有几个。一个是，很明显，在社会信任方面得分最高的国家在经济平等方面也排名最高，即北欧国家，荷兰和加拿大。其次，这些国家在创造机会平等方面付出了大量努力，尤其是在公共教育，医疗保健，劳动力市场机会和（最近）性别平等方面的政策。在关于社会信任的政策辩论中，通过减少不平等来增加社会信任的论点在很大程度上被忽视了。社会资本研究在很大程度上被一些政府和政策组织用来向人们传达一个信息，即他们社会中的坏事是由志愿服务太少造成的。从我们的研究得出的政策含义是，困扰许多国家的低水平的信任和社会资本是由政府在减少不平等方面的行动太少造成的。然而，许多社会信任和社会资本水平较低的国家可能会陷入所谓的社会陷阱。这种情况的逻辑如下。社会信任不会因为大规模的社会不平等而增加，但恰恰因为真正缺乏信任，就无法制定能够纠正这种情况的公共政策。这种信任的缺乏既关系到“其他人”，也关系到执行普遍政策所需的政府机构。
The importance of social trust has become widely accepted in the social sciences. A number of explanations have been put forward for the stark variation in social trust among countries. Among these, participation in voluntary associations received most attention. Yet, there is scant evidence that participation can lead to trust. In this paper, we shall examine a variable that has not gotten the attention we think it deserves in the discussion about the sources of generalized trust, namely equality. We conceptualize equality in two dimensions: One is economic equality and the other is equality of opportunity. The omission of both these dimensions of equality in the social capital literature is peculiar for several reasons. One is that it is obvious that the countries that score highest on social trust also rank highest on economic equality, namely the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and Canada. Secondly, these are countries have put a lot of effort in creating equality of opportunity, not least in regard to their policies for public education, health care, labor market opportunities and (more recently) gender equality. The argument for increasing social trust by reducing inequality has largely been ignored in the policy debates about social trust. Social capital research has to a large extent been used by several governments and policy organizations to send a message to people that the bad things in their society is caused by too little volunteering. The policy implications that follows from our research is that the low levels of trust and social capital that plague many countries are caused by too little government action to reduce inequality. However, many countries with low levels of social trust and social capital may be stuck in what is known as a social trap. The logic of such a situation is the following. Social trust will not increase because massive social inequality prevails, but the public policies that could remedy this situation can not be established precisely because there is a genuine lack of trust. This lack of trust concerns both "other people" and the government institutions that are needed to implement universal policies.