Social capital and democracy in a new democracy

Taiwan made the transition from political authoritarianism to democracy in the late 1980s. Data from representative samples of the Taiwan population in 1992 and 1997 show how, in the early phase of democratization, citizens varied in the extent of their democratic political behavior and attitudes. I attempt to explain these variations on the basis of variables drawn from social capital theory (participation in voluntary organizations and trust), controlling for the individual's position in the social structure (sex, age, ethnicity, marital status, socioeconomic status, and social class). The findings of the multivariate analysis support only one of the social capital hypotheses: The more organizations one participates in, the more one engages in various forms of democratic political behavior. However, organizational participation has no effect on democratic political attitudes. There is no positive reciprocal relationship between the two key social capital variables of organizational participation and trust. Trust, instead of having a positive effect, either has no net effect (on some forms of democratic political behavior) or a significant negative effect (on democratic political attitudes and petitioning a government agency). The political context of Taiwan may explain why people who distrusted Taiwan's political system were more democratic and more tolerant in their attitudes than those who had more political trust. My purpose in this article is to use social capital theory to explain several aspects of democratic political behavior and attitudes during the early years of democratization in Taiwan. As the causal model in Figure I indicates, this involves estimating the extent to which democratic political behavior and attitudes can be explained by the social capital variables of participation in voluntary organizations and trust, controlling for other, socio-demographic, socioeconomic status, and social class variables that also influence political behavior and attitudes. In other words, how much did social capital matter in Taiwan's early democratization?.