Ethnic Diversity, Social Trust and the Moderating Role of Subnational Integration Policy
| Author | Birte Gundelach,Anita Manatschal |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321716644613 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321716644613
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(2) 413 –431
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321716644613
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Ethnic Diversity, Social Trust
and the Moderating Role of
Subnational Integration Policy
Birte Gundelach1 and Anita Manatschal2
Abstract
Increasing ethnic diversity and whether or not it impacts on social trust are highly debated topics.
Numerous studies report a negative relationship between diversity and trust, particularly in the
United States. A growing body of follow-up studies has examined the extent to which these
findings can be transferred to Europe, but the results remain inconclusive. Moving beyond the
discussion of the mere existence or absence of diversity effects on trust, this study is concerned
with the moderation of this relationship. It addresses the neglected role of subnational integration
policies influencing the impact of diversity on trust. Empirical tests not only indicate that integration
policies moderate the relationship but also suggest that the influence of policies varies substantively
according to the specific policy aspect under consideration.
Keywords
generalised trust, ethnic diversity, integration policy
Accepted: 5 March 2016
Introduction
An expanding body of research focuses on the relationship between ethnically diverse
local contexts – such as neighbourhoods, municipalities and regions – and social trust. In
addition to a large number of studies in the North American context, there is a growing
number of analyses for several European countries – in particular, Great Britain and the
Netherlands, but also Germany, Denmark and Sweden (Dinesen and Sønderskov, 2015;
Gijsberts et al., 2012; Gundelach and Freitag, 2014; Koopmans and Schaeffer, 2015;
Rudolph and Popp, 2010; Stolle and Harell, 2013; Sturgis et al., 2011; Wallman Lundåsen
and Wollebæk, 2013).
1Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau, University of Zurich, Switzerland
2Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California – Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Corresponding author:
Birte Gundelach, Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau, University of Zurich, Küttigerstrasse 25, 5000 Aarau,
Switzerland.
Email: birte.gundelach@zda.uzh.ch
644613PSX0010.1177/0032321716644613Political StudiesGundelach et al.
research-article2016
Article
414 Political Studies 65 (2)
Studies for the European context show a great deal of heterogeneity with regard to
research findings (see van der Meer and Tolsma, 2014). Definite consensus has yet to be
found concerning the effects of ethnically diverse contexts on the development of social
trust. Although many of these studies detect a negative association between ethnically
diverse context and social trust (e.g. Dinesen and Sønderskov, 2012; Gundelach and
Traunmüller, 2014; Öberg et al., 2011), some authors describe the empirically found rela-
tionship as statistically significant, but substantively negligible (Laurence, 2011; Stolle
et al., 2013; Sturgis et al. 2011). Other scholars argue completely against the existence of
any meaningful relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust (Gijsberts et al.,
2012; Tolsma et al., 2009).
Moving beyond the discussion of the existence or absence of effects of diversity on
trust, this study is concerned with the moderation of the relationship between diversity
and trust. Whereas existing neighbourhood studies predominantly analyse the moderation
of the relationship by interethnic contact, social status or citizenship (Gundelach and
Freitag, 2014; Koopmans and Veit, 2014; Stolle and Harell, 2013; Tolsma et al., 2009),
we address a further theoretically important, but so far neglected moderator – the role of
integration policies (Bloemraad and Wright, 2014; Harell and Stolle, 2010; Hooghe,
2007; Wright, 2011). In addition to the study published by Kesler and Bloemraad (2010)
who investigated the moderating role of integration policies in an international compara-
tive perspective (see also Lupo, 2010), we aim to deepen the understanding of this mod-
eration by zooming in to the subnational level of analysis. Moreover, we conceptualise
integration policy in a more nuanced way than Kesler and Bloemraad (2010). Rather than
using a dichotomous coding of ‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ multicultural policies and taking
into consideration that specific components of integration policy may yield varying out-
comes, we distinguish different aspects of integration policy and use continuous scales of
integration policy in our analysis. More specifically, our conceptualisation is based on the
idea of immigrants’ rights and obligations in areas considered relevant for integration
(Koopmans et al., 2005, 2012; Niessen et al., 2007). Accordingly, integration policies are
captured in terms of the ease or difficulty of immigrants’ social access and considers five
areas: nationality (civic rights), political participation (political rights), cantonal employ-
ment (sociostructural rights), family reunification, and religious minority rights or cul-
tural obligations. In addition, we use a continuous classification for each policy aspect,
ranging from restrictive to liberal (civic, political, sociostructural rights and family reuni-
fication) or from assimilationist to multiculturalist (cultural rights and obligations)
(Manatschal, 2011).
Our focus on communities in Switzerland enables us to bring together two important
requirements for valid empirical evidence in the research on ethnic diversity and trust: the
consideration of experienced ethnic diversity in the local social context (Öberg et al.,
2011; Stolle et al., 2008; Tolsma et al., 2009) as well as the consideration of the signifi-
cant role of political institutions in shaping trusting attitudes (Freitag and Bühlmann,
2009). In other words, whereas international comparative analyses have been criticised
for being unable to capture the ethnically diverse character of daily social interactions, we
measure ethnic diversity at the level of Swiss communities which provide a central social
context for social interaction in Swiss day-to-day life. Subnational analyses often do not
allow for a meaningful consideration of policy contexts because they do not show signifi-
cant variation across the observed subnational units. This is, however, not a problem in
strongly federally organised Switzerland, where integration policies vary significantly
across cantons. A look at different cantonal approaches to naturalisation as one central
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