Social change and generalized anomie: Why economic development has reduced social trust in China

Trust, Social Capital and Economic Development∗†

Many argue that elements of a society’s norms, culture or social capital are central to understanding its development. However, these notions have been difficult to capture in economic models. Here we explore a possible role for ‘trustworthiness’ as corresponding to social capital. Individuals are trustworthy when they perform in accordance with promises, even if this does not maximize their pa...

Social Change and Anomie: A Cross-National Study

Social Trust and Economic Governance

The paper investigates the dynamic relationship between social trust and economic governance using a principal-agent model with stochastic returns. To mitigate the inherent moral hazard problem both intrinsic and extrinsic incentives are useful. The cooperative tendency of an agent measures his intrinsic discipline against shirking, the distribution of which characterizes social trust in societ...

ON THE SOCIAL COSTS OF MODERNIZATION: Social Disintregation, Atomie/Anomie and Social Development

he modernization project launched by the West two centuries ago, was based on three pillars: State-logic, Capital-logic and Ratio-logic; formulated in part by Montesquieu (France), Smith (Britain) and Kant (Germany). The logic of the State implied centralization of coercive power, tempered by democracy. The logic of Capital implied market forces for economic power, tempered by anti-monopoly cla...

social trust, women and climate change policies

in modern times, trust has become an issue crucial to human societies and it has basic role in confronting policies with social problems, particularly in the field of environmental risks. to counter environmental risks such as climate change requires knowledge that is gained through trust to its related informational institutions. these institutions cause the awareness of environmental issues a...