Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T14:12:21.080Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ethnicity and Trust: Evidence from Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2005

DONNA BAHRY ,
MIKHAIL KOSOLAPOV ,
POLINA KOZYREVA  and
RICK K. WILSON
DONNA BAHRY
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
MIKHAIL KOSOLAPOV
Affiliation:
Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences
POLINA KOZYREVA
Affiliation:
Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences
RICK K. WILSON
Affiliation:
Rice University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The willingness to trust strangers has been associated with a variety of public benefits, from greater civic-mindedness and more honest government to higher rates of economic growth, and more. But a growing body of research finds that such generalized trust is far more common in ethnically homogeneous than in more diverse societies. Ethnic difference is believed to breed more particularistic, ingroup ties, thus undermining both generalized and cross-ethnic trust. We argue that this image is too narrow, and we propose a broader model to identify the factors that give rise to cross-ethnic trust. Using data from two minority regions of Russia, we find considerable support for the model. We also find that high ingroup or particularistic trust is no barrier to faith in another ethnic group.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 99 , Issue 4 , November 2005 , pp. 521 - 532
Copyright
© 2005 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alberto Alesina Reza Baqir, and William Easterly. 1999. “Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (November): 1243– 84.Google Scholar
Alberto Alesina, and Eliana La Ferrara. 2000. “Participation in Heterogeneous Communities.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 115 (August): 847– 904.Google Scholar
Alberto Alesina, and Eliana La Ferrara. 2002. “Who Trusts Others?” Journal of Public Economics 85 (August): 207– 34.Google Scholar
Donna Bahry. 2002. “Ethnicity and Inequality in Postcommunist Transition: Evidence from Russia's Republics.” Europe-Asia Studies 54 (July): 673– 99.Google Scholar
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, and Iuliana Alekseevna Vinokurova. 1996. “Nationalism, Interethnic Relations and Federalism: The Case of the Sakha Republic.” Europe-Asia Studies 48 (January): 101– 20.Google Scholar
Bernard Barber. 1983. The Logic and Limits of Trust. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Samuel Bowles, and Herbert Gintis. 2004. “Persistent Parochialism: Trust and Exclusion in Ethnic Networks.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 55: 1– 23.Google Scholar
Paul Collier. 2001. “Implications of Ethnic Diversity.” Economic Policy 32 (April): 129– 66.Google Scholar
Dora Costa, and Matthew Kahn. 2003. “Civic Engagement and Community Heterogeneity: An Economist's Perspective.” Perspectives on Politics 1 (March): 103– 11.Google Scholar
Kathleen Dowley, and Brian Silver. 2002. “Social Capital, Ethnicity and Support for Democracy in the Post-Communist States.” Europe-Asia Studies 54 (June): 505– 28.Google Scholar
William Easterly. 2001. “Can Institutions Resolve Ethnic Conflict?” Economic Development and Cultural Change 49 (July): 687– 706.Google Scholar
William Easterly, and Ross Levine. 1997. “Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (November): 1203– 50.Google Scholar
Catherine C. Eckel, and Rick K. Wilson. 2004. “Initiating Trust: The Conditional Effects of Sex and Race among Strangers.” Working Paper, Political Science, Rice University, Houston, TX.Google Scholar
James Fearon. 2003. “Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country.” Journal of Economic Growth, 8: 195– 222.Google Scholar
James Fearon, and David Laitin. 1997. “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 90 (December): 715– 35.Google Scholar
Chaim Fershtman, and Uri Gneezy. 2001. “Discrimination in a Segmented Society: An Experimental Approach.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 116 (February): 351– 77.Google Scholar
Susan T. Fiske. 2000. “Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination at the Seam Between the Centuries: Evolution, Culture, Mind and Brain.” European Journal of Social Psychology 30 (May/June): 299– 322.Google Scholar
Susan T. Fiske. 2002. “What We Know Now About Bias and Intergroup Conflict, the Problem of the Century.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 11 (August): 123– 28.Google Scholar
Francis Fukuyama. 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: The Free Press.
Francis Fukuyama. 1999. “Social Capital and Civil Society.” IMF Conference on Second Generation Reforms, Washington DC (November). Available at http:// www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/seminar/1999/reforms/fukuyama.htm#I (January 16, 2005).Google Scholar
Jose Garcia–Montalvo, and Marta Reynal–Querol. 2002. “Why Ethnic Fractionalization? Polarization, Ethnic Conflict and Growth.” Available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? abstract_id=394926 (January 25, 2005).Google Scholar
James Gibson. 2001. “Social Networks, Civil Society and the Prospects for Consolidating Russia's Democratic Transition.” American Journal of Political Science 45 (January): 51– 69.Google Scholar
James Gibson. 2004. “Does Truth Lead to Reconciliation? Testing the Causal Assumptions of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Process.” American Journal of Political Science 48 (April): 201– 17.Google Scholar
Edward Glaeser, David Laibson, Jose Scheinkman, and Christine Soutter. 2000. “Measuring Trust.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 115 (August): 811– 46.Google Scholar
Dmitry Gorenburg. 2003. Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mark Granovetter. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Sociological Review 78 (May): 1360– 80.Google Scholar
Russell Hardin. 1995. One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mary Herring, Thomas Jankowski, and Ronald Brown. 1999. “Pro-Black Doesn't Mean Anti-White: The Structure of African-American Group Identity.” The Journal of Politics 61 (May): 363– 86.Google Scholar
Debra Javeline. 1999. “Response Effects in Polite Cultures.” Public Opinion Quarterly 63 (spring): 1– 28.Google Scholar
Leslie Kish. 1965. Survey Sampling. New York: John Wiley.
Stephen Knack, and Philip Keefer. 1997. “Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (November): 1251– 88.Google Scholar
Janet Tai Landa. 1995. Trust, Ethnicity, and Identity: Beyond the New Institutional Economics of Ethnic Trading Networks, Contract Law, and Gift-Exchange. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Rafael LaPorta, Florencio Lopez de Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny. 1997. “Trust in Large Organizations.” American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 87 (May): 333– 38.Google Scholar
Margaret Levi. 1996. “Social and Unsocial Capital: A Review Essay of Robert Putnam's ‘Making Democracy Work’.” Politics and Society 24 (March): 48– 55.Google Scholar
J. Eric Oliver, and Janelle Wong. 2003. “Intergroup Prejudice in Multiethnic Settings.” American Journal of Political Science 47 (October): 567– 82.Google Scholar
Thomas Pettigrew. 1998. “Intergroup Contact Theory.” Annual Review of Psychology 49: 65– 85.Google Scholar
Thomas Pettigrew, and Linda Tropp. 2000. “Does Intergroup Contact Reduce Prejudice? Recent Meta-Analytic Findings.” In Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination, ed., Stuart Oskamp. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 93– 114.
Barry Posen. 1993. “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict.” Survival 35 (spring): 27– 47.Google Scholar
Daniel Powers, and Christopher Ellison. 1995. “Interracial Contact and Black Racial Attitudes: The Contact Hypothesis and Selectivity Bias.” Social Forces 74 (September): 206– 26.Google Scholar
Robert Putnam (with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Nanetti). 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Robert Putnam. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Renewal of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Robert Robinson, and Elton Jackson. 2001. “Is Trust in Others Declining in America? An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis.” Social Science Research 30 (March): 117– 45.Google Scholar
Richard Rose. 1995. “Russia as an Hour-Glass Society: A Constitution Without Citizens.” East European Constitutional Review 4 (summer): 34– 42.Google Scholar
Tom W. Smith. 1997. “Factors Relating to Misanthropy in Contemporary American Society.” Social Science Research 26 (June): 170– 96.Google Scholar
Piotr Sztompka. 1999. Trust: A Sociological Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eric Uslaner. 2002. The Moral Foundations of Trust. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Eric Uslaner, and Richard Conley. 2003. “Civic Engagement and Particularized Trust: The Ties that Bind People to their Ethnic Communities.” American Politics Research 31 (4): 331– 60.Google Scholar
Barry R. Weingast. 1998. “Constructing Trust: The Political and Economic Roots of Ethnic and Regional Conflict.” In Institutions and Social Order, ed. Karol Soltan, Eric M. Uslaner, and Virginia, Haufler. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 163– 200.
Susan Welch, Lee Sigelman, Timothy Bledsoe, and Michael Combs. 2001. Race and Place: Race Relations in an American City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paul Zak, and Stephen Knack. 2001. “Trust and Growth.” The Economic Journal 111 (April): 295– 321.Google Scholar