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Interpersonal Trust and the Magnitude of Protest

A Micro and Macro Level Approach

University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Thomas R. Rochon

University of St. Thomas

The authors demonstrate that interpersonal trust is an important factor in motivating protest participation and raising the intensity of protest. They suggest that high levels of trust make individuals likely to anticipate low expected costs of participation while leading to optimistic estimates of the potential benefits of protest. Using 1990 World Values Survey data for 33 countries, a series of multinomial logistic regressions confirms that interpersonal trust plays an important role in determining both militant and nonmilitant forms of protest. These findings hold at the individual level in both free and nonfree societies. The authors also find some evidence that the same relationships hold at the national level. In addition, trust and postmaterialist values are shown to have complementary roles in fostering protest, whereas education is largely insignificant. Interpersonal trust, therefore, serves as both a personal and a social capital resource that fosters collective action in the form of protest.

Key Words: protest • trust • social capital • postmaterialism • World Values Survey

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