Big government does not undermine social capital and may foster it

Evidence

Among the U.S. states, however, differences in social capital appear essentially uncorrelated with various measures of welfare spending or government size. Citizens in free-spending states are no more engaged than citizens in frugal ones. Cross-national comparison can also shed light on this question. Among the advanced Western democracies, social trust and group membership are, if anything, positively correlated with the size of government; social capital appears to be highest of all in the big-spending welfare states of Scandinavia. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 972

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s standing interest in how institutional structures shape social behavior — parallels the extralegal-contracting and social-capital work. — connects to: Government policy can deliberately foster social-capital formation. — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining…, 79; Non-domination is less skeptical of government but socially more radical than non-interference — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 1253; Governments respond to social inequality by hiring more public servants rather than redistributing income.
• QUESTION: The direction of causality is unexamined here — is it welfare-state spending that builds trust, or trusting societies that elect generous welfare states?