It is often held that the establishment of electoral democracy is key to the creation of political legitimacy. This article challenges this idea and presents an alternative. A large number of empirical studies reveals that ...

The last years have seen a growth in research on “good governance” and the quality of government institutions. This development has been propelled by empirical findings that such institutions might hold the key to ...

Previous research concludes that immigrants and minority members, as well as all residents of more diverse contexts, display less generalized trust. Such findings suggest a harsh trade-off between diversity on the one hand ...

The purpose of this article is to present a new theory on the generation of social capital. In the discussion about the sources of social capital it has been stressed that generalized trust is built up by the citizens ...

Four interrelated arguments are presented to form a theory about the relation between the logic of markets, social efficiency and the quality of government. The first is that competitive markets with a certain set of ...