The neologism “mansplaining” captures an insidious dynamic in which men explain things to women that women already understand, assuming that, by virtue of being a woman, she lacks the man’s knowledge. Mansplaining has started to receive some attention in contemporary scholarship, conceptualizing the phenomenon and identifying its epistemic harm. My purpose is to consider mansplaining and its harms from the perspective of democratic theory. Setting the problem of mansplaining against the norms we expect of democracy—equality, inclusion, and recognition—I argue that mansplaining poses harms that are not only individual and epistemic but also collective and relational. I distinguish two types of mansplaining based on women’s expertise and experience to elaborate on its collective epistemic harms to decision making and its relational harm of political exclusion. Mansplaining poses further relational harms of inequality and misrecognition, undermining the equal social relations and social trust required for deliberation.

This paper draws on macroeconomics, the economics of institutions and the economics of trust to explain private savings at the national level for 33 OECD (mostly European) countries from 2002 to 2012. More specifically, it raises two questions: (i) is it the quality of institutions or trust in institutions that drives private savings? (ii) if trust matters, what is the appropriate institutional level at which it operates? To answer these questions, we add to the usual explanatory variables of private savings three measures of institutional quality and six measures of institutional trust, distributed between the following institutional levels, presented in assumed hierarchical order: political, legal, financial and social. We find that trust in political institutions is the most significant driver of private savings. This contributes to the literature underlining the importance of subjectivity in social and economic phenomena and suggests, for private bank savings in countries having highly regulated banking systems, the existence of a hierarchy of trust in which trust in the highest-ranking institutions (political – and to a lesser extent legal – institutions) acts as a substitute for trust in every lower-ranking institution (financial institutions and social trust).

Liberal political institutions have been an enormous boon for humanity. The free market aspect of liberalism has led to an explosion of innovation, ranging from new kinds of technology and novel forms of entertainment to advances in science and medicine. The emphasis on individual rights at the core of liberalism has increased our ability to explore new ways of living and to construct an identity of our own choosing. But liberal political institutions around the world are facing two crises: low fertility and declining social trust. In particular, liberalism’s focus on individual liberty rather than group cohesion can increase economic productivity by encouraging the free movement of people and capital, but this movement is associated with declines in social cohesion and fertility. In this essay, we highlight some challenges to the long-term evolutionary stability of liberalism. In other words, we raise the question: Can liberalism last?

Involvement in sports is considered a powerful way to generate social capital. However, the role of sport engagement in the development of social relationships of older adults has not received much attention. Remarkably, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the quality and diversity of social relations built through active sport participation and spectatorship. This paper attempts to assess the relationship between sport engagement and various measures of network social capital, including the extension and quality of social networks and the heterogeneity of personal relationships. Also, it proposes new and more informative measurements of an individual's quantity and quality of social ties. By analysing data from a survey in Spain (N = 600) and applying logistic regressions, the results show that sport participation and attendance at sporting events are closely related to different dimensions of network social capital. Concerning people who are not actively engaged in sports, more extensive social networks characterise those who frequently attend sporting events. In contrast, active sport participation is associated with the extensity and quality measures of social connectedness, the level of satisfaction with friends and the opportunity to enjoy close relationships. Therefore, this paper provides new evidence on how sport engagement may result in tighter and extensive networks for older adults and serve as support for emphasising sports, physical activity and leisure as strategies for maintaining and boosting older people's social and psychological health.

Wildlife reintroduction projects often face resistance from local residents who see potential conflicts with the species or lack trust or confidence in the agencies and professionals involved in reintroduction. Yet the linkages between trust, confidence, risk perceptions, attitudes towards the species and local support for its reintroduction are not well known. The Dual-Mode Model of Cooperation and Cognitive Hierarchy Model were theoretical frameworks used to shed light on these linkages by exploring the potential roles trust and confidence play as mediators between risk perceptions and attitudes towards, and support for, reintroduced elk in Tennessee (USA). A mail survey of 1005 residents living in the five-county area surrounding the North Cumberland Elk Restoration Zone assessed resident attitudes and risk perceptions towards the reintroduced elk, trust towards the managing wildlife agency and support for continued conservation efforts. A structural equation model revealed that trust and confidence play positive roles in mitigating risk perceptions and improving support for the reintroduction of elk. The findings confirm the roles public trust and confidence play in wildlife reintroductions and should help agencies work towards building local trust and confidence, minimizing risks, improving attitudes and increasing the chances for successful outcomes for the species and people.

This study examined mental health status among Hurricane Sandy survivors in the most severely damaged areas of New York and New Jersey in 2014, approximately 2 years after this disaster. We used the 2014 Associated Press NORC survey of 1009 Sandy survivors to measure the prevalence of probable mental illness and to analyze its association with selected socioeconomic characteristics of survivors, direct impact by Sandy, as well as social support and social trust. The study found major disparities in mental illness by race/ethnicity, age groups, and employment status. Higher Sandy impact levels were strongly associated with higher rates of mental illness and accounted for much of the disparity between blacks and Hispanics compared with whites in our study group. Social support was more strongly associated with lower rates of mental illness than was social trust. In addition, social support served as a significant mitigating factor in the mental health disparities between blacks and whites. The severity of mental illness among Sandy survivors differed significantly among racial and ethnic groups but was moderated by both the direct impact of this disaster on their lives and the degree of social support they received, as well as how trusting they were.

While confidence in the business sector is crucial for well-functioning markets, there is surprisingly little empirical work on its sources. Available research recognizes generalized social trust and macroeconomic performance (especially unemployment and economic growth) as major forces explaining confidence in institutions and organizations in general. By assuming that confidence in companies hinges on rules, formal procedures, and practices that shape how organizations function, economic regulation is frequently advocated to foster confidence in companies, not least as it is supposed to reduce the scope for opportunistic behavior. Based on individual-level data from World Values Survey/European Values studies and economic regulation data from the Economic Freedom of the World project we investigate statistical associations of confidence in major companies with generalized social trust and macroeconomic performance as well as the intensity and quality of business regulation. From an economic policy perspective our findings suggest that confidence in the business sector can be facilitated by an implicit guarantee from governments of fair and impartial treatment.

National pride is a group-based and sometimes collective emotion that people feel toward their nation-state. It is often measured by the general national pride item in cross-national surveys. Czechs are among those nations whose members express low levels of general national pride in comparison with those of other nations in the European Union. Scholars debate the extent to which general national pride is influenced by social desirability or other identifiable reasons. The goal of this article is to identify the specific reasons that influence general national pride in the Czech Republic. Using data from the October 2015 round of the survey Naše společnost, I examine what makes Czechs proud of their country. Among frequently mentioned reasons for national pride are the country’s beauty, nature, cities, and history, as well as respondents’ family and friends. Results of an ordinal regression analysis based on the European Values Study 2008 data confirm that general national pride is significantly influenced by political interest, confidence in government and satisfaction with the development of democracy, happiness, and social trust.

Proceeding population aging might fuel generational conflicts about the distribution of welfare state resources in the future, but the existing evidence on the extent of generational cleavages in attitudes towards the welfare state is mixed. We argue that these mixed findings are partially related to an underestimation of trade-offs on the level of individual preferences. Using novel data from a survey experiment conducted in eight Western European countries, we show that age-related self-interest is an important determinant of social policy preferences. When elderly respondents are confronted with hypothetical cutbacks in pensions, they are much less likely to support additional education spending. However, we also find evidence for a mediating effect of social trust: high-trusting elderly individuals are more likely to support education spending – contrary to their narrow self-interest – than low-trusting elderly.

This paper analyses the relationship between informal institutions measured by social trust and the provision of private credit. Research on the trust–finance relationship abounds, although most of it is confined to the micro-level, with far fewer contributions from a wide, cross-country perspective. Considering a sample of 119 economies in the period 1993–2015, results suggest that social trust is an important determinant of private credit, and that its effects are transmitted indirectly via some particular aspects of the quality of economic-judicial institutions. In addition, and contrary to previous findings in related areas, substitutive effects for informal and formal institutions are not found. Therefore, informal institutions can improve the quality of the certain types of formal institutions but they are, per se, unable to replace them in the provision of credit. Accordingly, a solid economic-judicial system becomes essential to guarantee credit transactions.

In the literature, two approaches toward the development of a European identity can be distinguished. Society-based approaches assume that the most important foundation for the development of a European identity is trust toward other European citizens as this allows Europeans to identify with the European Union as a community of citizens and values. The institutional approach, on the other hand, assumes that a shared European identity is predominantly based on trust in political institutions. In this paper, we use the results of the IntUne Mass Survey 2009 (n=16,613 in 16 EU member states) to test the relationship between social and political trust on the one hand, and European identity on the other. The results suggest that trust in other European citizens is positively associated with European identity, but trust in the European political institutions has a stronger relation with European identity. This could imply that efforts to strengthen European identity cannot just rely on a bottom-up approach, but should also pay attention to the effectiveness and the visibility of the EU institutions and the way they are being perceived by European citizens.