exacerbated in socially heterogeneous communities. […] It appears that ethnic
heterogeneity and high rates of immigration are part of the story. If so, then the rapid
increase in ethnic immigration in most OECD countries in recent decades may pose
important challenges to both the quantity and the social distribution of social capital in all
our countries”. Alesina and La Ferrara (2002, 207) also understand trust to be a “state”
when they conclude that “individuals who express stronger feelings against racial
integration trust relatively less the more racially heterogeneous the community is.”
Conversely, one can think of trust as a “trait” i.e. it is enduring and unchanging. If
that is the case, then diversity, by definition, should not be able to affect trust and trust
can be taken as an independent variable explaining the public’s willingness to continue
funding the welfare state. If trust is understood to be a “trait”, then more “trusting”
societies should perceive immigrants less as “others” and the more they are willing to
embrace them and treat them as part of the community. In other words, for any given
reasons, some societies are either more or less trusting and increasing diversity does not
significantly affect trust levels in these societies. This means that in “high trusting”
societies we should expect to see less widespread prejudice and hatreds against foreigners
while “low trusting” societies should suffer more from nativist resentment as a result of
increasing diversity. Thus, treating trust as a “trait” has very different hypothesized
effects on welfare support compared to treating trust as a “state”. If trust is a “state” then
the causal story goes as follows: diversity affects trust, which affects nativist resentment
which in turn affects the public’s willingness to support the welfare state. If trust is a
“trait”, diversity will NOT affect trust (while different from country to country, levels of
trust are nation-specific and may be driven by differences in institutions, or experiences
of nation building or differences in policies or many other reasons). This allows trust to
Convention