Social capital and support for democracy and autocracy in Moldova

This data collection consists of survey data collected in 2007 in the Republic of Moldova. The project has been designed to monitor the impact of social capital on both normative and practical support for the principles and practices of democracy and its alternatives and to generate a comprehensive, balanced, and dynamic account of political transformations taking place in Moldova from the perspective of the mass citizenry experiencing those changes on a daily basis. The main research questions are analyzing the existence of a correlation between levels of social capital and successful democratization, between levels of social capital and support for democracy and finally, between levels of social capital and support for democracy as an ideal form of regime (Dowley and Silver 2002). The working hypothesis is that high levels of social capital at the individual level are associated with high levels of political support for democracy, even if the overall extent of social capital might be comparatively low. The impact of divisions between Russian speakers and Romanian speakers upon political support for democracy or autocracy was also measured. One of the outputs of the ESRC Research Grant is a monograph on ‘Social Capital and Support for Democracy and Autocracy in Moldova’.