Political participation and political trust in Amsterdam: Civic communities and ethnic networks

Abstract This article examines the political participation and political trust of four ethnic groups in Amsterdam. We explore, first, the degree to which Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese and Antilleans participate and the extent to which they trust the democratic institutions of the city. Second, we address how differences in participation and trust can be explained. For this we will turn to the civic community perspective which was reintroduced powerfully by Robert Putnam in his Making Democracy Work (Putnam 1993). In order to measure the civic community of ethnic groups we focus on ethnic organisations in Amsterdam and the links between them. Additionally, we will also report data on the use of mass media. We conclude that there is a rank correlation between the degree of civic community of the various ethnic groups in Amsterdam and the levels of political participation and political trust in local ‐ non‐ethnic ‐ political institutions. Civic engagement and social capital are the most powerful determinants of the quality of multicultural democracy.