There are a variety of ways of measuring social capital, including social trust, social networks, social support and participation in organisations. In this paper we use cluster analysis to show patterns of social capital or ‘social capital regimes' across Europe, where the different elements are combined in various ways. The paper then goes on to look at how this differentiates European societies. Using the Eurobarometer 62.2, which covers a representative sample of 27 countries, the analysis found that European countries can be clustered according to the extent to which they have high or low levels of bridging and bonding social capital as developed in the theories of Michael Woolcock and David Halpern. The paper provides empirical challenges to previous studies that have shown that social capital reflects mainly welfare regimes and other studies that have tried to differentiate societies according to bridging and bonding social capital on a purely speculative basis by providing an exploratory “bottom up” classification based upon cluster analysis.
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