The Origins of Solidarity and the Provision of Public Goods : Primordial or Cosmopolitan?

The concept of redistribution is divided into two areas: “national” redistribution and “global” redistribution. We first examine the impact of immigration induced diversity on people’s willingness to continue funding the welfare state and second, the willingness of people to fund “global” forms of redistribution such as support for the environment and for foreign aid. Applying principal component factor analysis to various items in the 2005/6 World Values Study, we find two different kinds of trust which we term “primordial” and “cosmopolitan”. Our hypothesis that “cosmopolitan” trusters should support national as well as global redistribution is only partially supported: primordial as well as cosmopolitan trusters favor national redistribution. While primordial trusters show no significant effects on global redistribution, cosmopolitan trusters display attitudes that are conducive for public goods provision even while bearing concentrated costs. Primordial trusters on the other hand, display attitudes that show an unwillingness to contribute to public goods such as the environment or foreign aid, revealing a much narrower sense of community