ABSTRACT
Introduction Are post-Communist countries of Central-Eastern Europe (CEE) poor or rich in social capital? Has the introduction of democracy and the market economy in the region created favourable conditions for social capital development? The answers to these questions are far from obvious. Considerable literature has been devoted to social trust and formal and informal participation in CEE democracies over the past 20 years, but the conclusions reached are not unanimous and depend largely on which dimensions of social capital are analysed. The primary focus of this chapter is the effect of inequality and social polarisation on social capital formation and use in post-Communist Europe,1 thus we will first discuss the relevant dimensions of social capital. Then we will describe trends in inequality and social polarisation that have taken place since the early 1990s, and finally we will merge these two themes. Our conclusions point to the specific formation and use of social capital in CEE.
