ABSTRACT This article investigates for European societies the contextual conditions and social stratification of status seeking, defined as the desire to increase one's rank in the social hierarchy and thereby to gain prestige. We explore diverging assumptions about (a) the level of status seeking across societies and (b) the social gradient of status seeking within them, derived from three prominent sociological theories: the income inequality thesis sensu Wilkinson and Pickett, the post-materialism thesis sensu Inglehart, and the status competition thesis sensu Bourdieu. We employ representative, high-quality data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2018 for more than 45.000 individuals in 29 countries, which we analyse in a multilevel framework. We find evidence that socioeconomic development dampens status seeking while income inequality is less influential. Within societies, a higher rank in the stratification system, in particular a more favorable occupational class position and higher income, are associated with stronger status seeking. While our results for contextual conditions match post-materialism theory best, the results for social gradients conform best to status competition theory. Both findings question the current dominance of the inequality thesis as the stepping stone into status seeking research.

ABSTRACT This article seeks to conceptually clarify the measurement of Europeanization from a transactional perspective. Following Karl Deutsch, we regard cross-border practices and sense of community as constitutive for an emerging European society. But we critically reassess how this approach has been put into empirical practice by contemporary scholars. Typically, too much attention is paid to absolute Europeanization, and too little to relative Europeanization. In order to properly investigate the European society as situated between the nation-state and the world society, we argue that Europeanization involves both national openness (the salience of Europe compared to the nation-state) and external closure (the salience of Europe compared to the world). Three indices are suggested to capture relative Europeanization and its major components. Recent Eurobarometer and European Values Study data on practices and attitudes of EU citizens is used to illustrate our approach empirically. The results demonstrate that external closure adds a new layer of information for understanding everyday life Europeanization. We also find a bifurcation between practices for which Europe is the more relevant reference frame (as compared to the world) and attitudes for which it is not.

This article identifies six main theories of the determinants of social trust, and tests them against survey data from seven societies, 1999-2001. Three of the six theories of trust fare rather poorly and three do better. First and foremost, social trust tends to be high among citizens who believe that there are few severe social conflicts and where the sense of public safety is high. Second, informal social networks are associated with trust. And third, those who are successful in life trust more, or are more inclined by their personal experience to do so. Individual theories seem to work best in societies with higher levels of trust, and societal ones in societies with lower levels of trust. This may have something to do with the fact that our two low trust societies, Hungary and Slovenia, happen to have experienced revolutionary change in the very recent past, so that societal events have overwhelmed individual circumstances.