171fewest relational resources. They are truly disadvantaged in terms of emo-
tional and instrumental resources. Individuals with bridging social capital
have a variety of distinct subsets of network members, through whom
they benefit from different information, world views and support, but
with rather weak collective reinforcement. Individuals with only bonding
social capital available in their personal networks have supportive but also
controlling personal networks, which may help them to progress in their
local environment, but which do not link them with a diversity of net-
work members and do not increase their autonomy. Individuals who
have a comprehensive type of social capital, both bridging and bonding,
benefit at the same time from local embeddedness and from having set
foot in distinct relational worlds.
Social Capital Across Portugal, Lithuania,
and Switzerland
Most research on personal networks using sociometric methods such as
those used in this book was conducted within single national contexts,
as international surveys for the most part do not include such measure-
ments. This state of research made it hard to consider how macrostruc-
tural factors may influence the structural dimensions of personal
networks. Fortunately, data generated by this research project enabled us
to carry out such an assessment. One main factor shaping personal rela-
tionships in late modernity is associated with the research tradition on
welfare state regimes based on Esping-Anderson’s typology (Esping-
Andersen 1996 ). Depending on the extent of autonomy of individuals
from the market and of the universality of social benefits in each coun-
try, various types of regimes were stressed as a heuristic for understand-
ing a wide range of social issues, including personal relationships
(Ganjour and Widmer 2016 ). Social regimes thus feature a set of social
protection mechanisms that influence the development of social capital.
One study comparing social capital in various countries (Kääriäinen and
Lehtonen 2006 ) found that bridging social capital was more prominent
in social–democratic regime countries than it was in other countries.
Another study (Oorschot and Arts 2005 ) found that there was no rela-
Understanding Personal Networks as Social Capital