Social Capital and Access to Credit: Evidence from Uganda

We use a nationally representative survey in Uganda to study the links between social capital and financial access. Our results indicate a positive association between individual social capital and access to institutional credit, but no significant relationship between generalised trust and credit access. The effect of individual social capital is more pronounced for poorer people, in rural areas, and in areas where generalised trust is low. Individual social capital seems to promote access especially to semiformal and informal financial institutions.     

An oasis of democracy in an authoritarian sea? Civil society,social, and institutional trust in Georgia

We examine whether the existence of civil society in Georgia has promoted social and institutional trust in the population. As much of the literature suggests, Georgia is different from its neighbors in that civil society development is more advanced. Does participation in civil society lead to more social and institutional trust? Using survey data from the Caucasus Barometer and the World Values Survey, we find that attitudes regarding social and institutional trust are more developed in Georgia than in its neighbors, and that activity in voluntary organizations is positively associated with social and institutional trust in Georgia.     

Social Capital and Community Participation in Post-Soviet Armenia: Implications for Policy and Practice

This article argues that the social capital framework used by development agencies in community-driven development projects in post-Soviet countries may not be adequate for analysing conditions affecting community participation. Research in Armenia shows that the availability of social capital in a community may not necessarily translate into participation. The governance environment plays a key role in affecting the nature and forms of community participation and in shaping local institutions in Armenia. The research argues against the ‘cultural’ view of institutional change, which presumes that the main barriers to participation are posed by cultural factors, such as interpersonal trust and the ‘mentality’ of post-Soviet citizens. Development interventions that focus on building social capital as a means to promote community participation may not be effective without addressing broader structural factors affecting participation.     

Still a new democracy? Individual-level effects of social trust on political trust in South Korea

The social capital theory holds that there is a positive relationship between social and political trust; however, despite the prominence of this postulation, this relationship has often been disputed among political scientists. While recent studies on advanced democracies have shown a strong positive relationship between social and political trust, studies on East Asian democracies, which previously showed a weak or negative relation, remain scant, separating these countries into their own category of new democracies. The motivation of this study is based on the importance of revisiting the relationship between social and political trust using recent data from one such country—South Korea—to determine the nature of this previously studied negative or weak relationship. The results of this study indicate that generalized social trust in South Korea is positively associated with political trust. This result is in line with recent findings in advanced democracies. While this positive relationship is consistent and significant across models, a greater portion of political trust is explained by economic and political performance, including factors such as the economy, corruption, inequality, and the welfare system, making institutional performance a critical predictor of political trust.     

MANAGING SOCIAL CAPITAL AND DIVERSITY FOR PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS

Managers concerned with the performance of their organizations will exploit available social, administrative, and human capital resources. However, extant theory and mixed empirical evidence leave the effect of social capital on performance unclear. The gains from these norms of reciprocity, participation, networking, and trust may disproportionately benefit only some of their clients, leading to disparities in outcomes among diverse clienteles. We argue that in such contexts, management will put in place policies to counter these disparities. Indeed, our empirical evidence from the management of public education supports the expectation that an institutional commitment to diversity successfully mitigates the uneven effects of social capital on organizational performance. This finding carries important implications for public management and equity in public policy outcomes and may be of particular relevance to management of outcomes relying on co‐production.     

Institutional Trust in Contemporary Moscow

Levels of institutional trust in Russia are amongst the lowest in the world. As yet, however, little research has focused on this phenomenon at the sub-national level. The current study examines trust in social and political institutions among citizens in Moscow in 2004. Results showed that levels of institutional trust are extremely low and that there were only three institutions (the church, president and hospitals) that were more trusted than distrusted. Moreover, although the effects of some demographic and other independent variables on trust stretched across institutions, several variables had a unique impact in terms of trust in the president.     

Buying schools with social capital: how local response to state reform fosters education revenue inequality

In this article, the author tests the hypothesis that social capital leads to greater inequality in public school revenue. Research has linked social capital – the manifestation of social networks of trust and shared norms – to efforts that can alleviate inequality. By conducting a comparative analysis of the counties and school districts in California, this article finds competing evidence. Instead, the author finds that local areas with more membership associations generate more revenue for their schools, despite efforts by the state government to equalise revenue across districts. The local residents appear to be increasing their revenue by using their social capital to generate the collective action needed to increase their property-tax contribution.     

LOCAL POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: THE IMPACT OF RULES‐IN‐USE

This article argues that political participation is shaped by locally distinctive ‘rules‐in‐use’, notwithstanding the socio‐economic status or level of social capital in an area. It recognizes that the resources available to people, as well as the presence of social capital within communities, are potential key determinants of the different levels of local participation in localities. However, the article focuses on a third factor – the institutional rules that frame participation. Levels of participation are found to be related to the openness of the political system, the presence of a ‘public value’ orientation among local government managers, and the effectiveness of umbrella civic organizations. Whereas resources and social capital are not factors that can be changed with any great ease, the institutional determinants of participation are more malleable. Through case study analysis, the article shows how actors have shaped the environment within which citizens make their decisions about engagement, resulting in demonstrable effects upon levels of participation.     

History and Institutions in the Rebuilding of Social Capital after Forced Resettlement in the Philippines and Indonesia

Resettlement results in the loss of social capital from which poor households can draw resources for sustenance, survival and wellbeing. While Putnam deems social capital formation as pre-determined by a community’s history of civic engagement, the institutional view argues that social capital is generated through the institutions’ interventions. Utilising a comparative approach involving two resettlement sites, one in the Philippines and one in Indonesia, this article presents findings on the explanatory power of these two perspectives. The Philippine case is greatly influenced by the institutional interventions while the Indonesian case testifies to the validity of the theoretical perspective of Putnam.     

Society, community, and economic development

Studies of economic development and economic history have long been concerned with the relationship between the transparent and supposedly anonymous forces of markets, rules, and bureaucracies, on the one hand, and membership in groups, such as local communities, associations, or networks on the other. Economists are quite divided about these latter forces: for some, they are necessary underpinnings for the market, providing trust and social capital which in turn reduce transaction costs and moral hazards and hence promote development; for most, they are seen as archaic, leading to nepotism, rent seeking, and institutional rigidity. Indeed, throughout the social sciences, there is an opposition between the roles assigned to what may be called the “societal” and the “communitarian” bases of social and economic development. But each position in this theoretical standoff underestimates the contributions of either society or community to economic development. This is because both society and community have potentially positive and negative effects; together, however, they can act as mutual checks and balances on their potentially negative effects, while reinforcing the positive contributions of each to economic efficiency. Different levels and types of society and community, in interaction, define complex contexts of choice and incentives in economic development, and allow us to see more clearly the basis of different institutional configurations in relationship to development. Michael Storper is professor of regional and international development in the School of Public Affairs at UCLA; professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics; and professor of economic sociology at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (“Sciences Po”) in Paris. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.     

Explaining trust in political institutions: Some illustrations from the Baltic states

An important precondition of successful democratic consolidation is voters' confidence that political institutions do not abuse their privileged position of power. Seeking to identify variables that explain trust in political institutions, the paper tests different theories of institutional trust with individual-level survey data from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Building on prior research, two competitive theories—the cultural and performance explanation—are identified and tested, while also controlling for the effects of party preference, ethnicity, and socio-demographic factors. The results show that both cultural and performance variables influence citizens' trust in political institutions. In other words, institutional trust depends on how much the individual trusts other people as well as on how well they believe the economic and the political system to function. Besides cultural and performance variables, most control variables also proved to be significantly associated with institutional trust, confirming the need to include correct control variables in models of institutional trust.     

Friends or Foes? Nonstate Public Goods Providers and Local State Authorities in Nondemocratic and Transitional Systems

Ordinary citizens often welcome nonstate provision of public goods and social welfare, but government officials, particularly in nondemocratic and transitional systems, may view nonstate actors as political competitors. Drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative data from rural China, this paper finds that some kinds of nonstate participation in public goods and social welfare provision can actually make local officials more optimistic about their ability to implement state policies and elicit citizen compliance. Local officials often believe that coproduction of public goods and services with community groups in particular, often with community actors taking the lead, can build trust and social capital that can spill over into increased citizen compliance with state demands, a central element of state capacity. Simply increasing levels of public goods provision, however, is not associated positively with optimistic perceptions of local state authority and capacity. Moreover, other forms of nonstate participation such as coproduction between private businesses and local officials or substitutive provision by nonstate actors have less potential for building trust between officials and citizens and are not seen by officials as beneficial for increasing citizen compliance.     

The Contracting Quandary: Managing Local Authority–VNPO Relations

Problems with competitive transactional contracting raise the possibility of relational contracting as an attractive alternative for managing local authority–VNPO (voluntary non-profit organisation) relations. This empirical study of 45 relational social service contracts examines the conditions under which advantages such as flexibility and social capital development emerge as opposed to dangers of political abuse, defiance and resource frustrations. Findings suggest that successful relational contracting requires partners whose professional and management reputations inspire competence trust and whose commitment encourages goodwill trust. Decisions between competitive transactional contracting and relational contracting present difficult dilemmas. The costs and benefits of relational contracting need to be weighed against those of transactional contracting. At the same time there are political and ideological pressures, as well as public service norm constraints.     

The decentralisation of city government and the restoration of political trust

Abstract

‘Local politics’ has specific features that are conducive to the generation of trust, more so than ‘centralised politics’. Local politics is characterised by processes that occur on a small scale, within institutions that enjoy a certain autonomy, that are imbedded in a social community with which the citizens can identify, and that offer the possibility of more democratic participation. Where is the threshold between local and central politics? Clearly, if a city grows to the size of almost half a million inhabitants, as was the case in the port city of Antwerp, it becomes too large for local politics. It also becomes vulnerable to the lure of political distrust, as was manifested by the amazing rise of the extreme right in the 1990s. At least this was the theory that prompted the political leaders of the city to introduce a certain degree of decentralisation. To a certain extent they were right. Our evidence shows that the district councils generate more trust than the city council. Moreover they generate trust among sections of the population that were and remain distrustful of central politics. Will this capital of local political trust overflow into the trust in the higher authorities? Some of the data point in that direction but they are far from conclusive. Anyway it is too early to tell. The decentralisation reform in Antwerp is an interesting experiment but a very recent one.     

Trust and Reciprocity in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters

Abstract

Beyond all the material and economic losses that natural disasters produce, post-disaster environments can alter the social capital of a community by affecting social norms, attitudes, and people’s behaviour. To analyse this issue, we empirically investigate the effect that the aftermath of a disaster can have on trust and reciprocity of people within communities. We do this by comparing outcomes of trust games conducted in earthquake-affected and non-affected rural villages one year after the 2010 Chilean earthquake. Our findings show that while trust levels do not differ across cases, reciprocity is lower in earthquake-affected areas.     

Beyond Paternalism Towards Social Capital: Local Governance Reform in Portugal

An urge to reform local government in Portugal requires a sensitive approach to the role of social capital and, particularly, to the consequences of local governance arrangements in its formation. This research agenda, greatly influenced by the identification of positive externalities of social capital, has generated several claims regarding the need for proactive and objective top-down initiatives. Though assuming that institutions and public policies can have positive effects on social capital building, this article tries to contribute to the debate, focusing on the challenges met by local administration reform, arguing that it requires a four-fold approach: the identification of local government functions and the role of the State; a close look at institutional design and citizen engagement mechanisms; correct tools for allowing civil society reinforcement and social capital building; and recognizing political leadership as a fundamental aspect of a governance arrangement.     

Membership Organization’s Social Capital and the Impact on Nonprofit Sector Management

Social capital depicts the extent of mutual trust in a jurisdiction. This study examines the impact of organizational social capital (OSC) on nonprofit (NP) density. Prior studies have argued that OSC positively impacts the community and the organization itself. These studies are either theory- based or survey based. Few available empirical studies also do not examine the OSC of all the counties of the United States. This study overcomes these limitations and finds from the US county-level empirical study that social capital advanced in membership organizations is positively associated with the growth of NP density.     

两岸关系制度化：从理性选择到社会建构

两岸关系制度化的动力来源包含理性选择与社会建构两大因素。从两岸关系的制度化进程来看，两岸双方以追求共同利益的理性计算为出发点，在此基础上，伴随双方社会化交往越来越密集，越来越多的社会性因素被纳入制度化进程之中，推动着两岸关系的制度化向更高层次发展。推动这一制度化动力转变的机制主要包括三类：外部激励、规范说服以及社会学习。概括起来，理性选择和社会建构因素的双重动力推动了两岸关系制度化从低级向高级、从简单向复杂的发展，形成了一个综合的战略性社会建构动力。两岸战略性社会建构动力下的制度化建设可分为制度规范兴起、制度规范内化以及制度化的深化三个阶段。     

Can the World Bank Build Social Capital? The Experience of Social Funds in Malawi and Zambia

Social funds have been one of the main manifestations of the World Bank's move toward promoting projects with a participatory orientation. Supporters of social funds argue that participation in social fund activities builds community social capital. Critics of the Bank's use of social capital argue that it ignores power structures but these critics have focused on the Bank's research rather than its operations. This paper examines ‘social capital’ in a project context: social funds in Malawi and Zambia. In contrast to the model of collective action suggested by proponents of social funds, it is shown that the nature of community participation is indeed shaped by existing power and social relations. Project identification and execution is led by a small number of people in the community, usually the head teacher in cooperation with the PTA and traditional authorities. The community is then mobilised using the traditional structures of village headmen. Most community members participate actively in making bricks, but passively in decision making. However, this process should be seen as an institutional adaptation to what social funds offer, not elite capture. Most community members are satisfied with the outcome, although the chosen project is not what they would have chosen themselves. Given these processes, social funds do little to build social capital but instead, appear to be users of existing social capital.     

Social Capital: the politico-emancipatory potential of a disputed concept

Since the middle of the 1990s the concept of social capital has provoked rapidly growing interest. Social theorists, policy makers and those ngos working on the edge of theory and practice became fascinated with social capital. International organisations like the World Bank, undp and the oecd upgraded social capital to the ‘missing link’ in understanding (under)development. However, it did not take long before the critique cast shadows on this euphoria. Initially the critique was concerned with problems of defining and measuring social capital and its inadequate theoretical elaboration. In a later stage the critique accused social capital of forming part of the anti-politics machine of the post-Washington consensus. Social capital would reflect a point of view in which there was no room for an analysis of power inequality and struggle over access to resources. This article starts with an overview of the most important problems attached to the notion of social capital. The focus is then shifted to the contours of the global political crisis, which acts as a frame of reference for an attempt to reassess the politico-emancipatory potential of social capital.