Exploring Social Capital: as Concept and Practice in Australian Public Health Policies and Programs

Over the past twenty years interest has grown in the concept of social capital in international and Australian public policy. We explore how social capital is understood as a concept and used in practice for guiding policy development and program delivery in South Australian public health programs. The empirical research compared policy makers’ and practitioners’ understandings of social capital and how theories about social capital and health inequality were translated into practice in three case study projects. It found that there are shifting discourses between social capital and related concepts, including community capacity building, and social inclusion/exclusion. Policy makers reported less use of the concept of social capital in favour of social inclusion/exclusion reflecting changing political and policy environments where terms come into favour and then go out of fashion. In this transition period the two terms are often used interchangeably although there are some conceptual points of difference.     

Social capital as a policy resource

Existing studies of social capital have provided ample evidence of its pervasiveness and offered useful impressions of its political, economic, and social influence. That it can be also a resource for the implementation of public policies is less well understood. This paper considers how leaders use it to accomplish objectives that are exogenous to the purposes of those that originally contributed to it. Since social capital is usually a by-product of group behavior, its existence should be observed as a separate feature of a groups assets. It is most frequently observed indirectly through its influence on social systems and their policies, but it may also perform the reverse role by becoming an instrument of policy. This paper examines some of its uses in mobilizing public support through appeals to unrelated loyalties.     

Social Capital and Political Trust in Finland: An Individual-level Assessment

Political trust has in previous studies mainly been associated, either positively or negatively with a set of political variables, such as subjective knowledge of and interest in political issues, political efficacy, national pride, post-materialist values and corruption permissiveness. More recently, it has been debated whether or not indicators of social capital also have an impact on political trust. It has been argued that social capital helps to sustain civic virtues and that lack of it will create democratic problems like political dissatisfaction and declining political participation. While trends in social capital seem stable and high at the aggregate level in Finland, the level of political trust has varied to a much larger degree. In this article, indicators of social capital, political variables and social background variables are set against the Finns' trust in politicians and the parliament as well as their satisfaction with democracy. The analysis shows that social capital, as defined by a set of variables comprised of interpersonal trust and voluntary organisational activism, does not, en bloc, prove to be a powerful predictor of political trust. However, when the social capital items are examined as single factors, interpersonal trust seems to have strong impact on all levels of political trust, while the influence of voluntary organisational activity is less evident.     

Social capital, lobbying and community-based interest groups

Recent discussions of social capital within the public choice literature have tended to focus on its role in solving collective action problems and promoting political accountability. Consequently, two areas of inquiry remain underexplored: (1) the role social capital plays in facilitating lobbying and rent seeking, and (2) the possibility that the availability of government resources can cause community-based groups to re-orient their stocks of social capital away from mutual assistance and toward lobbying and rent seeking. This article examines the relationship between social capital and lobbying in New Orleans??s post-Katrina recovery.     

Social Identity and Social Capital: The Collective Self at Work

Organizational scholars and institutional theorists have shown a great deal of interest in the concept of social capital. To a large extent, this interest has been fueled by accumulating evidence that social capital plays a vital role in the development of more cooperative, productive, and stable relationships within organizations and institutions. Recognizing these benefits, a major focus of recent theoretical efforts has been explicating the antecedents of social capital. Drawing on concepts from social identity theory and related theories of the self, this paper develops a framework for conceptualizing how individuals' psychological identification with a collective enhances their willingness to engage in behaviors that contribute to the creation and maintenance of social capital. The paper reviews empirical evidence in favor of the framework and draws out some of its theoretical and applied implications.     

The utility of bonding social capital

Abstract

In most studies of social capital, bridging social capital is emphasized as ‘good’ for democracy and economic performance. It is rarer to find studies showing that bonding social capital can bring positive effects. Mostly, bonding social capital is either overlooked or depicted as the ‘villain’ that leads to ethnic conflict, intolerant behaviour and poor economic and democratic development. In this article, it is argued that this picture needs to be revised. If we assume that bonding trust is a negative force for development and democracy, we ignore a substantial portion of the political history of the West. Also, new empirical evidence from India suggests that bonding social capital is related to good governance. High levels of bonding trust cannot only facilitate political cooperation. They may also work as a shield against public sector employees who attempt to exploit citizens in a corrupt or clientelistic manner. The conclusion drawn in the article is that the view of social capital as a prime mover with inherent normatively attractive qualities should give way to a perspective where social capital is more properly regarded as an intermediate variable where the way it is combined with, or interacts with, other factors determines outcomes.     

Bowling the state back in: Political institutions and the creation of social capital

Abstract. While some studies have revealed that social capital is shaped within civil society, the role of political institutions in forming social capital has not yet been clearly shown. This article, therefore, tries to evaluate the politico-institutional foundations of social capital measured in terms of associational life in Switzerland. The purpose is to apply Putnam's method of comparing subsystems to the Swiss cantons. The empirical analyses show that government structures are strongly associated with social capital. More specifically, the availability of direct democracy promotes a lively associational life. In addition, consensus democracy and decentralized political structures contribute to social capital. In this vein, the access points of the politico-institutional structure constitute a feasible 'top-down' path to breaking out of the vicious circle of distrust, disengagement and weak democracy.     

Social Capital and Local Governance: Exploring the Institutional Design Variable

This article argues that Robert Putnam's social capital thesis is too society-centred and undervalues state agency and associated political factors. It explores the role of institutional design in explaining how governments can shape the development of social capital and its potential influence upon democratic performance. New Labour's programme of 'democratic renewal' within British local government provides an excellent opportunity to assess the relevance of institutional design to arguments about social capital and democracy. We propose that prospects for the creation and mobilization of social capital may depend as much upon the process as the content of institutional design.     

Trade unions and social capital in transitional communist states: The case of China

In the study of social capital in Asia, it has been common to see kinship networks as the formation of social capital relations that create trust within society or within Asian states. This paper explores social capital surrounding industrial conflicts to see how unions relate to social capital formation in the context of recent reforms in state socialist China. This paper will argue that in the face of spontaneous outbursts of rapid social capital formation, as in industrial conflicts, the role of institutional agents is important for sustaining social capital. In China, the traditional model of the states bureaucratic trade unions has proved poorly adapted to coping with rapid social capital formation, either as organizer or suppressant. In the case of new workplaces, however, without the history of cynicism and state corporatism, the official unions that seek to represent members and sustain social capital are able to do so quite effectively. To build social capital, it is not necessary to destroy existing trade unions in China but to reorient their focus from bureaucratic centralist to representative organizations.     

The myth of social capital in community development

Abstract

This article argues that contemporary interest in social capital by community development theorists, funders, and practitioners is misguided and needs to be thoroughly rethought. It argues that social capital, as understood by Robert Putnam and people influenced by his work, is a fundamentally flawed concept because it fails to understand issues of power in the production of communities and because it is divorced from economic capital. Therefore, community development practice based on this understanding of social capital is, and will continue to be, similarly flawed.

The article further argues that instead of Putnam's understanding of social capital, community development practice would be better served by returning to the way the concept was used by Glenn Loury and Pierre Bourdieu and concludes with a discussion of how these alternative theories of social capital can be realized in community development practice.     

Linking Social Capital to Political Participation: Voluntary Associations and Networks of Recruitment in Sweden1

That organizational involvement has a positive impact on political action is a well‐established finding in empirical research around the world. To account for this, theorists since Tocqueville have pointed to the returns in human capital, in particular ‘civic skills’, yielded by associations. This article, by contrast, is a study of whether social capital theory can help explain the same effect. According to the logic of ‘weak ties’, organizational involvement provides bridging social capital by connecting the individual to a wider range of people. As a result, the input of requests for participation increases and this ultimately leads to more activity. Unspecified in this argument, however, is what aspect of associational memberships is most conducive to such weak ties: the sheer number of memberships, or the extent to which one's memberships provide links to people of dissimilar social origin. In an unprecedented empirical test based on survey data from Sweden in 1997, it is shown that being connected to multiple voluntary associations is what matters for political activity, not the extent to which one's memberships cut across social cleavages. Moreover, the social capital mechanism of recruitment is more important in explaining this effect than the human capital mechanism of civic skills, since the former can account for why even passive members, not just organizational activists, may become more prone to take political action.     

Social Capital and Regional Economies in Britain

Is social capital a prerequisite for prosperity? This paper analyzes social capital and economic performance in the British regions. Like Italy, Britain has a north–south economic divide. Are these differences caused by unequal stocks of social capital? This paper provides limited support for the hypothesized relationship between some indicators of social capital (especially trust and civic associations) and economic performance. Economic associations, however, are negatively correlated. This highlights shortcomings in social capital theory in terms of transferring the concept to new settings, the mechanisms linking social capital to production and the translation of social capital into public policy.     

The World Bank and social capital: Lessons from ten rural development projects in the Philippines and Mexico

Social capital is widely recognized as one of the few sources of capital available to the poor, yet the processes by which development policies affect the accumulation of that social capital are not well understood. The World Bank, through its funding of development projects, affects the institutional environments for the accumulation of such social capital. The question is how to determine whether that institutional context is enabling, and to what degree. This paper compares ten recent World Bank-funded rural development projects in Mexico and the Philippines to explore how the processes of project design and implementation influence the institutional environments for the accumulation of horizontal, vertical, and intersectoral forms of pro-poor social capital. The findings have conceptual and policy implications for understanding the political dynamics of creating enabling environments for social capital accumulation by the poor.     

Social capital in the Japanese youth labor market: Labor market policy,schools, and norms

This paper develops the concept of institutional social capital and discusses its importance in the labor market. Institutional social capital is constituted by the resources inherent in an organization (such as a school) and thereby available to members of that organization. This is contrasted with the social capital available to individuals through their own personal networks. In the labor market context, an example of institutional social capital is the ties that schools have with employers who recruit a proportion of their new employees as they prepare to graduate. The paper examines how these ties and the norms governing the important labor market screening role played by the high school developed in post-WWII Japan. I also discuss an important positive externality – social control over students – generated by schools institutional social capital. Finally, I examine current challenges to Japanese high schools institutional social capital.     

Participation and Social Capital Formation: Norway in a Comparative Perspective1

Voluntary associations are often ascribed a fundamental role in the formation of social capital. However, scholars disagree on the extent to which face‐to‐face contact, i.e. active participation, is necessary to create this resource. The impact of participation in associations on social capital is examined using three dimensions: intensity (active vs. passive participation), scope (many vs. few affiliations) and type (non‐political vs. political purpose). While those affiliated display higher levels of social capital than outsiders, the difference between active and passive members is absent or negligible. The only cumulative effect of participation occurs when the member belongs to several associations simultaneously, preferably ones with different purposes.     

The language of politics and the politics of language: Unpacking ‘social exclusion’ in new labour policy

Since the election to power of New Labour in 1997, the concept of social exclusion has played a defining role in framing welfare policy. The rapid absorption of its terminology in government discourse has signalled a shift away from existing notions of inequality and disadvantage to a broader understanding of material poverty, which also includes (or instead prioritises) other social, cultural and political factors. This has important implications for New Labour policy-making. In particular, it allows for problems of inequality and disadvantage to be reinterpreted and new political measures to be introduced. Such measures produce different effects across space and society, which may be argued to disadvantage policy subjects. The aims of this paper are to explore how social exclusion has become installed as the primary framework of welfare policy in the UK and to examine the key assumptions embedded within specific policy formulations using discourse and content analysis. It thus points towards the importance of language in stipulating relatively enduring and stable sets of socio-political connections, and its role in mediating a particular (political) vision of the relationship(s) between state, economy and society as implicit in New Labour's ‘Third Way’.     

Economic Growth and Social Capital

Recent interdisciplinary theoretical work has suggested that social capital, or the interpersonal trust of citizens, plays an important role in explaining both the efficiency of political institutions, and in the economic performance of contemporary societies. This paper examines the relationship between social capital and economic growth in a sample of thirty-four countries over the period 1970 to 1992, within the framework of a modified neo-classical model of economic growth. The findings suggest that social capital has an impact on growth which is at least as strong as that of human capital or education, which has been the focus of much of the recent work on endogenous growth theory. It appears to have about the same impact on growth as catch-up or the ability of poorer nations to adopt technological innovations pioneered by their richer counterparts.     

Both glue and lubricant: Transnational ethnic social capital as a source of Asia-Pacific subregionalism

Social capital not only forms and functions at the individual, group, and organizational levels, but also permeates and transcends the political and geographic boundaries of nation-states. This paper examines transnational ethnic social networks based on ancestral and kinship ties as a form of social capital that facilitates economic growth and transformation in a transborder subregional context. Transnational ethnic social capital works by gluing multiple economic actors on opposite sides of a border together and by lubricating economic transactions among them. When purposefully mobilized by government policies, transnational ethnic social capital in turn induces more responsive and efficient policy initiatives and implementation. This paper also considers whether ethnic social capital is both a necessary and sufficient condition for successful transnational subregionalism by demonstrating its interaction with certain crucial complementary or contradictory factors.     

Building Social Capital in City Politics: Scope and Limitations at the Inter-organisational Level

This article explores the relations between voluntary organisations and the city administration in two British cities through an analysis of the impact of social capital. It provides a corrective to the dominant individual-level approach by offering an organisational-level analysis of social capital. The evidence suggests that inter-organisational social capital is not distributed equitably within cities. Voluntary organisations that regularly engage with a city administration can build networks of trust and information flows that outstrip those available to other voluntary organisations. Although it is easier to build social capital within a sector, such as the voluntary sector, building it in tight networks with voluntary organisations would appear to be an achievable goal for a city administration – but such networks do not guarantee an enhanced overall confidence in the local political system.     

Political Support: Social Capital, Civil Society and Political and Economic Performance

This article assesses two main theories of the decline of political support that is found in many western democracies. The first is society centred and built on the concepts of social capital, trust and civil society. The second is politics centred and focuses on the performance of government and the economy. The two theories are not necessarily incompatible, but they are usually treated in a mutually exclusive way. In this article they are tested against a combination of aggregate cross-national comparative data and detailed case studies of four countries that have suffered exceptional decline of political support for politicians, political institutions and the systems of government. The puzzle is that cross-national comparative evidence about a large and diverse number of nations supports social capital theory, whereas in-depth study of four countries that have experienced substantial decline of political support does not. The erosion of support coincides in all four with poor economic and/or political performance. A way of reconciling the two theories and their supporting evidence is suggested, arguing that while social capital is a necessary foundation for democratic support, it is not a sufficient cause.