国家角色与社会资本建构的双重效应

以帕特南为代表的社会资本理论通过参与、互惠以及信任的相互促进模型,建构了“去国家中心化”的多中心社会治理模式,从而削弱了国家在社会治理和社会控制过程中的唯一合理性和唯一权威。这类社会资本理论强调了社会资本的积极效应,而忽视了社会资本建构的结构性因素所导致的一些负面效应。同时,国家是一种拥有合法强制力量的特殊制度形式,能够通过营造多元化的制度和政策环境缓解社会资本建构引发的负面问题。     

Political institutions and debt crises

This paper shows that political institutions matter in explaining defaults on external and domestic debt obligations. We explore a large number of political and macroeconomic variables using a non-parametric technique to predict safety from default. The advantage of this technique is that it is able to identify patterns in the data that are not captured in standard probit analysis. We find that political factors matter, and do so in different ways for democratic and non-democratic regimes, and for domestic and external debt. In democracies, a parliamentary system or sufficient checks and balances almost guarantee the absence of default on external debt when economic fundamentals or liquidity are sufficiently strong. In dictatorships, high stability and tenure play a similar role for default on domestic debt.     

Non-global social contracts: A note on inefficient social institutions

This paper explores some perverse features that can emerge when social contracts are moved from a social vacuum to a setting of social interdependence. In particular we note incentives that might exist in conjunction with externality problems that yield situations in which: (1) social contracts reduce social wealth; (2) sub-global social contracts are Pareto inferior to the absence of social contracts; (3) there are no incentives for global social contracts. While previous works emphasized the benefits of contracts, this paper focuses on their costs. A conclusion reached is that perhaps justice and efficiency demand not a single global social contract but rather a rich melange of sub-global contracts with appropriate interstices of anarchy.     

Political institutions and academic freedom: evidence from across the world

Public Choice - There is scant systematic empirical evidence on what explains variation in academic freedom. Making use of a new indicator and panel data covering 64 countries 1960–2017, we...     

Political institutions and economic growth reconsidered

The debate on the relationship between institutions and economic development is discussed, focusing on two illustrations, i.e., the impact of democracy and political instability on economic growth. Various pitfalls of existing research are identified, like sensitivity of the outcomes to model specification, sample heterogeneity, measurement of political variables, and the treatment of the time dimension.     

Political institutions and Central Bank independence: A cross-country analysis

Using three quantitative measures of Central Bank independence, we apply OLS and TSLS regression methods to investigate the possible correlation between political liberty, political instability and central bank independence. For a sample of Western democracies and highly democratic developing countries we show that Cukierman's legal independence index is positively correlated with political freedom and regime political stability. It is negatively correlated with party political stability. For a sample of developing countries that excludes dictatorships we show that a special index of legal central bank autonomy is positively associated with political freedom and political stability. Finally, we observe that, for the same sample of nations, the turnover index of central bank independence is not sensitive to our political variables.     

Political institutions and sovereign borrowing: evidence from nineteenth-century Argentina

I study the relationship between political institutions and sovereign borrowing when constitutional constraints are systematically chosen to obtain better credit conditions. I argue that the impact of institutional constraints on country risk premia depends on the government’s concern with the country’s creditworthiness and its “willingness to repay”; two variables that are hardly observable. To properly evaluate the relationship between political institutions and sovereign borrowing, I focus on the link between institutional constraints and the risk premia of Argentine bonds between 1822 and 1913. Specifically, I analyze whether a “structural break” in the government’s cost of borrowing time-series exists. I use the Perron-Volesang test for structural change with unknown break dates. The statistical analysis indicates that the adoption of institutional constraints led to significant improvements in borrowing terms: the series has a single structural change; and the distinctive break point is associated with the country’s adoption of constitutional checks and balances. Time-series regressions and instrumental variables (IV) estimation reinforce these findings.     

Measuring social capital and its consequences

If social capital is understood to be a resource that can facilitate the attainment of a communitys goals, then it may be searched for in its institutions, in its patterns of culture, in its modes of communication and association, or in its shared psychosocial characteristics as expressed in qualities such as trust, cooperativeness, or initiative. This paper focuses on the latter expressions of social capital, and especially on efforts to measure its presence in large-scale national populations. Evidence from Hofstedes sample of 40 nations shows that the average strength of individualism in each national population was strongly correlated with measures of income equality and press freedom; and from Ingleharts sample of more than 40 nations that when positive social values such as trust are widely shared they produce desirable features of social organization such as economic growth and stable democratic government. The paper considers how far such psychosocial characteristics of national populations are stable or variable. It concludes with a discussion of the uses policymakers make of these distinctive elements of social capital.     

Consumer capture of regulatory institutions: The creation of public utility consumer advocates in the United States

We examine the conditions under which state legislatures in the United States organized public utility consumers during the 1970s and 1980s by creating independent consumer advocates with resources and authority to intervene in public utility rate-making procedures. While economic factors, notably utility fuel cost increases, were important predictors, state political conditions were estimated to have a larger impact on the probability of implementation. We find that the pattern of adoption is consistent with the hypothesis that legislatures deploy institutions as a mechanism for insulating regulatory policies against future reform: in general, Democrat-controlled governments were significantly more likely to implement consumer advocates when they were less certain about being re-elected to office during this period. We find also that the effect of political re-election expectations was particularly acute for the creation of advocates representing solely residential consumers, a relatively disorganized interest group. Our results suggest that legislatures organize and publicly fund interest groups to protect supportive but vulnerable groups against adverse future political environments.     

社会资本理论视角下的社会组织问题研究

政府职能转变是政府在当前社会结构不断调整的条件下所作出的一种应对性举措。作为构建社会主义和谐社会的主要力量之一——社会组织在我国社会建设中发挥的作用不可忽视。在实现＂小政府,大社会＂的目标过程中,正确地认识社会组织在社会发展中存在的问题对于其社会功能的发挥具有重要的指导作用。拟从社会资本的理论视角入手,对当前我国社会组织现存的主要问题进行分析,并针对这些问题给出一些合理化的建议。     

On social capital theory and the Chinese enterprise owner

Chinese is called a ＂human relations first＂ society, naturally, it combines field and social capital theory to study entrepreneur groups. The native research of social capital is advocated earlier in Taiwan. Also, the continent researches have developed on depth and extent. In the future, the social capital will go to analyze more secondary social capital fundament from three perspectives： relational dimension, structural dimension, cognitive dimension.     

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.     

Brown kids in white suburbs: Housing mobility and the many faces of social capital

Abstract

Social capital has many faces in the geography of urban opportunity, and as such, particular housing policies might have positive effects on some forms of social capital and negative effects on others. The author defines social support and social leverage as two key dimensions of social capital that can be accessed by individuals. A sample of 132 low‐income African‐American and Latino adolescents is used to examine the early impacts of a Yonkers, NY, housing mobility program on social capital.¹

Overall, program participants (^‘’movers^‘’) appear to be no more cut off from social support than a control group of “stayer” youth. On the other hand, movers are also no more likely to report access to good sources of job information or school advice— to leverage that might enhance opportunity. Adding just one steadily employed adult to an adolescent's circle of significant ties has dramatic effects on perceived access to such leverage.     

State institutions, political power and social policy choices: Reconstructing the origins of Nordic models of social policy

Abstract.  The origins of the Nordic social policy model(s) need to be viewed broadly and historically from its late nineteenth-century initiation to the immediate postwar period (1940s to the early 1960s), when a social democratic model began to consolidate. In reference to the alternate social policy traditions of British poor relief and German occupational insurance, this article analyzes the sociopolitical contexts that finally prevented Scandinavian states from developing similarly, instead enabling development of universalistic social policy. The historical narratives are arranged with respect to four analytical aspects: policy development; the configuration of state institutions; the strength of liberal, conservative and leftist power blocs; and intra-Nordic divergence in all these respects. Such an approach integrates state-centred and power-resources-focused analyses of Nordic welfare.     

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.     

Investigating the influence of social costs and benefits of environmental policies through social capital theory

The level of effectiveness of an environmental policy depends to a significant degree on the level of acceptance and cooperation of citizens. The relevant literature indicates that social capital may significantly influence environmentally responsible behaviour connected with the implementation of an environmental policy. In this context, the present article aims to further explore this field by introducing the issue of non-economic social costs and benefits imposed from environmental policies. In particular, it is supported, both theoretically and empirically, that social costs and benefits may influence the decision of individuals to cooperate and comply with an environmental policy and thus may be a significant indicator for environmental behaviour. Furthermore, these social costs and benefits may differ among individuals and are influenced by social capital elements. Consequently, through the article the need of exploring social capital prior to environmental policy implementation is underlined along with the need of creating social capital assessment techniques.