Social Capital and Institutional Trust: Evidence from Bolivia's Popular Participation Decentralisation Reforms

This article uses Bolivia's emblematic process of decentralisation (Popular Participation) to explore the elusive relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust, as central components of social capital. The evidence corroborates the notion that basic social interaction and more complex institutional settings are strongly co-related, such as the trust that individuals place in their governments and institutions. The data also shows that social capital has a direct effect on civic activism and political behaviour at the individual level. The notion of social capital is present throughout the analysis as this type of capital allows observing and measuring changes in social structures that affect more complex institutional arrangements.