Region social capital: institutional and social and cultural resources for the development of human capital in the republics of Tyva and Khakassia

Abstract

Social capital, which is considered as a resource of human and physical capital, is increasingly positioned as one of the most significant factors in the development of modern society, especially local, regional, striving, in view of objective reasons and limitations, to use all available development resources. The South Siberian republics of Tyva and Khakassia, which still show low indicators of economic growth and the human development index, rarely fell into the focus of research interest in terms of analyzing the characteristics and dynamics of the functioning of social capital. The article examines the general conceptual approaches and particular methodological developments of domestic and foreign authors to the analysis of social capital. The main goal of the study, which is to analyze the features of the functioning of the components of the regional social capital of the South Siberian republics, is achieved by combining private indicators (index of trust capital, norms and values, social networks). As an empirical basis for the study, we used the results of opinion polls in 2013, 2016 and 2019 in the Republics of Tyva and Khakassia according to a standardized program (sample population: Khakassia — 520 people, Tuva — 290 people). The results of the study allow us to draw a well-grounded conclusion that the strongest component of the region’s social capital is the capital of values and norms, which is a consequence of the formation of a stable norm of tolerance and universal morality system, a stable complementarity of interethnic and cultural relations. The processes of actualization of alternative national identities, the preservation of tension in interethnic relations remain the risk space with low indices of the development of open social capital; decrease in trust and satisfaction with the activities of the authorities and preservation of a predominantly conformist model of social and political behavior of the region inhabitants. The priority of the federal and regional authorities, as well as civil society institutions and local self-government bodies, should be to increase the level of trust in them by the residents of the region.