Social Capital: Summing up the Debate on a Conceptual Tool of Comparative Politics and Public Policy

Abstract

Social capital, defined as a combination of generalized trust and access to networks, has become a key concept in the sciences in recent decades because it correlates with normatively desirable qualitative features of liberal democracy, such as functioning demo cratic institutions, increased levels of civicness and citizens' participation in and/or public life, and, most importantly, with increased levels of performance in several public policy areas, such as education, health, development, and public policy at large. The rele vance of capital to good governance and almost all areas of public policy draws on its capacity for resolving dilemmas of collective action, such as the provision of various public goods, and avoiding a situation Bo Rothstein describes as social trap.1 There is strong evidence that capital contributes not only to public policy achievements but to improving the performance of democratic institutions and democracy at large. The already huge and expanding literature and research on capital over the last fifteen years has been dominated by a fundamental and crucial theoretical dichotomy. On the one hand, the cultural/historical approach views capital as an independent variable embedded in and generated by culturally and historically determined networks of civic en gagement (that is, associations, civil society organizations) that affect public policy outcomes. On the other hand, the institutionalist approach conceptualizes capital as an intervening variable crucially influenced by formal institutional structures of the polity, such as the wel fare state, in conjunction with other variables, such as equality and homogeneity, and affect ing in turn the quality of governance and public policy outcomes at large. The former approach is characterized by the logic of path dependence and therefore attributes much of the origins of capital to history. Conversely, the latter approach takes into account the role of important humanly constructed devices, such as institutions and equality. This article considers this theoretical dichotomy, as well as the determinant and outcome variables of capital, through a review and assessment of recent scholarly contributions to the debate.