Social Capital: Promise and Pitfalls of its Role in Development

Sede de la CEPAL en Santiago (Estudios e Investigaciones), 2001

This document was prepared by John Durston, consultant with the Social Development Division of ECLAC and has been reproduced without formal editing. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Organization. The author wishes to express his gratitude to the following colleagues for their comments and suggestions:

2007

Este informe se publica con el único objeto de contribuir al debate sobre un tema de importancia para los países de la región. Su publicación por este medio tiene como propósito generar comentarios y sugerencias de las personas interesadas en el tema. El informe no ha sido sometido a un proceso independiente de revisión ni ha sido estudiado por el Grupo gerencial del Departamento de Desarrollo Sostenible. Tampoco representa la posición oficial del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. Las opiniones expresadas en el documento son de los autores y no coinciden necesariamente con la posición oficial del BID o de su Directorio Ejecutivo. Los comentarios deben dirigirse a Marco Ferroni (marcof@iadb.org) Mercedes Mateo (mercedesma@iadb.org), Mark Payne (markpa@iadb.org) 2 Abstract Intended as a contribution to the discussion of the relevance of social capital and social cohesion to Latin American development, this paper treats the two as assets for development and the creation of welfare. The paper defines the concepts, including their uses and limitations, and analyzes some of the key relationships involved. It also introduces an index of social cohesion and presents evidence of positive linkages between levels of social cohesion and development-related outcomes such as growth, investment and innovation capacity, governmental effectiveness, the quality of public policies, and the predictability of the policy environment. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the choice of policies and public action.

2011

Economic theory has proposed and discussed a lot of possible factors or explanations that promote or foster economic development. One of these gathers specific discussions from other Social Sciences, incorporating social, cultural, religious, institutional and political dimensions – and among them, the idea of 'social capital'. Although the discussion held by Putnam on the benefits of association, civic involvement and interpersonal trust is extremely rich, this paper incorporates the discussion advocated by the World Bank, and the central ideas of Woolcock and Narayan papers, since they extend the scope of analysis, making what is called 'synergic vision' of social capital. These authors consider that 'social capital does not exist in a political vacuum', ie there is no way to separate the elements that characterize the social and the political and institutional elements that surround it. The ‘community social capital’ of Putnam cannot be underst...

REVISTA DE ESTUDIOS REGIONALES Nº 113, 2018

This article proposes an analytical framework to study local development as a socio-territorial project based on local social capital. Grounded on local endogenous development literature, social capital theories and social network analysis methodologies, the article proposes three hypotheses describing inter-organisational network properties required for the construction of a socio-territorial Development project: basic pre-conditions for local development must exist, in terms of agglomeration economies and density of interactions (H1), local organisations must display central positions in territorial networks (H2), and relations between organisations must be the result of territorial, rather than sectoral, motivations (H3). Using data from a field work carried out in 2014, these requirements are analysed for the case of Punta del Este-Maldonado-San Carlos, an urban region in South-East Uruguay. The results show that the case studied presents favourable conditions for the existence of a socio-territorial development project. Yet, there has been found some weaknesses regarding the scarce integration of social organisations into networks. Based on these results, the article suggests policy recommendations aiming to promote a socio-territorial project for local development.

Social capital is a flawed theoretical construct. Empirical studies of social capital often compound the theoretical problems with flawed operationalization and model specification. Nevertheless, there are some useful ideas and some meaningful empirical findings. This critical review of the literature demonstrates what is wrong with the selected empirical literature and what is missing in terms of a wider political perspective. This paper also identifies the few ideas and empirical techniques worth saving and using in future research that recognizes the role of social relations in the development process.

2006

The eruption of Social Capital as a concept in the 1990 ́s and its implications for economic development has not been accompanied with the emergence of practical, as well as scientifically valid measuring instruments. The measurements would help weigh policy alternatives and help in the design of interventions and the evaluation of their implementation. This article (note1) will describe a full cycle of nation-wide measurements of Social Capital (SC) in Colombia, as well as the design of policies and programs and their evaluation in Bogotá, all directed to increase SC. Such an ambitious project will simultaneously be discussed as directed to generate a society-wide dialogue on SC and the ever present limitations of implementation.

Progress in Development Studies, 2008

The eruption of Social Capital (SC) as a concept in the 1990´s and its implications for economic development has not been accompanied with the emergence of practical as well as scientifically valid instruments to measure it. This article describes the development of one such instrument: the barometer of Social Capital (Barcas). Besides SC, this instrument measures another factor found: Faith in Unvalidated Sources of Information (FUSI) in ten dimensions related to those factors as well as the variables that build into them. With these it was possible to analyze Colombia’s SC and compare it with other nations as the Barcas is built with elements of the World Value Survey. With the results of this analysis policies were implemented in Bogotá to, socially and politically, construct the sub municipal localities. These policies included participatory planning and political maps to establish the representation of these localities in the Municipal Council and its accountability. Additionally, to gauge the civic society that should exert social control on the local governments its density and articulation was measured. Although the downward trend identified since 1997 was not reversed, it was possible to detect two instances of positive change, one at the cultural sector and one in the locality of Antonio Nariño. The implication of this cycle of measurement, policy design, implementation and evaluation are discussed in the light of the establishment of a public sphere on the practice of SC’s development.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the composition and level of consolidation of Social Capital quantified through the Trust and Solidarity, the Collective Action, and the connection and the Social Inclusion in the town of Navojoa. Through the Analysis of Principal Components were identified the principal variables which form the Social Capital. After determined the components, it was adapted to the local context the questionnaire that develop the World Bank. Subsequently was made and validated a structural model to test the causal relations proposals between the variables object to analysis. The results obtained evidenced that the Social Capital is vulnerable and it have a poor develop, which encourage the increase of high rates of violence, poverty, job insecurity and marginalization, that obstruct the regional develop. The governmental implications are design social policies that allow a pacific coexistence and encourage the economic develop and social of the region.

2004

This research project was carried out with three principle objectives. First, I provide a primer investigation of what social capital means and examine its possible relevance in the discipline of economics and I highlight some of the numerous conceptual debates surrounding the theory. Secondly, I shed light on the historical progression and time line for the implications of social capital. That is, where we were in the past, where we are at the current time and where we (as economists) are possibly heading with this into the future. Lastly, I highlight some of the major challenges in applying an empirical methodology to social capital, without having to carry out any new empirical research work-an intensive and oftentimes extensive and time consuming undertaking-which is not likely to add much to this project. This report is a primer on social capital and its links to economics and development policy. The attempt is to simply and effectively isolate issues of past debate and the current major successes and failures in the attempt to integrate social capital into meaningful policy. More importantly, this report explores possible answers to the question: Does social capital have a contribution to make in the current efforts at formulating economic policies to address poverty?