This paper presents evidence that "social capital" matters for measurable economic performance, using indicators of trust and civic norms from the World Values Surveys for a sample of 29 market economies. Memberships in formal groups—Putnam's measure of social capital—is not associated with trust or with improved economic performance. We find trust and civic norms are stronger in nations with higher and more equal incomes, with institutions that restrain predatory actions of chief executives, and with better-educated and ethnically homogeneous populations.

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Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation

http://onemvweb.com/sources/sources/network_structure_social_capital.pdf

The Network Structure Of Social Capital

Science in the Department of Government, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G1 1XQ, UK, email: G.stokerK strathclyde.ac.uk His main research interests are in local government, urban politics, and cross-national policy transfer. Between 1992 and 1997 he was Director of the ESRC Local Governance Research Programme. He has authored or edited over a dozen books. His two most recent publications are: Rethinking Local Democracy, 1996 (edited with D. King) and The Privatisation of Urban Services in Europe, 1997 (edited with D. Lorrain). Governance as theory: five propositions

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Governance as theory: five propositions

Both individual experiences and community characteristics influence how much people trust each other. Using individual level data drawn from US localities we find that the strongest factors associated with low trust are: i) a recent history of traumatic experiences; ii) belonging to a group that historically felt discriminated against, such as minorities (blacks in particular) and, to a lesser extent, women; iii) being economically unsuccessful in terms of income and education; iv) living in a racially mixed community and/or in one with a high degree of income disparity. Religious beliefs and ethnic origins do not significantly affect trust. The role of racial cleavages leading to low trust is confirmed when we explicitly account for individual preferences on inter-racial relationships: within the same community, individuals who express stronger feelings against racial integration trust relatively less the more racially heterogeneous the community is.

Who Trusts Others

This paper studies what determines group formation and the degree of participation when the population is heterogeneous, both in terms of income and race or ethnicity We are especially interested in whether and how much the degree of heterogeneity in communities influences the amount of participation in different types of groups Using survey data on group membership and data on U S localities, we find that, after controlling for many individual characteristics, participation in social activities is significantly lower in more unequal and in more racially or ethnically fragmented localities We also find that those individuals who express views against racial mixing are less prone to participate in groups the more racially heterogeneous their community is These results are consistent with our model of group formation

Participation in Heterogeneous Communities

All too thoughtlessly and all too commonly democracy has come to be regarded as being a one-way proposition — just an intangible “something” which somehow automatically establishes and guards individual freedom, individual rights, and individual privileges. That this careless point of view may be understandable makes it no less tragic and at least potentially devastating. True democracy connotes co-operation and interdependence — a definite responsibility for each citizen if there is to be any democracy. There must be a general awakening — “or else!”

Howard Coonley

Papers

Making democracy work