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Putnam. 1993. Making Democracy Work. Princeton: Princeton Universitiy Press.
*  The conclusion, and Putnam's argument that social capital is a necessary ingredient for government functioning. It's a bit unclear on causality here, which he acknowledges: although the differing patterns of social capital in the north and south are largely due to centuries of history (thus dooming the institutional reform, one might think), Putnam also says that the changed institutions will have a gradual (perhaps imperceptible in the short term) effect on improving social capital.
    * At the same time, he views social capital as simply one of two equilibria: either societies choose "always defect" in their daily collective action problems, or they choose "always return favors," thus building social capital and general trust. Keep in mind: like all equilibria, these are self-reinforcing. That means that saying institutions cause social capital which reinforces institutions isn't necessarily circular; any equilibrium is circular in that sense, since being in the equilibrium increases the probability that you will stay there.


whether or not co-operation takes root will
depend on the pre-existing set of social and political relations in the community and on
the degree of inequality and polarization suffered by society
The topic of the creation of social capital has since been explored at several levels. At the empirical level there have been a number of statistical analyses of the recently-collected data. One such study identified the factors affecting the development of trust as income per person, income distribution, government effectiveness, social cohesion and education
<ref> Paul Zak and Steven Knack: "Trust and Growth", ''Economic Journal'', April 2001</ref>.
<ref>[http://www.econ.ubc.ca/fpatrick/franzabofinal.pdf:  Patrick Francois and  Jan Zabojnik  "Trust, Social Capital and Economic Development", ''Journal of the European Economic Association'', 2005]</ref> (providing a possible explanation of the difficulty of successfully transferring developed countries' production methods to developing countries).
The size of the resource, technology for
exclusion and exploitation of the resource and similar gritty details affect whether
cooperation in commons management arises (Ostrom, 1990: 202-204).
Ostrom, E.
1990 Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective
Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—
1998 A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective
Action. American Political Science Review 92: 1-22. Scientific
findings again correspond well to personal experience. Sometimes we cooperate
enthusiastically, sometimes reluctantly, and sometimes not at all. People vary
considerably in their willingness to cooperate even under the same environmental
conditions.
• Institutions matter. People from different societies behave differently because their
habits have
[http://www.nopecjournal.org/NOPEC_1996_a10.pdf]Fehr, E. and J.-R. Tyran
1996 Institutions and Reciprocal Fairness. Nordic Journal of Political Economy (punishment)
Social Capital: Explaining Its Origins and Effects on
Government Performance
CARLES BOIX AND DANIEL N. POSNER British Journal of Political Science (1998)




Revision as of 08:51, 3 January 2010

Putnam. 1993. Making Democracy Work. Princeton: Princeton Universitiy Press.

  • The conclusion, and Putnam's argument that social capital is a necessary ingredient for government functioning. It's a bit unclear on causality here, which he acknowledges: although the differing patterns of social capital in the north and south are largely due to centuries of history (thus dooming the institutional reform, one might think), Putnam also says that the changed institutions will have a gradual (perhaps imperceptible in the short term) effect on improving social capital.
   * At the same time, he views social capital as simply one of two equilibria: either societies choose "always defect" in their daily collective action problems, or they choose "always return favors," thus building social capital and general trust. Keep in mind: like all equilibria, these are self-reinforcing. That means that saying institutions cause social capital which reinforces institutions isn't necessarily circular; any equilibrium is circular in that sense, since being in the equilibrium increases the probability that you will stay there.


Ostrom, Elinor, 1990, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press).



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