The Social Capital Foundation

Patrick Hunout and the Tripartite Model of Societal Change

Patrick Hunout, a Franco-Belgian researcher and policymaker, created in 1999 The International Scope Review and in 2002 The Social Capital Foundation. His inspiration is both in the sociology of Emile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tönnies and in the more recent contribution of social psychology. A former stage of his work had shown that judicial decisionmaking is only possible to the extent where judges use, beyond the formal legal provisions, impersonal and universal values as decision principles (1985, 1990). His later work explored the formation of what he called a New Leviathan around the hypothesis that the upper class of society seeks to build a new order based on less equality and less democracy. His approach suggests that, contrary to a common view, the strategies carried forward by the New Leviathan link intimately the economic, ethnic, and interpersonal fields.

These strategies consist in developing economic flexibility and precariousness, promoting migrations and a multiethnic society, and pushing forward individualist,hedonist and consumerist values. In a last resort, they design a weak society, enslaved to market values and governmental controls rendered necessary by the increasing incapacity of an atomized social body to manage itself. The strategies carried forward by the ruling class explain most contemporary difficulties; if they would be inverted, a huge improvement would follow. His collectivistic, communitarian inspiration reemerges when he suggests, to counter the strategies of New Leviathan, policies consolidating the community spirit, developing a democratic middle-class centered society, promoting an equitable share of wealth, protecting cultural identity against mass migrations, and strengthening shared values within the social body. These orientations are at the heart of the action of The Social Capital Foundation.