User:Nick Gardner /Sandbox
Social capital is believed to come into being by the process termed emergence by which a complex interactive system[1] can transform itself from chaos to order. The initial position is taken to be similar to the "state of nature" envisaged by Thomas Hobbes in which there is a constant "war of all against all". That condition is taken to be analagous to the prisoner's dilemma parable [2] of games theory, in which both participants suffer unnecessarily because neither trusts the other. Emergence from that condition is taken to commence when the two protagonists interact repeatedly and arrive by trial and error at a mutually beneficial evolutionary stable strategy that once is established is likely to persist. Experiments with human participants have shown that mutually beneficial strategies involving trust do tend to emerge, and that their stability tends to be promoted by an urge to punish defectors. Social capital then emerges in the form of expectations that others will reciprocate in response to co-operative initiatives; and it can spread through the community as more and more people become aware of the advantages of cooperation.
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 . Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
Social Capital: Explaining Its Origins and Effects on
Government Performance
CARLES BOIX AND DANIEL N. POSNER British Journal of Political Science (1998)