The Contribution of Volunteering, Trust, and Networks to Educational Performance

Social capital can have a beneficial effect on public policy outcomes by helping to solve collective action problems and by providing individuals and communities with efficient social networks. In education, it also assists students' self-confidence, which can foster motivation and academic success. To investigate the social capital-outcome link, this article analyzes a panel survey of 15–16 and 16–17 year olds in 27 English schools, testing whether social capital, both at the individual and at the school levels, tends to increase grades and examination performance. The analysis concludes that individual-level trust and voluntary action improve pupil performance, but that the parental networks of some young people, particularly those from low socioeconomic status families, have negative rather than positive consequences. The findings add to a debate about the differential impact of social capital and the relative importance of its bridging and its bonding elements.     

Cooperation without Trust: Overcoming Collective Action Barriers to Endangered Species Protection

Mutual trust among individuals is frequently cited as an important factor in encouraging collective action, particularly in environmental policy settings. Yet the precise role of trust in the collective action process remains uncertain. This article explores the hypothesis that trust is overrated as a cause of cooperation. It initially tests this hypothesis through two case studies of voluntary collective action in a new context: the creation of multiactor Habitat Conservation Plans to protect endangered species. The two cases suggest that institutional mechanisms and political leadership can play an important role in encouraging collective action without relying on trust among cooperators. Besides their theoretical implications, the results suggest policymakers might spend more energy on creating incentives and assurance mechanisms to encourage collaboration, rather than the potentially fruitless task of building of social capital among rival stakeholders.     

集群社会资本对乡村民宿企业成长的影响研究——以丹霞山两村为例

采用质性研究方法,以丹霞山两村为例,探析集群社会资本对乡村民宿企业成长的影响机制。研究发现：集群社会资本由个体社会资本（企业纵向联系、市场网络和个人资源）和集体社会资本（社区合作网络和公共资源）构成。乡村民宿获取个体社会资本的存量取决于关系质量和关系数量,前者有利于降低成本、增加异质资源,后者能够补足企业综合性基础;乡村民宿吸纳集体社会资本的程度在于资源共享度和网络紧密度,前者决定了集体资源的存量,后者制约着民宿吸收转化集体资源的程度。个体社会资本影响企业的初创和生存,集体社会资本制约或促进企业的持续发展,两者相互作用共同影响企业成长。从集群社会资本视角可深化理解乡村民宿企业成长的机理,为我国乡村民宿业发展乃至乡村振兴路径提供指导。     

公共服务设施可达性、个人社会资本与居民心理健康——基于北京的实证研究

利用2018年来自北京的问卷调查数据,本文探讨了公共服务设施可达性、个人社会资本及其交互作用对居民心理健康的影响。研究发现：公共服务设施可达性对心理健康具有显著的正向影响,且对新市民的影响更突出。个人社会资本中密切交往的网络规模、从社会网络中获取经济支持两个维度对其心理健康有显著正向作用,但在新市民和本地市民群体间不存在显著差异。个人社会资本能够强化公共服务设施可达性对心理健康的正向影响。本文验证了社会生态学的健康促进模型的相关假设,即外部环境特征和个人社会资本相互嵌套共同影响个人健康水平。鉴于此,健康城市规划需兼顾“硬件”与“软件”层面,既要构建公平正义的空间环境,还需加强社会资本和社会组织培育。     

Firm-level productivity growth returns of social capital: Evidence from Western Europe

We analyze the firm-level labor productivity growth returns of social capital—defined as a synthetic measure of “generalized trust,” “active participation,” and “social norms”—using a large sample of manufacturing firms in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. We find that firms' labor productivity growth is higher in areas with a better social capital endowment. The positive returns of social capital are, nevertheless, unevenly distributed across firms, with smaller, less productive, less capital-endowed, and low-tech firms benefitting the most from operating in strong social capital ecosystems.     

The Impact of Privatization on Land Inheritance among Samburu Pastoralists in Kenya

Privatization of communal land among a community of pastoralists in northern Kenya creates a gap in social institutions relating to land inheritance. This analysis shows that the emergence of a new rule for inheritance is a complex social process and that new rules do not arise automatically. Using theories of institutions and collective action, this study examines the process through which rules of inheritance are emerging in Siambu since land privatization. Drawing on in‐depth interviews, observations and household surveys, this study reveals why collective action around inheritance norms has been difficult to achieve. In the absence of such action, no single norm of inheritance has emerged. Rather, several different practices currently co‐exist. A considerable amount of evidence suggests that livestock inheritance rules that favour eldest sons will become the norm for land as well, but there are also reasons to doubt this outcome. What this case demonstrates is that institutional gaps are not necessarily or automatically filled; institutions do not simply arise when needed. When collective action fails, multiple practices and norms may co‐exist leading to a certain degree of institutional instability.     

The Effects of Risk,Beliefs, and Trust in Education Policy Networks: The Case of Autism and Special Education

There are multiple theoretical accounts of how actors address problems of collective action in policy networks, but the two most prominent hypotheses are the risk and belief homophily hypotheses. The risk hypothesis claims that relational structures (e.g., bridging, bonding) depend on the benefits actors receive from uncooperative behavior, while the belief homophily hypothesis claims that relational ties form around shared policy beliefs. This study incorporates the case of autism and special education policy, a subsystem best characterized by Berardo and Scholz's (2010) conceptualization of a low-risk environment, to test hypotheses about the influence of risk, policy beliefs, and trust on the formation on relational ties in education policy networks. Utilizing data from a 2016 network survey of public and private special education stakeholders in Virginia, results from exponential random graph models provide support for the effects of bridging structures, beliefs related to the medical model of disability, and social trust on strong (collaboration) and weak (information/advice) relational ties in policy networks. The findings reinforce the importance of using policy networks to understand how actors build connections across multiple jurisdictions and policy sectors to mitigate problems of coordination in policy decision making and implementation.     

European Integration and Industrial Relations: A Case of Variable Geometry?

This contribution considers the implications for industrial relations of European economic integration, and possible trade union responses. We can understand industrial relations as institutions and processes of social regulation of work and employment, whether by law, collective bargaining or more diffuse norms and standards (often, a combination of all three). These systems of worker protection became consolidated at national level; their foundations are eroded by increasing economic internationalisation (to which the European single market was a response, but which it further reinforced). Through the dynamic of "regime competition", multinational capital can play off national governments and national trade unions against one another, while norms of worker protection are subverted by growing insistence on "shareholder value". Effective regulation of work and employment must be reconstructed transnationally; but most trade union energy has been devoted to a vain pursuit of European analogues of national legislation and collective agreements within a bureaucratic elite process of "social dialogue". What is needed is, first, effective articulation between European-level trade union action and the day-to-day realities of national and workplace trade unionism, and second, a struggle to create a European civil society within which the protection of workers' rights can win popular support and which can sustain effective collective mobilisation.     

社区社会资本对居住满意度的影响——基于北京市中低收入社区调查的实证分析

居住满意度是居民对所居住的住房和社区宜居性的综合评价。尽管近年来,中国的城市地理学者开始关注城市重构与居住分异背景对社区邻里关系、社会互动及居民的社区满意度的影响,已有研究对社区社会资本与居住满意度之间因果机制的探讨,缺乏合理的指标构建和实证依据。本文结合城市社会学、地理学和政治学相关理论,构建了一套适合于中国城市转型背景的社区社会资本指标体系,通过对北京市九个中低收入社区的实证研究表明,社区社会资本与居住满意度有显著的正向关系,然而,尽管低收入居民对于邻里信任因素的重视大于对社区组织的信任、邻里互助和共同价值,其在社会资本的几个维度中得分最低。因此,打破社区内的分异与隔阂,建立邻里信任,应当成为社区社会资本建设中首先解决的问题。     

Social capital determinants and labor market networks

We explore the links between determinants of social capital and labor market networks at the neighborhood level. We harness rich data taken from multiple sources, including matched employer–employee data with which we measure the strength of labor market networks, data on neighborhood homogeneity that has previously been tied to social capital, and new data—not previously used in the study of social capital—on the number and location of nonprofit sector establishments at the neighborhood level. We use a machine learning algorithm to identify the potential determinants of social capital that best predict neighborhood‐level variation in labor market networks. We find evidence suggesting that smaller and less centralized schools, and schools with fewer poor students, foster social capital that builds local labor market networks, as does a larger Republican vote share. The presence of establishments in a number of nonprofit‐oriented industries are identified as predictive of strong labor market networks, likely because they either provide public goods or facilitate social contacts. These industries include, for example, churches and other religious institutions, fire and rescue services including volunteer fire departments, country clubs and golf courses, labor unions, chamber music groups, hobby clubs, and schools.     

Tackling the Down Side: Social Capital,Women’s Empowerment and Micro‐Finance in Cameroon

Micro‐finance programmes are currently dominated by the ‘financial self‐sustainability paradigm’ where women’s participation in groups is promoted as a key means of increasing financial sustainability while at the same time assumed to automatically empower them. This article examines the experience of seven micro‐finance programmes in Cameroon. The evidence indicates that micro‐finance programmes which build social capital can indeed make a significant contribution to women’s empowerment. However, serious questions need to be asked about what sorts of norms, networks and associations are to be promoted, in whose interests, and how they can best contribute to empowerment, particularly for the poorest women. Where the complexities of power relations and inequality are ignored, reliance on social capital as a mechanism for reducing programme costs may undermine programme aims not only of empowerment but also of financial sustainability and poverty targeting.     

Beyond the Learning Region: A New Direction for Conceptualizing the Relation between Space and Learning

The learning region has been unsuccessful in delivering its main ambition of conceptualizing the relation between space and learning. Taking the region as the level of analysis biased the learning region towards learning in regional networks up to the point where it conflates regions with networks. As learning is a process of social interaction between individuals, innovation networks of individuals are suggested as the alternate level of analysis. The spatial dimension of innovation networks is two-fold. Their reach may vary between the local and the global. Second, regional social capital and norms and values affect learning as they are brought into the networks by spatially sticky individuals.     

Network topologies as collective social capital in cities and regions: a critical review of empirical studies

This paper outlines a theoretical framework to study collective social capital at the local scale using social network analysis. To do so, it develops a review on empirical research that found evidence regarding the impact of networks on the performance of cities and regions. Eight network topologies are identified with collective social capital: size and composition, connectivity, closeness, clustering, small world, openness, centralization and heterophily. The paper inquires into the effects of these properties concluding that they influence two aspects that are highly relevant for territorial development: they facilitate the diffusion of information and they foster cooperation among actors. Results help tracing roots among three different academic fields: literature on social capital, local and regional economics, and social network analysis. Furthermore, the article suggests a framework to obtain relevant conclusions regarding political and economic aspects of territorial capacities.     

Polycentricity and the Hollow State: Exploring Shared Personnel as a Source of Connectivity in Fragmented Urban Systems

The Ecology of Games (EoG) theory couples institutional rational choice with social network theory, articulating how transaction costs, social capital, and collective action dilemmas shape networks and network outcomes in polycentric governance systems. EoG literature has often focused on social–relational ties across organizational boundaries. However, jurisdictional fragmentation and increased reliance on private contractors in local public service delivery foster another source of network connectivity—shared personnel who work for multiple service providers. Drawing upon novel data of organizational personnel from more than 500 special purpose entities responsible for delivering drinking water to local neighborhoods in the Houston metro area in the state of Texas (United States), we examine how managerial, technical, and financial service delivery personnel connect otherwise independent organizations. We find that districts regulated by a common groundwater management agency and districts which contract with one another are both more likely to share technical and managerial personnel. By studying special districts that have overlapping personnel, we broaden the scope of the EoG framework to include additional layers of governance network complexity. As individual bureaucrats and service professionals play a key role in information transfer and innovation diffusion across organizations, shared personnel networks merit consideration as a mechanism for coordination and collective problem solving in fragmented urban systems.     

Tackling Social Exclusion: The Role of Social Capital in Urban Regeneration on Merseyside — From Mistrust to Trust?

In recent years community involvement and increasingly social capital have become central themes in debates and policies surrounding urban regeneration. This paper attempts to contribute to these debates by reviewing the role of social capital in the context of a major regeneration initiative, namely the European Union-sponsored Objective One Programme, currently underway on Merseyside. The paper argues that it is important to show how social capital is formed through the 'scaling-up' of local associational relationships, networks and institutions, to wider power structures and relations. Trust amongst participants is central to this process. Two areas on Merseyside are used as case studies to illustrate the argument. The paper concludes that the active development of trust and the social relationships surrounding it needs to be central to the process of urban regeneration.     

Social and political trust in Istanbul and Moscow: a comparative analysis of individual and neighbourhood effects

Aiming to bring local context into studies of social capital, our study uses samples of 4006 individuals in Istanbul and 3476 in Moscow using a comparable questionnaire. The stratification of each city's neighbourhoods on the basis of socio-economic characteristics provided the basis for the sampling. Using a multilevel modelling procedure, we show both that locality matters (neighbourhood effect proved significant) and that social capital may indeed be constituted in very particular ways in illiberal democracies such as Russia and Turkey. Social and political trust are frequently thought to contribute to social capital – that is, to provide social resources upon which individuals or groups may draw for their political efficacy. Trust in fellow citizens in Istanbul exhibits a positive relationship to associational activities (joining clubs etc.), while in Moscow social trust can be explained predominantly in terms of (lower) socio-economic status. At the same time, important similarities emerged between the two cases. For social trust, in both cities the 'cosmopolitanization thesis', which holds that those who associate more widely are also more trusting of fellow citizens, generally applied. Further, in both cities, residents with lower socio-economic status (though in Moscow this is complicated by education) and lower likelihoods of engagement in direct political action were more trustful of parliament . While this is the opposite of what we have been led to expect based on Western democratic polities, it is a reasonable outcome of illiberal democratic governance operating in these two cities.     

IS SOCIAL CAPITAL USEFUL FOR EXPLAINING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN POLISH REGIONS?

The concept of social capital is widely perceived as a promising tool for explaining differences in economic development between countries and regions. According to this theory, weak links (bridging social capital) and social trust in an area favour its better access to other forms of capital, that is, economic and human capital. However, strong links (bonding social capital) may stifle creativity and entrepreneurship. Since the vast majority of research on the impact of social capital on economic development focuses on highly developed Western European countries, it seems particularly interesting to evaluate the usefulness of this approach when applied to post‐communist countries with their different experiences. The objective of this article is to identify the spatial variation of different forms of social capital in regions of Poland and then to test a hypothesis on the impact of this capital on regional economic development. The results demonstrate that despite the existing differences between regions there are no significant relationships between levels of social capital and economic development. This may be explained either by low social capital levels or by the overall degree of Polish economic development.     

Who Can Govern? Comparing Network Governance Leadership in Two Norwegian City Regions

What social and structural mechanisms determine where hands-on leadership of city-region governance networks is anchored? In this article, we discuss the origin of city-region governance leadership in two Norwegian city regions. Based on empirical analysis, we argue that variations in terms of leadership practices cannot be fully explained in terms of levels of trust, social capital and institutional set-up. Issues related to how power is institutionalized needs to be explored and explained in order to improve our understanding of processes associated with the construction of leadership of governance networks. We also recognize that where this type of leadership is anchored can have important implications for both regional economic development as well as defining the qualities of local democracy.     

Crime,collective action and development

Starting from a definition of criminal activity for economic purposes broader than the criminological concept of economic crime, and from an assessment of its empirical importance, the article considers: 1) the relationship between criminal behaviour and economic behaviour, on the hypothesis that criminal activity can in large part be viewed as a component of the broader category of economic activity;the negative effects of crime on the performance of markets and economic systems; The basic hypothesis is that when the social damage caused by crime is assessed, and consequently when the suitability and extent of punitive action is evaluated, the costs/benefits analysis must be extended to include the structural repercussions of crime on collective action and on the supply of public goods. This signifies that a substantial part of the harmful effects of crime affects the long-term competitiveness of local areas or systems, in particular by acting on the so-called non-material production factors, such as human capital, social capital and entrepreneurship. This consequence is particularly serious where the organized crime is able to exert control over a given territory and influence its patterns of development.     

Uncertainty, Risk, Trust, and Information: Public Perceptions of Environmental Issues and Willingness to Take Action

Environmental policymaking has remained an important issue in American public policy for many years. While many individuals have proenvironmental attitudes, they remain unwilling to take the actions necessary to achieve environmental goals. Many variables have been used to explain support for environmental policymaking. This study looks at the effect of uncertainty about environmental quality, perception of risk from environmental hazards, and trust in government and university scientists on willingness to take environmental action. The study examines the impact of these three variables on two environmental issues—tap water and nuclear power. The data were collected from a national sample of 400 individuals. This article presents the results of this research and examines the complex relationships among risks, trust, uncertainty, and willingness to take environmental action. The conclusions improve our understanding of environmental attitudes as well as have practical implications for policymakers who need to build public support for policies designed to improve the environment.