Social Capital as a Policy Resource

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1 Social Capital as a Policy Resource Edited by John D. Montgomery and Alex Inkeles Reprinted from Policy Sciences, Volume 33, Nos. 3 & 4 (2000) Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V... ~. ~ Pacific Basin Research Center Soka University of America

2 Foreword v John D. Montgomery / Social capital as a policy resource... 1 Alex Inkeles / Measuring social capital and its consequences Xiangming Chen / Both glue and lubricant: Transnational ethnic social capital as a source of Asia-Pacific subregionalism Mary C. Brinton / Social capital in the Japanese youth labor market: Labor market policy, schools, and norms Jeffrey P. Broadbent / Social capital and labor politics in Japan: Cooperation or cooptation? Zhou Yongming / Social capital and power: Entrepreneurial elite and the state in contemporary China Bill Taylor / Trade unions and social capital in transitional communist states: The case of China Christopher Candland / Faith as social capital: Religion and community development in Southern Asia Haunani-Kay Trask / Native social capital: The case of Hawaiian sovereignty and Ka Lahui Hawaii Charles H. Norchi / Indigenous knowledge as intellectual property Jonathan Fox and John Gershman / The World Bank and social capital: Lessons from ten rural development projects in the Philippines and Mexico Benjamin R. Quinones Jr. and Hans Dieter Seibel/Social capital in microfinance: Case studies in the Philippines Thomas F. Carroll and Anthony J. Bebbington / Peasant federations and rural development policies in the Andes Abdul Hye Mondal / Social capital formation: The role of NGO rural development programs in Bangladesh John M. Heffron / Beyond community and society: The externalities of social capital building About the authors Index The editors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Pacific Basin Research Center of Soka University of America for the generation of this research and the preparation of this volume.

3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Social capital as a policy resource / edited by John D. Montgomery, Alex Inkeles. p.cm. 'Policy Sciences, vol. 33, nos. 3 and ' Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Social participation - Cross-cultural studies. 2. Community life - Cross-cultural studies. 3. Social networks - Cross-cultural studies. 4. Social groups - Cross-cultural studies. I. Montgomery, John D., II. Inkeles, Alex, III. Policy Sciences. Special Issue. HM771. S dc ISBN All Rights Reserved 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2001 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

4 Policy Sciences 33: v-viii, Kluwer Academic Publishers. v Foreword These studies emerged out of a series of grants from the Pacific Basin Research Center of Soka University of America. Their purpose has been to consider the kinds of policies surrounding the existence and formation of social capital in a variety of contexts. The scholars who were engaged in the project were encouraged to follow their own preferred methodologies as they pursued different lines of inquiry, so that the variety of approaches they took would enlarge our understanding of the issues. In order to establish a common base of inquiry over the three-year cycle, we began with a few definitions, which we discussed and revised in our annual seminars. We decided to work within generally accepted conceptions of social capital as described by Coleman, Putnam, and their critics (see references). As a working statement, we defined social capital as 'enduring social relationships of trust and reciprocity that enhance a group's capacity to coordinate actions of its members as they work toward a collective good' (this paraphrase follows the definition of the World Bank's web site, We proceeded by concentrating on social capital as a policy resource, focusing on aspects that contributed to 'the cumulative capacity of individuals and social groups to work together for a common good.' This approach encouraged us to concentrate on several special features that are sometimes overlooked in studies of social capital as a by-product of history or of a favorable policy environment. We would consider the concept of 'cumulative capacity' to test several assumptions that are not explicit in the literature: (1) that the stock of social capital was not constant, but rather that it could deteriorate when at rest and enlarge its potential when at work, and (2) that it could increase, decline, or change its character in response to policy actions and other exogenous developments. A question of special interest, then, was to be how policymakers, both public and private, could use social capital to produce benefits that could be shared or reinvested, yielding 'interest' or 'dividends' resembling those of other forms of capital (Coleman, 1988; Fukuyama, 1995; Fox and Brown, 1998: pp ; Rich, 1999; Putnam, 2000). The 'social groups' we would study could include many kinds of entities - industrial organizations, trade and agricultural unions, peace movements, organized ethnic units, nongovernmental organizations engaged in welfare activities, ecumenical collaborations, institutions of the public arts and other leisure and entertainment activities, and even 'virtual' communities that create social capital by sharing access to media and interacting with it. Our expectation was that studies of specific group behavior would show whether the use of the groups' social capital enhanced political

5 vi purposes, improved social solidarity, increased individual benefits, contributed to human capital, or had other consequences (Norris, 2000, Chapter 6; Schwartz, 1996; Budge, 1996; Rheingold, 1993). We would distinguish the concept of 'a common good' from 'the common good,' in that our interest in the consequences of social capital formation would not necessarily refer to 'the good of all groups or individuals,' but only that of identifiable participants. Our examination of group experience was to explore the implications of cases where some individuals would benefit from activities that detracted from the general social good, or the reverse; we were interested in what would happen if some groups flourished at the expense of the public supply of social capital. We recognized that there would be cases where there would be groups that discouraged cooperation with others, thus fragmenting society or otherwise 'subtracting' from the sum total of generic social capital. We recognized that cooperation among social groups could be interpreted as a distinct form of social capital, i. e., one that lay beyond that of the individual organizations working in isolation. We accepted the possibility that links among these groups could help them enlarge their individual capacity to participate in collective action by bonding with each other, and that they could also contribute to conflict resolution by bridging differences between and among them (Lasswell, 1935, Ch. II, IV; Putnam, 2000). These issues were discussed and amended in annual seminars in 1997, 1998, and 1999, as the PBRC grantees considered them in terms of their own research. We did not require the grantees to follow them rigorously, and as a result some of the chapters we have assembled in this collection of papers have explored facets that we did not anticipate in developing these definitions. We attempted to bring them into comparable form, however, during our final conference in Berlin in May The chapters selected for inclusion in this book were those that offered the most direct evidence about policy uses of social capital; other papers are being published elsewhere. This collection is intended to provide answers to fundamental questions involving that relationship: Are there different kinds of social capital that serve policy purposes? Does the social capital of a group change when members are persuaded to work together for purposes that deviate from those of the group itself? Do groups increase their social capital when they join with other groups to serve an external cause? How do group leaders seek to strengthen the commitment and loyalty of members? How do political leaders make use of social capital to implement policies that require public cooperation?

6 Vll John Heffron's concluding chapter summarizes some of the answers that we discovered during the research. Other papers developed under this research cycle are available through the Pacific Basin Research Center (c/o Professor John D. Montgomery, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138). The research projects that led to the production of these chapters are listed below. In some cases, the projects were group efforts. Mary C. Brinton, 'Social capital in the Japanese youth labor markets.' Jeffrey Broadbent, 'Does favor trading garner influence or facilitate politics? Networks of reciprocity in Japanese and U.S. policy-making processes.' John C. Campbell, 'Losing faith in politics? Trends in citizen attitudes and behavior in Japan and the United States.' Christopher Candland, 'Community action groups as vehicles for social capital formation: Comparative investigations in Southern Asia.' Thomas F. Carroll, 'Strengthening rural federations through interinstitutional linkages: Lessons for positive social capital formation from the Andes.' Xiangming Chen, 'The role of aggregate social capital in the formation of Asia-Pacific transborder subregions.' William K. Cummings, 'Building bridges of understanding and belief in the Pacific Rim.' Jonathan A. Fox, 'The impact of the World Bank's sustainable development reforms on social capital formation in the Philippines and Mexico.' Alex Inkeles, 'Modernizing experiences in Chinese factories'; 'Youth attitudes as a precondition of social capital formation'; 'Adolescent values as social capital: A cross-national comparison.' Yoonmi Lee, 'Constructing a new national identity: Discourses of unification in South Korean education.' Minghong Lu, 'Value changes and policy implications: Business education in China'; 'Re-employment as social capital in China: A dynamic perspective.' Chin-ju Mao, 'Constructing a Taiwanese identity: The making and practice of indigenization curriculum.' Catherine Marshall, 'Gender equity values in education policy: Crossnational comparisons.' Abdul Hye Mondal, 'The diffusion of core human values: The role of the NGO educational programs in Bangladesh.' Charles Norchi, 'Copyright as social capital investment: The case of India.' Murray Print, 'The impact of values, policy and civics education in Pacific Rim countries.' Benjamin Quinones, 'Social capital formation in microfinance.' Heidi Ross and Jing Lin, 'The material school: Social capital formation and stratification in Chinese secondary education.'

7 Vlll Jai Sen, 'Strategic alliance? Social capital in the narmada campaigns: A comparative analysis of the dynamics of "internationalization.", Bill Taylor, 'The changing role of China's official trade unions: A comparison with Russia.' Carlos Alberto Torres, 'Teachers' organizations, the state and society in the Pacific Rim: Value conflicts and collaborative strategies in educational reform.' Haunani-Kay Trask, 'Sovereignty movement for social justice and selfdetermination among Hawaiians.' Yongming Zhou, 'Social capital and power: Entrepreneurial elite and the state in contemporary China.' References Budge, I. (1996). The New Challenge of Direct Democracy. Oxford: Polity Press. Coleman, J. S. (1988). 'Social capital in the creation of human capital,' American Journal ()fsociology 94 (Supplement), S95-S120. Fox, J. A. and L. D. Brown (1998). The Struggle for Accountahility, The World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fukuyama, F. (1995). Ii'ust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press. Lasswell, H. D. (1935; 1965). World Politics and Personal Insecurity. New York: Free Press. Norris, P. (2000). A Virtuous Circle, Political Communications in Post-Industrial Democracies. New York: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Rheingo1d, H. (1993). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Rich, P. (1999). 'American voluntarism, social capital, and political culture,' Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 565, Schwartz, E. A. (1996). NetActivism: How Citizens Use the Internet. Sebastapol, CA: Songline Studios.

Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture

SOLIDARITY Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture VOLUMES Series Editor H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine. Houston. Texas. and