Original scientific paper
CONCEPT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS
Berto Šalaj
orcid.org/0000-0002-9913-8477
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The author looks into one of the most important concepts in the last decade of comparative research: social capital. The concept of social capital was originally developed in sociology, where it denotes potential benefits that individuals enjoy, based on their involvement in various social networks. This concept was fully utilized in the field of comparative politics into which it was “introduced” by Robert Putnam in his book Making Democracy Work, in which he presents the results of his research in which he establishes a positive link between the social capital – embodied in the norms of generalized reciprocity, horizontal networks and trust – and the higher levels of democratic efficiency. In the last decade, the concept has been used in a number of studies in comparative politics, the starting point of which was the thesis that spatial and temporal differences in the levels of political efficiency may, at least partly, be explained by the level of social capital of a community. By comparing the concepts of political culture and social capital, the author concludes that social capital is a major conceptual innovation in comparative politics and represents a revival of social/cultural variables in comparative analysis.
Keywords
social capital; comparative politics; Robert D. Putnam; democracy; political science
Hrčak ID:
22930
URI
Publication date:
16.7.2004.
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