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Civil Society, Political Capital, and Democratization in Central America
Abstract
Robert Putnam argues that civil society-citizen organizational activity-contributes to successful governance and democracy, outcomes potentially helpful in reconstructing Central America. Putnam does not, however, specify how civil society shapes government performance. We demonstrate how group participation might impinge upon the state through the "political capital" of political participation and democratic norms. We first explore the relationships among two civil society measures (formal group activism and community self-help activism) and social and political capital, employing survey data from Central America. We then investigate the effects of civil society and social and political capital upon levels of democracy. We find that while higher levels of formal group membership and several political capital measures associate with higher levels of democracy, social capital lacks the relationship Putnam predicts. We conclude that political rather than social capital links formal group activism to democracy in Central America.
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Citations
Cites
Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital
Putnam, R. D. (1995) · Journal of Democracy · doi:10.1353/jod.1995.0002 · Cited by 14,037
Cited by
NGOs, States, and Donors Revisited: Still Too Close for Comfort?
Banks, N., Hulme, D., & Edwards, M. (2015) · World Development · doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.09.028 · Cited by 772
“Other research in Central America, however, highlights that social capital does not automatically translate into political capital, which is a necessary condition for influencing democratic outcomes (Booth & Richard, 1998).”
BackgroundIs It Time to Disinvest in Social Capital?
Foley, M. W., & Edwards, B. (1999) · Journal of Public Policy · doi:10.1017/s0143814x99000215 · Cited by 607
Social Capital and Poor Communities
Brehm, J., Saegert, S., Thompson, J. P., & Warren, M. R. (2003) · Contemporary Sociology · doi:10.2307/3089189 · Cited by 585
Civil Society under Authoritarianism: The China Model
Teets, J. C. (2014) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9781139839396 · Cited by 280
Metadata
- Authors
- Booth, J. A., & Richard, P. B.
- Venue
- The Journal of Politics
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1998-08
- Volume
- 60
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 780-800
- ISSN
- 0022-3816 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2508
- OpenAlex
- W2168606050
- Cited by
- 248
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 59.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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