Κοινωνικό κεφάλαιο και δημόσια πολιτική στην Ελλάδα

Abstract

Social capital has emerged as a key concept in the social sciences in general and in political science/public policy in particular over the last two decades or so, because by facilitating collective action among the actors, it leads to increased levels of performance in several public policy areas and public policy at large. In the case of Greece, the low level of social capital, at least since the late 1980s, tends to be regarded as a major problem of the domestic institutional infrastructure that crucially affects the level of performance in several public policy areas. In that respect, there is evidence to suggest that the low level of social capital is linked to the dominant role of the rent-seeking behaviour of relatively small and strongly-tied interest groups in the policy process that inhibit policy learning and hence the reform process in several public policy areas. Finally, with regard to the challenge of building social capital in countries like Greece, where it is in demand, evidence based on the institutional theory of trust suggests that the most important variable for social capital creation is the presence of an impartial institutional infrastructure in general and street-level bureaucracy in particular, while the role of the welfare state is crucial for the more equitable distribution of social capital across class and/or culture boundaries.