Good Governance Through Social Capital

Bryane Michael, Linacre College

These slides are under a creative commons licence, meaning the user may freely use these slides in their own presentations for sharing knowledge or for critique. To the best of my knowledge, and graphics used are share-able under “fair use” – though of course I can not indemnify the user of these slides in case of problems.

What is Social Capital and Why Do We Care? 40 Years of International

Development fails to solve the poverty trap

State performance very different across similarly structured governments

Robert Putnam finds a relationship between economic development and state-level social capital Sees social capital as trust

Norms of co-opration and trust which facilitate the performance of common goals

Failure of the Rationally Designed State and “Public Sector Reform”

Figure 7.4: Bridging, Bonding and Volunteering in Italian Regions

-8

-6

-4

-2

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Adju

sted

Fac

tor S

core

s

Bonding Social Capital

Bridging Social Capital

Participation in Voluntary Organisations

Source: Sabatini (2005)

Social Capital and the State

Minister

Department Head

Department Head

Department Head

Population

Bridging

Bonding

Social Capital helps at the policy and public service delivery level…?

Social Capital Helps Increase Civil Servant Productivity Productivity defined as

outputs per unit input Bonding helps civil

servants to work as a team WITHOUT tight regulation

Bridging helps them define production targets and collect information

Figure 9.2: Performance and Institutional Environment in Bolivian Public Sector Organisations

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

UDAPE (thinktank)

labor road tax education telecomregulation

Ind

ex (

hig

her

nu

mb

ers

den

ote

bett

er

perf

orm

an

ce

an

d e

nvir

on

men

t

institutional environment performance

Source: Adapted from Manning et al. (2000).

Figure 9.9(b): Productivity in 10 States by Services

80

85

90

95

100

105

110

115

1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Inde

x

Electric Pow er

Natural Gas

Mass transit miles

Source: Fisk and Forte (1997)

Trust is required in the service

Figure 7.2: Differences in Trust in Public Organisations in Australia

0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5 0.55 0.6 0.65 0.7

Item-total correlation Institutional confidence (standardised alpha .84)

State government

Local government

Federal government

The public service

The legal system

The police

The media

Big business

The Churches

Unions

Source: Stone and Hughes (2002)

Richard Rose refers to the post-modern society entitlements without trust trust determines

effectiveness All production relies on

“strong” and “weak” links

Figure 4.3: US Health Care Interest Groups' Sharing Information through Strong and Weak Links

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Ave

rag

e le

vel o

f in

form

atio

n d

eman

ded

Average number of strong ties

Large Groups

Individuals

Source: Carpenter et al. (2003). The original level of information demanded scale has been rescaled to make the graph easier to read. The level of information demanded represents a scale w here 100 represents the maximum amount of information demanded on the scale constructed by the authors. Other f igures represent a proportion relative to this maximum set by the authors. The number of strong ties refers to the number of lobbying parties or political friends sought by each interest group.

Building Social Capital

World Bank Tanzania, Latin America and Asia Focus on “association” by having

people mingle EU

standardised measure of social capital

Work with OECD on standardisingand measuring “social capital”

World Bank and later work by Oxford academics understand using experimental

methods

Building Social Capital in St. Petersburg In 2000, several surveys done

to assess “regulatory quality” in Russia and other countries

With the Russian Academy of Public Administration, work on understanding social capital in the local public sector (municipalities and elsewhere)

Conduct a survey and conduct an “economic experiment”

Look for a relationship between team group size, “social capital”, regulation and productivity

Figure 2.16: Productivity Impacting Factors in St. Petersburg and around Russia

-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

St. Pete Novgorod St. Pete Novgorod St. Pete Novgorod St. Pete Novgorod

anti-competitivebehaviour

Cronyism Corruption Policy Instability

Rel

ativ

e D

ista

nce

s*

Source: FIAS (2001).

* The indicated number is the proportional value of the region over the 5-region average expressed as a percentage.

Goal: Improve Public Service Delivery rather than Promote Democracy

Understanding Social Capital in St. Petersburg More sharing tended to

lead to higher productivity

Formal regulation had mixed impacts on sharing (and social capital)

Group sizes of workers tended to vary with the amount of social capital

0

20

40

60

80

100

1Sharing Measure

Estim

ated

R

elat

ive

Varia

nce

(%)

Rule 1 Rule 2

Rule 3 Rule 4

Rule 1 and Rule 2 Rule 1 and Rule 3

Rule 1 and Rule 4 Rule 2 and Rule 3

Rule 2 and Rule 4 Rule 3 and Rule 4

Error

Figure 12.5: Variance Components Analysis of Four Civil Servant Regulations

Source: author. ANOVA Method using Type I Sum of Squares errors used.

Figure 15.4: Relationship Between Productivity and B-Measures in the Social Poker Game

0

40

80

120

160

200

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

B-Measure

Inef

ficie

ncy

(num

ber o

f sec

onds

re

quire

d to

com

plet

e ro

und)

Sto Delat: Public Sector Reform Deregulation

focus on outputs using New Public Management concepts

Incubation government as generating

“spin-out” companies keeps employment down

and training up Virtual teams

civil servants work across depts and even ministries

few restrictions on communication and “vertical reporting”

Minister

Department Head

Department Head

Department Head

Minister

Department Head

Department Head

Department Head

Service Delivery Contract

regulation

before

after

individual employment contracts

Sto Delat: The Public Private Partnership Government service

delivery has decreased in quality and funding (endogeneity problem)

Move toward “issues” with government as an arbiter instead of player

Electricity Provision

government peopleelectricity

government consumers

business NGOs

The HRM Survey

Executive regulation is like a blanket guides current activity but also follows

current activity Two types of

questions cognitive (trust) structural (who you

relate to)

Figure 4.2: Link Strength and Observed Sharing of Resources

0

20

40

60

80

100

2 6 10 14 18 22 26 30 34 38 42 46 50

Iteration

Per

cen

tag

e co

ntr

ibu

tio

n (

%)

w eak links

strong links

Source: Adapted from Macy (1991). Data in the figure represent two-period moving averages in order to reduce volatility.

Trust questions

Association questions

Productivity questions

Lessons from St. Petersburg

Start by obtaining mandate from key individuals in ministry and “service users” (local oligarchs) gives “mandate” gives “protection” for later

The Dance of Regulation ignoring vexing regulation and

coming back when reproached Aggressive PR

showing population how the executive sees things

MPs are listening As unit becomes “best

practice”, policy changes from above

today

bridging phase

Minister

Department Head

Department Head

Department Head

Population

Insulationphase

See also Tendler’s study of local government in Brazil and Petro in Russia

Fluid service

Coda: Fighting or Helping Corruption? Reliance on public

sector values can help or hurt corruption

Empirical studies show that bonding social capital more susceptible to corruption

MORE REGULATION IS NOT THE ANSWER!

Figure 2.12: Regulatory Discretion in Selected Countries

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Germany Sweden Austria UnitedStates

CzechRepublic

SlovakRepublic

Hungary Poland Russia

Ind

ex

ra

tin

g(l

ow

er

nu

mb

ers

wo

rse

)

Regulatory discretion

Bureaucratic quality

Source: Johnson et al. (1998)

regulation