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Capital social y políticas públicas: análisis del efecto del programa de coinversión social sobre las organizaciones de la sociedad civil
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Este estudio se deriva de la evaluación del Programa de Coinversión Social (PCS), el cual aporta recursos financieros a las Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil (OSCs) para el desarrollo de grupos vulnerables y con rezago mediante el fomento de su capital social. Para la evaluación, se analizó la relación del capital social con el PCS y el fortalecimiento de las OSCs. Se llevó a cabo un estudio cualitativo y cuantitativo, el primero consistió en entrevistas a profundidad y grupos focales; el segundo en una encuesta con dos instrumentos aplicados a las OSCs y a los beneficiarios. Se utilizó el análisis de componentes principales y la metodología de variables latentes para estimar los aspectos no observables y multidimensionales de los conceptos de capital social y fortalecimiento institucional. Se estimaron dos Modelos de Ecuaciones Estructurales (SEM) para captar la influencia mutua entre los indicadores de ambos conceptos, así como su relación, los cuales generaron resultados similares: el PCS fortalece a las OSCs para el desarrollo de sus proyectos, su capital social se obtiene de esta forma. Las OSCs cuentan con capital social entre sus miembros y su población objetivo, crean redes con otras OSCs donde se identifican e intercambia información y apoyo, y fomentan cohesión social. Se identificaron los elementos que determinan el fortalecimiento institucional y el capital social de las OSCs, su conocimiento podría contribuir a focalizar los apoyos del PCS para el logro de sus objetivos.
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¿Cuál es el papel de la confianza y las redes sociales en elementos de la acción colectiva, tales como la pertenencia a asociaciones, el sentido de eficacia social y la participación? ¿El capital social tiene un comportamiento similar al de otros tipos de capital, tales como capital humano y económico, y por tanto corresponde a los mismos procesos de estratificación? Se ofrece aquí un análisis de tres medidas de capital social: confianza interpersonal, confianza institucional y fortaleza de lazos, y tres medidas de acción colectiva: eficacia, capacidad de asociación y participación. Los modelos de ecuaciones estructurales analizados sugieren que a mayor confianza interpersonal, mayor acción colectiva. También indican que esta relación interactúa con distintos componentes de la estratificación social, tales como sexo, nivel de ingreso, región y movilidad social. El análisis concluye con una discusión de las implicaciones teóricas y de política pública derivadas de estos hallazgos.
While social capital is emerging as a theory rich in its potential for understanding the relationships between societal norms and values, and community outcomes, clarification of its measures remains unresolved. This article attempts to contribute to this measurement issue by presenting a reliable self-report instrument for measuring social capital in societal environments. The instrument is grounded in the theoretical and measurement literature of social capital, and proposes an evolving conceptual framework of social capital's dimensions, determinants and outcomes. The instrument was empirically validated using data collected in the African Republics of Ghana and Uganda. The article presents results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses that substantiate a number of robust dimensions of social capital, prominent at the household and aggregate levels, and across the two country data sets. Both recommended and suggested survey questions are documented for use in subsequent research relevant to measuring social capital. Regression analyses supporting the validity of the measures are included, as are reliability measures.
This book unifies and extends latent variable models, including multilevel or generalized linear mixed models, longitudinal or panel models, item response or factor models, latent class or finite mixture models, and structural equation models. Following a gentle introduction to latent variable modeling, the authors clearly explain and contrast a wide range of estimation and prediction methods from biostatistics, psychometrics, econometrics, and statistics. They present exciting and realistic applications that demonstrate how researchers can use latent variable modeling to solve concrete problems in areas as diverse as medicine, economics, and psychology. The examples considered include many nonstandard response types, such as ordinal, nominal, count, and survival data. Joint modeling of mixed responses, such as survival and longitudinal data, is also illustrated. Numerous displays, figures, and graphs make the text vivid and easy to read.
I present argument and evidence for a structural ecology of social capital that describes how the value of social capital to an individual is contingent on the number of people doing the same work. The information and control benefits of bridging the structural holes-or, disconnections between nonredundant contacts in a network-that constitute social capital are especially valuable to managers with few peers. Such managers do not have the guiding frame of reference for behavior provided by numerous competitors, and the work they do does not have the legitimacy provided by numerous people doing the same kind of work. I use network and performance data on a probability sample of senior managers to show how the value of social capital, high on average for the managers, varies as a power function of the number of people doing the same work.
Respondents' recall ability may compromise the validity of their report of lifetime experience of intimate partner violence (IPV). This study compared two interview methods: a commonly used structured interview method and the Life History Calendar (LHC) method, which combines a visual calendar with a semistructured interview schedule to help respondents gain better access to long-term memory. Comparison of two studies conducted with samples drawn from the same sampling frame found that, as hypothesized, the LHC method elicited more reports of lifetime IPV - especially abuse that occurred early in respondents' lives - than a structured interview survey method.
Journal of Democracy 6.1 (1995) 65-78
As featured on National Public Radio, The New York Times, and in other major media, we offer this sold-out, much-discussed Journal of Democracy article by Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone." You can also find information at DemocracyNet about the Journal of Democracy and its sponsor, the National Endowment for Democracy.
Many students of the new democracies that have emerged over the past decade and a half have emphasized the importance of a strong and active civil society to the consolidation of democracy. Especially with regard to the postcommunist countries, scholars and democratic activists alike have lamented the absence or obliteration of traditions of independent civic engagement and a widespread tendency toward passive reliance on the state. To those concerned with the weakness of civil societies in the developing or postcommunist world, the advanced Western democracies and above all the United States have typically been taken as models to be emulated. There is striking evidence, however, that the vibrancy of American civil society has notably declined over the past several decades.
Ever since the publication of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, the United States has played a central role in systematic studies of the links between democracy and civil society. Although this is in part because trends in American life are often regarded as harbingers of social modernization, it is also because America has traditionally been considered unusually "civic" (a reputation that, as we shall later see, has not been entirely unjustified).
When Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, it was the Americans' propensity for civic association that most impressed him as the key to their unprecedented ability to make democracy work. "Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition," he observed, "are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types -- religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. . . . Nothing, in my view, deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America."
Recently, American social scientists of a neo-Tocquevillean bent have unearthed a wide range of empirical evidence that the quality of public life and the performance of social institutions (and not only in America) are indeed powerfully influenced by norms and networks of civic engagement. Researchers in such fields as education, urban poverty, unemployment, the control of crime and drug abuse, and even health have discovered that successful outcomes are more likely in civically engaged communities. Similarly, research on the varying economic attainments of different ethnic groups in the United States has demonstrated the importance of social bonds within each group. These results are consistent with research in a wide range of settings that demonstrates the vital importance of social networks for job placement and many other economic outcomes.
Meanwhile, a seemingly unrelated body of research on the sociology of economic development has also focused attention on the role of social networks. Some of this work is situated in the developing countries, and some of it elucidates the peculiarly successful "network capitalism" of East Asia. Even in less exotic Western economies, however, researchers have discovered highly efficient, highly flexible "industrial districts" based on networks of collaboration among workers and small entrepreneurs. Far from being paleoindustrial anachronisms, these dense interpersonal and interorganizational networks undergird ultramodern industries, from the high tech of Silicon Valley to the high fashion of Benetton.
The norms and networks of civic engagement also powerfully affect the performance of representative government. That, at least, was the central conclusion of my own 20-year, quasi-experimental study of subnational governments in different regions of Italy. Although all these regional governments seemed identical on paper, their levels of effectiveness varied dramatically. Systematic inquiry showed that the quality of governance was determined by longstanding traditions of civic engagement (or its absence). Voter turnout, newspaper readership, membership in choral societies and football clubs -- these were the hallmarks of a successful region. In fact, historical analysis suggested that these networks of organized reciprocity and civic solidarity...