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Place matters: government capacity, community characteristics, and social capital across United States counties
Abstract
Communities with high levels of social capital enjoy an array of positive economic and community development outcomes. We assess the role of several key community characteristics, including the strength of government institutions, in explaining local social capital variation. The analysis draws on data from United States counties and includes regression modelling and a Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition to explore differences in social capital across an area’s metropolitan status and region. The data show social capital determinants vary by place both due to the endowment levels of these determinants and the productive value of their coefficients. For example, the coefficient productive values of government capacity explain some differences in social capital levels across metropolitan status (but not across region). Concurrently, variations in government capacity endowment levels help explain some differences in social capital levels across region (but not across metropolitan status).
... Place plays a crucial role as its nature can lead to variations in the level of social capital (Goetz et al., 2012;Hofferth & Iceland, 1998;McCall et al., 2021;Rupasingha et al., 2006). These reservoirs of cooperative capacity hinge on the community's unique political and social experiences (Boix & Posner, 1998, 687). ...
... The structural aspects of social capital can be captured as externally identifiable network densities and forms of civic engagement (Villalonga-Olives & Kawachi, 2015). Social networks are often measured by considering both political and nonpolitical associations (Choi & Kim, 2016;Coffé & Geys, 2005;McCall et al., 2021;Putnam, 2000;Rupasingha et al., 2006). We created a network density index by combining horizontal associations, organizations for rent-seeking (Knack & Keefer, 1997), civic and social organizations that provide for community organizational life, and nonprofits that indicate volunteerism (Andrews, 2011;Andrews & Brewer, 2013). ...
The study of the antecedents of child maltreatment has advanced through ecological research, but there has been a limited focus on the role of community social capital. This study investigates the effects of community social capital on child maltreatment and how these associations differ by regional type, using data on child maltreatment rates in 226 localities in South Korea from 2014 to 2019. Surprisingly, our results show that social trust, networks, and engagement in community affairs are positively associated with child maltreatment rates. Additionally, the mechanisms of social capital effects on child maltreatment vary by place, being more pronounced in small‐ and medium‐sized cities and rural areas. Our findings suggest that a more nuanced understanding of social capital mechanisms across dimensions and locations is required to effectively address child maltreatment. This study contributes to both theory and practice by highlighting the importance of community social capital in preventing child maltreatment and demonstrating the contextual nature of these associations.
... Government Size. Previous studies have operationalized the size of government in various ways, including the total number of government employees, government revenue per capita, and government payroll (Kim, 2015;Lecy & Van Slyke, 2013;McCall et al., 2020). We measured government size as county government payroll expenditures on the assumption that it best captures the ability of government to act while excluding grants or contracts to private organizations. ...
Scholars and policymakers have long been interested in the complex relationships between political institutions and voluntary collective action. However, the reciprocal nature of their relationships complicates empirical analysis: voluntary action supports democratic institutions and political institutions enable voluntary action. This article examines the relationship between political institutions and the activation of local voluntary action in the context of COVID-19 funds managed by community philanthropic organizations. We find that political engagement, policy signaling, and political competition all support the emergence of a COVID-19 fund. The findings advance our understanding of the significant role that political institutions play in activating voluntary action.
... The study of J. Susan and H. Xiaobing revealed the positive impact of trust and sociability on the formation and effectiveness of agricultural cooperatives, the authors proposed ways to improve their development policy [7]. Important aspects of the study of social capital are reflected in scientific papers [8][9][10][11], which pay attention to the impact of community characteristics on the development of their social capital. Geographical features of mechanisms of social capital development based on community practices are reflected in [8]. ...
Purpose. The purpose of the article is to identify current problems of strengthening the social capital of rural territorial communities in the context of administrative and territorial reform with the definition of directions for their solution.
Methodology / approach. The paper uses general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis to collect, process, and systematize the results of scientific research; abstract-logical and critical analysis – to identify possible risks due to the implementation of administrative-territorial reform; statistical – for data collection and systematization; method of comparisons – to identify the compliance of the dynamics of various forms of social capital to the potential of communities; graphic – to visualize the results of the assessment of the new spatial configuration of socio-territorial communities and the dynamics of accumulation of various forms of social capital; correlation and regression analysis – to determine the impact of certain indicators of social capital development on the economy of rural communities; induction and deduction – to substantiate the main directions of social capital development of rural communities in modern conditions.
Results. Restrictions on the development of social capital accumulation have been identified, which include: shadowing of interaction and low trust in social institutions, individualization of behavioral strategies, growth of economically inactive and socially vulnerable groups, and formation of networks of discriminatory relationships, spreading of norms of destructive social behavior, as well as the risks that may arise in the new spatial configuration of socio-territorial communities. It is established that the administrative-territorial reform at the local level has created certain preconditions for strengthening the potential of horizontally and vertically integrating social capital. It was found that the dynamics of territorial identification of the population of Ukraine in relation to their community is negative and indicates low social capital at the local level. The dynamics of forms of horizontally integrating social capital of rural communities, which are represented by agricultural cooperatives, farms, and inter-community cooperation, are analyzed and it is found that the potential of their development in Ukraine has not been realized yet. The necessity of implementation of systemic decisions on the development of social capital of communities to achieve the main goals of decentralization of management is proved. The main directions of the development of social capital of rural communities are substantiated taking into account modern features of their development.
Originality / scientific novelty. The specifics of the formation of social capital of rural communities as small local communities are analyzed, taking into account the main determinants of influence, which include increasing territorial mobility and maintaining the asymmetry of spatial development in the direction of the center-periphery, the choice of adaptive behavioral strategies due to changes in the territorial identification of the population and the assessment of opportunities to achieve a certain level of well-being in the community. The main directions of social capital development as a prerequisite for uniting and mobilizing internal resources for rural development are substantiated based on existing problems and identified potential risks due to the reform of local self-government and territorial organization of government. Scientific and methodological bases of research on social capital at the local level under conditions of social and economic instability are improved.
Practical value / implications. The results of the study will be useful for local governments of territorial communities formed as a result of local government reform and territorial organization of government, as well as district and regional state administrations, which focus on promoting inclusive community development and self-sufficiency.
The international consensus in support of universal health coverage (UHC), though commendable, thus far lacks a clear mechanism to finance and deliver accessible and effective basic healthcare to the two billion rural residents and informal workers of low- and lower-middle-income countries (LLMICs). Importantly, the two preferred financing modes for UHC, general tax revenue and social health insurance, are often infeasible for LLMICs. We identify from historical examples a community-based model that we argue shows promise as a solution to this problem. This model, which we call Cooperative Healthcare (CH), is characterized by community-based risk-pooling and governance and prioritizes primary care. CH leverages communities' existing social capital, such that even those for whom the private benefit of enrolling in a CH scheme is outweighed by the cost may choose to enroll (given sufficient social capital). For CH to be scalable, it needs to demonstrate that it can organize delivery of accessible and reasonable-quality primary healthcare that people value, with management accountable to the communities themselves through structures that people trust, combined with government legitimacy. Once LLMICs with CH programs have industrialized sufficiently to make universal social health insurance feasible, CH schemes can be rolled into such universal programs. We defend cooperative healthcare's suitability for this bridging role and urge LLMIC governments to launch experiments testing it out, with careful adaptation to local conditions.
Aims
The purpose of this study was first, to investigate the harmful effects of food insufficiency on health outcomes – self-rated health (SRH) and self-assessed depressive symptoms – during the COVID-19 pandemic and, second, to test whether these effects fluctuated across the US in terms of state-level social capital.
Methods
Data were drawn from the Census Household Pulse Survey (fielded between April 2020 and February 2021) consisting of community-dwelling American adults (N = 1.5M+). Social capital measures were taken from the ‘Social Capital Project’ sponsored by the US Congress. We estimated three-level mixed effects models to analyze multiple waves of repeated cross-sectional surveys.
Results
Post-COVID-19 food insufficiency was significantly negatively associated with SRH and positively associated depression, adjusting for controls including food insufficiency prior to the onset of the pandemic. These relationships were also more pronounced in areas with higher aggregate social capital.
Conclusions
The health burdens of the new coronavirus disease have fallen disproportionately on the economically marginalized, as measured by food insufficiency. Contrary to the conventional literature, living in a state with a greater stock of social capital worsened its health effects.
Розглянуто основні джерела і практики розвитку соціального капіталу спроможних територіальних громад в Україні в умовах їх об’єднання та пошуку шляхів забезпечення самодостатності й самоорганізації. Виявлено істотну асиметрію у співвідношенні різних
джерел на тлі значних відмінностей від зарубіжних практик, орієнтованих на зміцнення
соціального капіталу. Визначено концептуальні засади формування моделі відкритого
соціального капіталу із залученням усіх суб’єктів територіального розвитку.
Political institutions have been considered important factors that influence local policy processes. This study investigates if different county political institutions, including the form of government and home rule charter, influence the processes among three policy arenas: allocational, development, and redistributive. We analyze the annual expenditure change in Florida counties from 1995 to 2008. Results show that both modernized and nonmodernized counties show similar levels of policy changes in allocational, developmental as well as redistributive policy arenas, while counties with modernized political institutions tend to experience a slightly higher, although minimal, level of policy change in each of the three policy arenas.
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Aguado, Alexander. 2018. “Mayor‐Council Form of Government and Policy Responses in Times of Economic Travail.” Politics & Policy 46 (5): 714‐730. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12273
French, P. Edward. 2008. “Municipal Government: Does Structure Make a Difference in Small Cities and Towns.” Politics & Policy 31 (4): 694‐725. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2003.tb00168.x
Modlin, Steve. 2008. “Defining Involvement of County Commissioners in the Budget Formulation Process.” Politics & Policy 36 (6): 1044‐1065. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2008.00149.x
Related Media
Florida Association of Counties. n.d. “FAC All about Florida.” http://www.fl-counties.com/videos-psas
National Association of Counties. n.d. “National Association of Counties.” https://www.naco.org/
A long-standing debate persists regarding how social capital relates to diversity and inequality in the American states. Putnam argues social capital leads to greater equality and tolerance; however, others find that it increases racial inequality. We build on Soss, Fording, and Schram’s Racial Classification Model (RCM) and theorize that social capital enhances social trust and empathy in homogeneous contexts and favors paternalistic and punitive social controls in diverse contexts. We test this using the case of immigration and welfare generosity following the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. Using state-level data from 1997 to 2009, we find that under conditions of low immigration, social capital is associated with increased social trust and empathy; however, as immigration increases, social capital pivots toward favoring mechanisms of social control. Specifically, social capital increases Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash benefit levels, but only when immigration levels are low. In high-immigration contexts, social capital is associated with decreased welfare generosity.
More than a century ago, Corrado Gini proposed his well-known concentration index for measuring the degree of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. His index is still extremely relevant and widely used in several fields of research and application. In this paper, we focus on the inferential properties of the Gini index, and discuss the main directions of analysis proposed in the literature. The aim of the paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the main developments on the inferential aspects of the Gini concentration ratio. We feel that this work can provide a valuable contribution to those scholars who are approaching the large amount of literature on the inferential properties of the Gini index.
The authors examine major aspects of the connection between social capital and economic development in U.S. counties. They test the conclusions of Putnam, who saw associations as a force for positive development, and Olson, who concluded the opposite. The authors find that Putnam organizations have a negative effect on income, while Olson organizations have a positive effect by decreasing levels of income inequality. Drawing on the literature distinguishing between bridging versus bonding, the authors show that bridging capital has a positive effect on development by increasing per capita income, while bonding capital has a neutral effect on both per capita income and income inequality. Finally, religious variables are tested for their relationship with economic development. Overall, congregation density has a negative influence by increasing per capita income and income inequality, controlling for geographic type. Congregations with bridging characteristics have a mixed effect on development by decreasing income and decreasing inequality.
This article examines the proposition that in American cities higher levels of social capital lead to higher quality governmental performance, even when controlling for the cities’ political culture, demographic variables, and quality of life. Two indicators of social capital are employed: level of diffuse social and political trust and level of involvement in local fraternal organizations. The quality of a city’s governmental performance is indicated by data published by the Government Performance Project completed by Governing: The Magazine of States and Localities and the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. The quality of performance is measured in five domains (financial management, human resource management, information technology management, capital management, and managing for results). Political culture is assessed using the Elazar distinctions among Moralistic, Traditionalistic, and Individualistic culture types. Demographic composition is assessed through aggregate census statistics on poverty, educational attainment, and non-White populations. Quality of life indicators are derived from Places Rated Almanac. In the 20 cities available for this study, the results indicate that the level of social capital has a significant independent impact on the quality of urban governmental performance, even when controlling for political culture, demographic variables, and overall quality of life. Implications are drawn for efforts at building social capital as a means to enhance democratic governance and improve government performance.
There has been considerable interest and study of local and regional economic development networks in recent years. Local governments forge informal and formal network ties with a variety of organizations, the most prominent of which are private, private/public development, community/residential, and public. Extant research has examined networks but not the processes of network partner choice and their networking. This research begins to fill these lacunas by empirically examining various explanations for economic development networks and their influence on each of these four types of networking. The findings reveal that the factors shaping network ties in each organization type are different. Except for community/residential organization network ties, local governments’ networking is significantly related to the development incentives that they offer. Network ties with public organizations are related to government structures. Network ties with community/residential organizations are distinguished by their relationships with financial conditions and citizens’ opposition to development. The factors influencing network activities for economic development with organizational types are shaped by the predisposition of each organizational network; thus, the factors promoting local economic development activities and the factors stimulating network activities for local economic development are different.
When corporations make an effort to be socially responsible beyond what is required by the law, this effort is often described as strategic-made mainly for the shareholders' or managers' benefit. A large body of literature corroborates this belief. But, could the incentives for corporate social responsibility (CSR) come from an altruistic inclination fostered by the social capital of the region in which the firm is headquartered? We investigate whether this phenomenon exists by examining the association between the social capital in the region and the firm's CSR. We find that a firm from a high social capital region exhibits higher CSR. This result suggests that the self-interest of shareholders or mangers does not explain all of the firm's CSR, but the altruistic inclination from the region might also play a role.
Empirical and theoretical research on government competition and collaboration identifies several important macro-level characteristics that can affect these forms of interaction between local governments within the same large jurisdiction. These characteristics are fragmentation of governments, fiscal dispersion of governments, sorting of population by governments, and decentralized fiscal responsibility between state and local governments. This study presents indices to measure these characteristics and examines how metropolitan regions in the United States with populations greater than one million are distributed on these indices. The study also examines how these regions compare on conditions that are likely to motivate sales tax competition between municipal governments.
We have examined the extent to which ethnic diversity in neighbourhoods and municipalities in The Netherlands is related to personal contact with neighbours from ethnic in-groups and out-groups among the native majority as well as among ethnic minorities. The results indicate that ethnic diversity is negatively related to personal contacts with native neighbours, but positively to personal contacts with neighbours from other ethnic groups. This applies equally to native respondents and Turks and Moroccans, rejecting Putnam's hunkering-down hypothesis and ethnic competition theory. Instead, ethnic diversity increases meeting opportunities with ethnic minorities while decreasing meeting opportunities with the native majority.
In the discussion of the sources of social capital, it has been stressed that generalized trust is built up by the citizens themselves through a culture that permeates the networks and organizations of civil society. This approach has run into conceptual problems, and empirical evidence has provided only mixed support. An alternate approach is to highlight how social capital is embedded in and linked to formal political and legal institutions. Not all political institutions matter equally, however. Trust thrives most in societies with effective, impartial, and fair street-level bureaucracies. The causal mechanism between these institutional characteristics and generalized trust is illustrated in a cross-national context.
We challenge the widely held view that classic American voluntary groups were tiny, local, and disconnected from government. Using newly collected data to develop a theoretically framed account, we show that membership associations emerged early in U.S. history and converged toward the institutional form of the representatively governed federation. This form enabled leaders and members to spread interconnected groups across an expanding nation. At the height of local proliferation, most voluntary groups were part of regional or national federations that mirrored the structure of U.S. government. Institutionalist theories suggest reasons for this parallelism, which belies the rigid dichotomy between state and civil society that informs much current discussion of civic engagement in the United States and elsewhere.
This paper explores the impact of space on prosperity. In order to do this, it develops a spatial model for locating prosperous counties and for identifying factors associated with prosperity. Using principal component analysis, a county-level prosperity index is created that comprises four measures: high school dropouts, housing conditions, unemployment, and poverty rates. Five categories of independent variables—demographic, economic, geographic, agricultural, and human and social capital—are used in the analysis. The spatial autocorrelation method has been used to determine the spatial pattern of prosperous counties, and the spatial econometric method has been used to develop a model that explains prosperity. The result shows that more prosperous counties have lower minority populations, more economic opportunities, and higher social and human capital. A policy reformulation is important in addressing the issues of less prosperous counties by creating jobs and enhancing social and human capital at regional levels.
Why do some governments implement more sustainability practices than others? Based on a national survey of U.S. cities, this article finds moderate levels of sustainability efforts and capacity in U.S. cities; about one-third of the sustainability practices identified in this article have been implemented. The authors conclude that, first, capacity building is a useful conceptual focus for understanding sustainability implementation in U.S. cities. Capacity building involves developing technical and financial support and increasing managerial execution. Second, sustainability is strongly associated with managerial capacity, which includes establishing sustainability goals, incorporating goals in operations, and developing a supportive infrastructure. Third, getting stakeholders involved furthers the capacity for sustaining sustainability efforts. Citizen involvement is strongly associated with securing financial support for sustainability.
Neoliberal accounts of local governance have paid insufficient attention to variation in the forms of urban governance and urban policies across local regimes. On the basis of a comparison of eight deprived neighbourhoods in Catalonia (Spain) where the same regional programme of urban regeneration has been carried out, this paper explores the significance of place when it comes to understanding the adoption of different models of urban governance. In Spain, the combination of a high autonomy of local government and a very strong tradition of neighbourhood associations has resulted in both local authorities and community organisations playing a very important role in local policy-making. Local structural and agency factors are both essential to understanding why models of urban governance and regeneration change from place to place. The paper concludes that neighbourhood type, size of municipality, social capital and previous conflicts are crucial for the understanding of urban governance geographies.
This article explores the changing relationship between the public and voluntary sectors. In 2007, a local government reform reduced the number of Danish municipalities from 271 to 98 and assigned new tasks to these. Consequently, the reform resulted in major local political and administrative changes, thereby giving a unique opportunity to examine how institutional changes affect the voluntary sector. Based on data from qualitative case studies and two questionnaire surveys (2004 and 2010) the article examines how the local government reform affects the relationship between the two sectors. The findings indicate that the political and administrative changes in the local political system have influenced municipality collaboration, contact and interaction with local associations. While some associations experience a decline in personal contact, there is an increase in formalization of the relationship and an increased degree of collaboration between the voluntary and public sectors.
Several studies suggest a negative impact of ethnic diversity on cooperation, but most of them rely on attitudinal and other indirect measurements of cooperation or are derived from the artificial laboratory setting. We conducted a field experiment based on the lost-letter technique across 52 neighborhoods in Berlin, Germany. The study has two aims. First, we investigate whether the negative effect of ethnic heterogeneity on cooperation holds for concrete cooperative behavior in a real-world setting. Second, we test the most prominent psychological mechanism that has been proposed to explain the negative effects of heterogeneity on cooperation, namely in-group favoritism. We do so by experimentally varying the ethnicity and religion of the senders of letters. We find strong support for the negative effect of ethnic diversity on cooperation. We find no evidence, however, of in-group favoritism. Letters from Turkish or Muslim organizations were as often returned as those from German and Christian organizations, and the ethnic diversity effect was the same for all types of letters.
The objective of this research is to determine what important roles are played by social capital in the implementation of recovery policies for areas affected by disasters. We will compare two districts in India where tsunami recovery has either failed or been successful. In 2004, the Sumatra Tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed more than 14,000 people and left 50,000 people homeless. Regardless of the cultural background or ethnicity of victims, disaster recovery greatly depends on social capital. This research included a questionnaire survey administered to people in two tsunami-affected districts and compared the types of social capital that can be associated with disaster recovery. The result is that the style of each community prior to the disaster and the presence of a strong village leader are both crucial for the successful implementation of a recovery program. We believe that social capital significantly affects successful policy implementation, which will lead people to utilize government resources for disaster recovery.
Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances The Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances for 2016 provides insights into the evolution of family income and net worth since the previous time the survey was conducted, in 2013. The survey shows that, over the 2013-16 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes rose 10 percent, and mean income increased 14 percent. Real median net worth increased 16 percent, and mean net worth increased 26 percent. The data also indicate that gains in income and net worth are broad based, occurring across many different types of families, whether grouped by economic characteristics such as income and wealth or by demographic characteristics such as age, education, or race and ethnicity. However, the data also indicate that inequality continued to grow between 2013 and 2016, with large gains in income and net worth accruing to the highest-earning and wealthiest families. This article reviews these and other changes in the financial condition of U.S. families, including developments in assets, liabilities, debt payments, and credit market experiences.
America’s rural-urban divide seemingly has never been greater, a point reinforced by large geographic disparities in support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. But it is also the case that big cities and rural communities are more tightly integrated than ever and are increasingly interdependent, both economically and socially. This new rural-urban interface is highlighted in this collection of articles, which are organized and developed around the general concept of changing symbolic and social boundaries. Rural-urban boundaries—how rural and urban people and places are defined and evaluated—reflect and reinforce institutional forces that maintain spatial inequality and existing social, economic, and political hierarchies. This volume makes clear that rural-urban boundaries are highly fluid and that this should be better reflected in research programs, in the topics that we choose to study, and in the way that public policy is implemented.
Employing expenditure data as a surrogate for policy values as established by state and local policymakers, discriminant analysis has been used to test whether similar patterns of expenditures correspond to Elazar's classification of American states into three political subcultures. The tests lend support to the utility of conceptualizing American states as operating in distinct political cultural environments. Traditionalistic states have expenditure patterns significantly different from moralistic and individualistic states, in that state, local, and combined expenditures are relatively low. Combined expenditures in moralistic and individualistic states tend to show similar patterns. What distinguishes moralistic and individualistic states is the fiscal role played by the state and local governments. In moralistic states, expenditures are relatively lower for local governments and higher for the state government. In the individualistic states, expenditures are higher for local governments and lower for the state government. These findings hold, even after controlling for a number of competing reasons for the observed patterns.
Proponents of social capital theory have long argued that it is not only in the best interest of civic life to build social capital but that social capital is vital for the economic health of communities. Yet past studies have failed to distinguish among different types of social capital and have relied on inaccurate measures of economic health. This study reexamines what has become conventional wisdom by analyzing the social capital of American metropolitan areas and its impact on economic well-being. It improves on past studies by examining different types of social capital (i.e., trust, group membership, social networks) and substituting the change in competitive-advantage jobs from shift-share analysis for total job growth and other traditional economic development measures of wealth creation. The study finds that bridging social capital positively affects the economic welfare of communities with respect to job creation.
This paper examines the variant roles that specific forms of networked-based social capital play in supporting the democratic functions of a neighbourhood governance network in Los Angeles. A significant body of empirical work has demonstrated the positive role that social capital plays in the functioning of civil society, but there has been less attention to the manner in which different types of network-based social capital promote support efficacy of multifaceted civic organisations. This paper utilises network measures from a survey of the members of a neighbourhood governance network in Los Angeles to explore the associations between types of network ties – within group; among groups; to different external stakeholders – and perceived self-efficacy of the member associations. We find that internal cohesion, or bonding social capital, promotes both advisement of city officials and promotion of local participation, suggesting that this network-based resource is fungible. Other network structures appear to have value in different contexts, in that stakeholder connections promote participation, while bridging social capital is associated with perceived success in advising city officials. The findings suggest that architects of participatory reform should be attentive to system goals in establishing supports for varying forms of system relationships.
Managers concerned with the performance of their organizations will exploit available social, administrative, and human capital resources. However, extant theory and mixed empirical evidence leave the effect of social capital on performance unclear. The gains from these norms of reciprocity, participation, networking, and trust may disproportionately benefit only some of their clients, leading to disparities in outcomes among diverse clienteles. We argue that in such contexts, management will put in place policies to counter these disparities. Indeed, our empirical evidence from the management of public education supports the expectation that an institutional commitment to diversity successfully mitigates the uneven effects of social capital on organizational performance. This finding carries important implications for public management and equity in public policy outcomes and may be of particular relevance to management of outcomes relying on co-production.
The Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances for 2010 provides insights into changes in family income and net worth since the 2007 survey. The survey shows that, over the 2007–10 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes fell 7.7 percent, while mean income fell more sharply, an 11.1 percent decline. Both median and mean net worth decreased even more dramatically than income over this period, though the relative movements in the median and the mean are reversed; the median fell 38.8 percent, and the mean fell 14.7 percent. This article reviews these and other changes in the financial condition of U.S. families, including developments in assets, liabilities, and debt payments.
Successful community development is usually constructed with “bottom-up” capacity and “top-down” public policy. The synergy between these approaches has been hampered by the transition from a Keynesian to a neoliberal public policy framework. Under the stress of rapid change from major industrial projects, this article examines community development responses in the small town of Kitimat, British Columbia. Using a social capital lens, our findings suggest that despite limited senior government responses, local stakeholders have been using local and non-local network structures to: improve communication and understanding of protocols and procedures, improve awareness of community needs, access a broader range of financial and in-kind supports, transfer skills and broaden access to human resources, broaden access to infrastructure, and rapidly develop and deploy new supports. By formalizing network structures and working to strengthen local capacity, local stakeholders have been able to address many social and economic development pressures. Over the longer term, however, social capital and social cohesion among voluntary and non-profit sector organizations will require the assistance of senior government policy, financial, and program supports to be sustainable.
This article analyzes the influence of state, region, and urbanization on adoption of comity government structural reform, exemplified by charter adoption, appointment of county administrators, and election of executives. It examines3, 119 counties on which data were available, emphasizing the 786 counties with appointed administrators, 382 with elected executives, and 117 with charters. These three structural reforms were correlated with urbanization as measured by three variables for counties nationwide: population size, population growth, and per capita income. The reforms also were examined by U.S. Census regions and subregions. Then each reform was adjusted to assess the influence of one or a few stales where a given reform was slate-imposed or almost universally adopted. For each reform, urbanization was a key factor in explaining adoption. Region offered little explanation. The stale also emerged as an important variable
Over the last two decades, subjective well-being in China declined. Using data from the World Values Survey, we identify predictors of the trend in life satisfaction in China during 1990–2007. Social comparisons and the decline of social capital explain the decrease in well-being, and they are strictly connected to the increasing orientation of Chinese people toward materialistic values. The increasing role of social comparisons is also a key factor in the increase of well-being inequalities between income classes.
Various types of social capital facilitate the creation of intralocal or interlocal economic development partnerships because it reduces the transaction costs that lead to collective action problems. Prior studies have focused on explaining how collective action mechanisms lead to the creation of economic development partnerships. While multidimensional social capital plays a dynamic role in promoting economic development activities within and across communities, the underlying complexity of multidimensional social capital remains unexplored in prior studies. This study creates a typology presenting various dimensions of social capital and tests the effects of multidimensional social capital on different economic development partnerships. Results indicate that different dimensions of social capital contribute to creating economic development partnerships regardless of local boundaries.
Lester Salamon pioneered the study of nonprofit organizations and of their cooperation with government in the development and delivery of important social and economic services. His unique research in the early and mid-1980s was the first to document the pervasive interrelationships between government and the nonprofit sector in the United States, identifying some of crucial characteristics of nonprofit human service agencies and examining the impact of the budget and tax policies of tire Reagan and Bush administrations. Partners in Public Service brings together some of Lester Salamon's most important work on the changing relationship between government and the voluntary sector in the American version of the modern welfare state. Approaching issues from a variety of perspectives -- theoretical, empirical, retrospective, prospective, and comparative -- Salamon illuminates the theoretical basis of government-nonprofit cooperation, shows why government came to rely on nonprofit groups to administer public programs, documents the scope of the resulting partnership, reviews the consequences for this partnership of recent attempts to cut federal spending, and explores the expanding scope of government-nonprofit collaboration at the international level.
Employing expenditure data as a surrogate for policy values as established by state and local policymakers, discriminant analysis has been used to test whether similar patterns of expenditures correspond to Elazar's classification of American states into three political subcultures. The tests lend support to the utility of conceptualizing American states as operating in distinct political cultural environments. Traditionalistic states have expenditure patterns significantly different from moralistic and individualistic states, in that state, local, and combined expenditures are relatively low. Combined expenditures in moralistic and individualistic states tend to show similar patterns. What distinguishes moralistic and individualistic states is the fiscal role played by the state and local governments. In moralistic states, expenditures are relatively lower for local governments and higher for the state government. In the individualistic states, expenditures are higher for local governments and lower for the state government. These findings hold, even after controlling for a number of competing reasons for the observed patterns.
Social capital is the web of cooperative relationships between citizens that facilitates resolution of collection action problems (Coleman 1990; Putnam 1993). Although normally conceived as a property of communities, the reciprocal relationship between community involvement and trust in others is a demonstration of social capital in individual behavior and attitudes. Variation in social capital can be explained by citizens' psychological involvement with their communities, cognitive abilities, economic resources, and general life satisfaction. This variation affects citizens' confidence in national institutions, beyond specific controls for measures of actual performance. We analyze the pooled General Social Surveys from 1972 to 1994 in a latent variables framework incorporating aggregate contextual data. Civic engagement and interpersonal trust are in a tight reciprocal relationship, where the connection is stronger from participation to interpersonal trust, rather than the reverse.
We test whether a larger percentage of non-Whites in neighborhoods decreases associational involvement and build on earlier research in three ways. First, we explicitly consider the ethnic composition of organizations, distinguishing involvement in bridging (with out-group members) and bonding (only in-group members) organizations. Second, we start from constrict theory and test competing sets of predictions derived from conflict and contact theories to explain these relationships. Third, we examine whether relative out-group size affects involvement in different types of voluntary organizations equally. Using data from the 2005 U.S. 'Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy' survey, the percentage of non-Whites in neighborhoods is largely unrelated with associational involvement or perceived ethnic threat. However, perceiving ethnic threat is consistently negatively related with involvement in bridging organizations. Simultaneously, a larger percentage of non-Whites fosters intergroup contact, which is negatively related with perceptions of ethnic threat and involvement in bonding leisure organizations. Our results shed more light on the relationship between the relative out-group size in neighborhoods and associational involvement as well as underlying explanations for this link.
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Municipal governments play a vital role in American democracy, as well as in governments around the world. Despite this, little is known about the degree to which cities are responsive to the views of their citizens. In the past, the unavailability of data on the policy preferences of citizens at the municipal level has limited scholars’ ability to study the responsiveness of municipal government. We overcome this problem by using recent advances in opinion estimation to measure the mean policy conservatism in every U.S. city and town with a population above 20,000 people. Despite the supposition in the literature that municipal politics are non-ideological, we find that the policies enacted by cities across a range of policy areas correspond with the liberal-conservative positions of their citizens on national policy issues. In addition, we consider the influence of institutions, such as the presence of an elected mayor, the popular initiative, partisan elections, term limits, and at-large elections. Our results show that these institutions have little consistent impact on policy responsiveness in municipal government. These results demonstrate a robust role for citizen policy preferences in determining municipal policy outcomes, but cast doubt on the hypothesis that simple institutional reforms enhance responsiveness in municipal governments.
Competitiveness debates have contrasted countries that have industrial policies, like Japan, with more laissez-faire countries like the United States. But the pivotal difference is the level of a people's trust. High-trust societies are interlaced with voluntary organizations--Rotary clubs, Bible study groups, private schools--and thus have "social capital," which makes for the growth of large corporations in highly technical fields. Low-trust societies--France, Italy, China--tend toward small, family-owned businesses in basic goods. Social capital is not necessary for growth, but its absence tempts governments to intervene in the economy and imperil competitiveness.
The past several decades have brought significant changes to county governments in the United States as these jurisdictions assume an increasing share of urban services and opt for more modern forms of government. This article focuses on the policy consequences of the change from the traditional form of commission government to either the elected executive or appointed administrator form. Using an interrupted pooled time-series design with 10 reorganized counties and 10 matched jurisdictions, the analysis confirms the null hypothesis. Changes in form of government have virtually no effect on rates of change in county fiscal behavior.
Social capital has become a highly successful concept in social science despite widely perceived shortcomings in conceptualization and operationalization. The latter is frequently performed as a principal component analysis of individual survey data with subsequent aggregation to regional or national levels. The central focus of this paper is the interpretation of the diverging correlations observed between the dimensions elaborated on an individual and an aggregate level. We illustrate that the correlations of regionally aggregated components are the result of an improper application of a single-level model to a multilevel structure. This mechanism is demonstrated empirically by adopting results from the European Social Survey and elaborating dimensions of social capital from both individual and aggregate survey data for European regions. The findings clearly indicate that the observed ecological correlations are not simply spurious or inconsistent due to an ecological fallacy condition, but rather reflect the influence of regional driving forces. Researchers need to be more careful in taking account of the multilevel nature of the data in order to produce valid results. In fact, the often applied procedure of individual factorization and subsequent aggregation of data provides a mixture of the two level effects with potentially misleading implications.
Objective
The recent surge in hate group activity is a concern to many citizens and policymakers. We examine the roles of socioeconomic factors measured at the county level that are hypothesized to account for the presence of such groups, including social capital and religious affiliations.Methods
We estimate a Poisson regression model using counts of hate groups provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center for each of the over 3,000 U.S. counties. Our regressors include a wider set of variables than has been considered in previous studies, such as Jefferson and Pryor (1999).ResultsOur approach produces a better statistical fit than that in Jefferson and Pryor's paper, and the additional regressors contribute significantly to our understanding of hate groups.Conclusion
Both social capital stocks and religious affiliation exert an independent and statistically significant influence on the number of hate groups, as does the presence of Wal-Mart stores, holding other factors constant.
Government in the United States is in considerable part local government, and of all local governmental units the county is most widely prevalent. Every state has counties (they are called parishes in Louisiana); in all states but Rhode Island the county is organized for governmental purposes; and, not with standing the existence of some areas without county organization, county government may be said virtually to blanket the nation. A generation ago, in a sub-title to one of the earlier books on the subject, the county was characterized as the “Dark Continent” of American Politics. Now, at mid-point in the century, it seems appropriate to reëxamine the county with a view to determining the extent to which the backward institution of the early 1900's has since been modernized and the directions in which further improvement may reasonably be expected in the future.
Perhaps most striking, in a comparison of present-day counties with those of a half-century ago, is the fact that, in total number of organized units (now 3,051) and in geographic outline, the county setup remains practically unchanged. Most present-day counties were established well before the turn of the century and, by and large, subsequent boundary changes have been few and of minor nature. A map of the nation's counties as of today would be scarcely distinguishable from one portraying the counties as of 1900 or even earlier.
San Francisco is in transition between two urban regimes, a crumbling business-dominated progrowth regime and an emerging progressive slow-growth regime, which is best described as an antiregime because it functions mainly to obstruct the exercise of power. To convert an urban movement into a regime, the city's progressive leaders must reconcile the divergent political interests of coalition elements, renegotiate a partnership with the private sector that is consistent with slow-growth objectives, and settle disputes surrounding Mayor Agnos's tenure. The progressive coalition's exclusive reliance upon a small-business economy is not sufficient to resolve contradictions between materialist and postmaterialist goals in the progressive agenda.
The idea of social capital has had a powerful impact on the study of politics, policy, and social science at large. Much of what we know about the causes and effects of social capital, however, is limited by the nature of data used regularly by scholars working in this area. Current data sets allow researchers to study changes in social capital over time at the national level and static differences in the distribution of social capital across the states. The inability of scholars to know how social capital varies over time and across space limits the kinds of questions that can be asked. In this article, we use sample data of more than 20,000 individuals conducted biannually in the continuous 48 states by the marketing research firm MediaMark Research, Inc. to create a unique measure of social capital that varies across time and space. These data are available at the state level from 1986 through 2004.
While the dynamics of trust in the national government have been shown to be responsive to political events and governmental performance, less is known about why the publics trust in U.S. state and local government rises and falls over time. We examine the trends in confidence in subnational government using an aggregate level approach. First, we consider whether levels of trust are defined by reactions to the national government. Second, we consider how factors specific to subnational politics such as governmental performance and the quality of community life influence trust. Using measures of confidence in state and local government from 1968 to 2004 and a set of error correction models, we find evidence for both accounts. Confidence in subnational governments reflects national trends such as economic tides and public preferences for more or less government, but also exhibits unique dynamics explained by factors specific to subnational politics.
Robert Putnam’s work suggests social capital is compatible with social equality, while Rodney Hero argues the two are inversely related. Hero and Putnam, however, are limited in their arguments because they have only cross-sectional data and their theoretical arguments imply dynamic relationships over time. We create a state-level social capital index and a measure of racial diversity that varies over time and across states. We use multivariate models to determine whether social capital or racial diversity better predicts levels of policy equity. We find that social capital detrimentally affects policy equity and racial diversity is positively associated with policy equity.