A Network Perspective on State-Society Synergy to Increase Community-Level Social Capital

"Can state-society synergy be created in the short run, or does it require historically deep institutional and normative foundations?" In other words, what role can an outside party-such as a government or state actor-play in constructing social capital when it is not a permanent fixture of the existing interrelationships within a community? Taking a network perspective, this exploratory research examines community-level social capital outcomes of a government-led intervention. Operationalized as social networks, social capital is measured as an increase to the strength of weak ties and reduction in redundancy among exchange relationships. Findings suggest that state-society synergy has the potential to increase bridging social capital in communities. In addition, communities with higher levels of cohesion and connectivity pre-intervention results in greater increases to social capital, and although trust plays a crucial role in development of social capital, the influence organizations are perceived to have does not.