Do
government agencies play significant role in building social capital? Or how
social capital helps in sustaining the effort of community based organizations?
I
have chosen this to share my views for two reasons. Firstly, in governance
paradigm, the role of community based institutions or NGOs are significant, in
which denying the social capital would be fatal at local level. Secondly, the state tries to ensure its
hegemony by establishing its institutions at local level, to promote democracy
and economic prosperity. Even the decentralized process of decision making is
significantly based on centralized structure of the state.
However,
these articles have examined and discussed many aspects of social capital
differently, which shows that a well established functional institution, both
at government and local level is important for active social capital.
Nicolai
clearly argues that social capital can be constructed by the state intervention
and role of the state is indispensable in creating the social capital by
ensuring the active involvement of government agencies or by coordinating with
local organization. According to his terminology, this is a ‘statists’ approach
of defining social capital. He criticizes ‘non statists’ approach, where ‘social
capital can only be generated outside of government sphere’. In fact, the Novgorod
Model is interesting case to recognize the importance of government in building
social capital. The article shows that Novgorod of Russian region has improved
a lot in comparison to many neighboring regions and even Novgorod has surpassed
the national average in many economic growth indicators. In the period of
1995-98, Russian’s GDP declined by 2.1%, while the annual growth of Novgorod
was 3.8% during the same period. Other indicators such as, employment rate,
regional salary before taxes, inflation, industrial production, Novgorod has
shown the impressive result.
How this
has possible in Novgorod? In 1990, the regional administration of Novgorod
reached on three point’s agreement, “promoting small scale and medium sized
businesses, attracting foreign investment, and reforming the housing market” to
generate alternative source of revenue after the collapse of federal government
subsidies. The local administration was agreed that small and medium scale
businesses to be promoted more for generating long term impact and job creation
at local level. Administration adopted market friendly policy, but an
administrative system was evolved to ensure the check and balance on the market
reform.
The
regional government established a cordial link with the local self government
and facilitated them to increase their administrative capacity. Novgorod was
the first region, which conducted the election regularly and timely. The political stability in the region provided
ample ground to take corrective measures to promote economic development
equally among everyone. A regional stabilization fund was established, which
ensured that the rich region would transfer fund to poorer region. This
mechanism of financial cooperation at local level motivated the local
administration to implement government policies effectively and involved other
actors and institutions in decision making. The Social Chamber was one of the associational
connections to share the legislative decisions and to involve civil
organizations. The Social Chamber was an important institution which brought
administration closer to the community leaders and helped in establishing the
network between the government and different organizations, such as trade
unions, political parties etc.
This is
important to recognize that Novgorod region was able to generate social capital
by government efforts because the local government recognized many social
rules, which was later accepted as agreements and this helped the local
government to identify various actors and mediating agencies at local level for
effective implementation of government policies. The author strives to equate
the instrumental value of social capital with the economic development and
growth of Novgorod. According to him, the involvement of local economic and
political elite with the government efforts and they also wanted to break the
status quo. In sum up, we can say that the author has supported that the role
of government is essential and indispensable in creating, generating and
maintaining social capital at regional and local level.
In the Novgorod Model, the author has supported that
the government agencies can build the social capital. The economic development
of Novgorod region proves that the effective local government agency enable the
community to strengthen the social capital and enable them to participate in
decision making. But, this argument is very much similar, which has been
repeated several times and commonly known as trickle down approach of social
development. The regional economic development helps elite and powerful and
they act collectively when they need to pressurize decision making process in
their favor.
However, Nicolai N. Petro not able to recognize the
civil society and informal organization, which have been promoting civicness
among the general masses, who are unable to participate in government sponsored
structure such as Social Chambers. The positive aspect of the Novgorod Model is that
the model shows that the government can create effective implementing mechanism
and mediating agencies to promote prosperity in the regional basis, by
developing local level institutions and agencies. The political transparency
and accountability of these agencies and institutions is important ingredient
to build positive social capital at local level.
