Exploring the Impact of Community and Organizational Social Capital on Government Performance

Civic-republican theories of democracy assume high levels of social capital within the community and within public bureaucracies will be associated with better government performance. This article tests these assumptions by analyzing the impact of community and organizational social capital on the achievements of English local governments. The interdependence between social capital and performance is modeled using a range of primary and secondary data. The statistical results suggest that both community and organizational social capital are positively related to government performance. However, further analysis revealed that the combined effects of these two forms of social capital are not beneficial for performance.