Social Capital and Civil Society in Public Policy, Social Change, and Welfare

Abstract

Mainstream economics reduces concepts of social capital and civil society to means for profit and competition, reproducing inequality and power. Alternative approaches identify social capital with state-society synergy relations and generalized networks of cooperation, which enable the civil society to promote solidarity, democracy, public policy, social change, and welfare. Similarly, Post-Keynesian Institutionalism recognizes the creative role of the state, democratic institutions, and civic values. However, questions remain regarding how social groups and the state interact and promote change. This article seeks to fill that void by connecting these analyses with the literature on the commons and participatory and deliberative democracy.

Keywords:

• social capital
• civil society
• public policy
• commons
• participatory and deliberative democracy

JEL Classification Codes:

• A13
• B52
• B55
• D70
• Z18

Notes

1 See Wrenn and Waller (2018) for an analysis of the ways mainstream economics has distorted the social and ethical dimensions of human behavior.

2 According to Michel Foucault, Neoliberalism is a mode of governmentality, where the social is organized through economic incentives and political power is organized on the competitive logic of markets (Madra and Adaman 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Asimina Christoforou

Asimina Christoforou is an assistant professor at the Department of Economic and Regional Development of Panteion University, Athens, Greece. This article draws on ideas developed in the author's chapter entitled “Social Capital and Public Policy: The Role of Civil Society in Transforming the State” in A Modern Guide to Post-Keynesian Institutional Economics, edited by Charles J. Whalen (Christoforou 2022). The author would like to express her heartfelt thanks to the Association for Evolutionary Economics for honoring her with the Clarence E. Ayres Award 2022. She extends her deepest gratitude for their support and solidarity in her research and academic life during the times of crisis.