Good Governance Through Social Capital

1. Good Governance Through Social Capital Bryane Michael, Linacre College These slides are under a creative commons licence, meaning the user may freely use these slides in their own presentations for sharing knowledge or for critique. To the best of my knowledge, and graphics used are share-able under “fair use” – though of course I can not indemnify the user of these slides in case of problems.

2. 40 Years of International Development fails to solve the poverty trap State performance very different across similarly structured governments Robert Putnam finds a relationship between economic development and state-level social capital Sees social capital as trust What is Social Capital and Why Do We Care? Norms of co-opration and trust which facilitate the performance of common goals Failure of the Rationally Designed State and “Public Sector Reform”

3. Social Capital and the State Bonding Bridging Population Social Capital helps at the policy and public service delivery level…?

4. Productivity defined as outputs per unit input Bonding helps civil servants to work as a team WITHOUT tight regulation Bridging helps them define production targets and collect information Social Capital Helps Increase Civil Servant Productivity

5. Richard Rose refers to the post-modern society entitlements without trust trust determines effectiveness All production relies on “strong” and “weak” links Trust is required in the service

6. Building Social Capital • World Bank • Tanzania, Latin America and Asia • Focus on “association” by having people mingle • EU • standardised measure of social capital • Work with OECD on standardising and measuring “social capital” • World Bank and later work by Oxford academics • understand using experimental methods

7. Building Social Capital in St. Petersburg • In 2000, several surveys done to assess “regulatory quality” in Russia and other countries • With the Russian Academy of Public Administration, work on understanding social capital in the local public sector (municipalities and elsewhere) • Conduct a survey and conduct an “economic experiment” • Look for a relationship between team group size, “social capital”, regulation and productivity Goal: Improve Public Service Delivery rather than Promote Democracy

8. More sharing tended to lead to higher productivity Formal regulation had mixed impacts on sharing (and social capital) Group sizes of workers tended to vary with the amount of social capital Understanding Social Capital in St. Petersburg

9. Sto Delat: Public Sector Reform before • Deregulation • focus on outputs using New Public Management concepts • Incubation • government as generating “spin-out” companies • keeps employment down and training up • Virtual teams • civil servants work across depts and even ministries • few restrictions on communication and “vertical reporting” regulation after Service Delivery Contract individual employment contracts

10. Government service delivery has decreased in quality and funding (endogeneity problem) Move toward “issues” with government as an arbiter instead of player Sto Delat: The Public Private Partnership government people electricity government consumers Electricity Provision business NGOs

11. The HRM Survey • Executive regulation is like a blanket • guides current activity • but also follows current activity • Two types of questions • cognitive (trust) • structural (who you relate to) Trust questions Association questions Productivity questions

12. Lessons from St. Petersburg today • Start by obtaining mandate from key individuals in ministry and “service users” (local oligarchs) • gives “mandate” • gives “protection” for later • The Dance of Regulation • ignoring vexing regulation and coming back when reproached • Aggressive PR • showing population how the executive sees things • MPs are listening • As unit becomes “best practice”, policy changes from above bridging phase Insulation phase Population Fluid service See also Tendler’s study of local government in Brazil and Petro in Russia

13. Reliance on public sector values can help or hurt corruption Empirical studies show that bonding social capital more susceptible to corruption MORE REGULATION IS NOT THE ANSWER! Coda: Fighting or Helping Corruption? regulation