Description
Drawing on extensive field work in Nicaragua and Argentina, in addition to public opinion and elite data, Leslie E. Anderson’s Social Capital in Developing Democracies explores the contribution of social capital to the method of democratization and the bounds of that contribution. Anderson finds that in Nicaragua strong, positive, bridging social capital has enhanced democratization, at the same time as in Argentina the legacy of Peronism has created bonding and non-democratic social capital that forever undermines the development of democracy. Faced with the truth of an anti-democratic type of social capital, Anderson suggests that Argentine democracy is developing at the basis of an alternative resource – institutional capital. Anderson concludes that social capital can and does beef up democracy under historical conditions that have created horizontal ties among citizens, but that social capital too can undermine democratization where historical conditions have created vertical ties with leaders and suspicion or non-cooperation among citizens.