Plenty of trust, not much cooperation: social capital and collective action in early twentieth century eastern Spain

Abstract

Social capital—defined here as the norms and networks that create the necessary trust for people to cooperate to solve collective-action problems—also has negative effects. They are usually a consequence of “bonding” social capital, but not always, as this article shows from a new perspective. It uses community irrigation institutions, cooperatives, and the citrus industry in eastern Spain to test Robert Putman's thesis on the ability of social capital to generate virtuous equilibria. It shows that social capital itself hindered “bridging” cooperation (in some cases, centuries' old) on certain issues from becoming a generalized culture of cooperation.