Putnam's Social Capital Theory Goes East: A Case Study of Western Ukraine and L'viv

Abstract

attempts to test Putnam's theory explicitly in the analysis of post-socialist politiesmost notably former East Germany-attention has been directed more towards his equilibrium thesis of 'virtuous' and 'vicious' circles. While stressing Putnam's neglect of factors such as institutional design and third-party enforcement,4 the focus in current analyses has been less on the issue of social capital as such and the micro-sociological underpinnings of non-communitarian social capital. The latter is the topic of this article. Therefore, rather than asking ourselves 'what is the importance of social capital to successful democratisation', the proper question to pose in our case should be 'exactly what is it in the nature of social capital in post-socialist societies that makes people less inclined to invest trust in formal democratic institutions?' Putnam's own reply is that 'sanctions that support norms of reciprocity against threat of opportunism are less likely to be imposed upwards and less likely to be acceded to, if imposed' in the kind of particularistic and vertical networks from which negative social capital breeds.5 Contrary to Putnam's argument, though, we hold that lack of trust in formal institutions is not due primarily to difficulties in implementing sanctions in social networks. Although Putnam was right in focusing on the exchange relations that constitute the backbone of these networks, the important point is actually that communitarian and non-communitarian social capital draw on two different modes of reducing social transaction costs. It is this difference rather than the problem of sanctions that accounts for the difficulties of transforming non-communitarian social