Civic Actions Vital For Local Democracy

It was almost two decades ago that this author visited some of the local bodies in Rupendehi district together with Prof.  Dr. Walter Kalin, who was then heading the public law department of Berne University in Switzerland. As a well-known local governance and civic engagement expert, when he came across the relatively well-planned development in Anandaban VDC with road access penetration and other civic amenities in almost all wards, he was quick to point out that civic capital in the VDC should be active and engaging. Now the VDC has been consolidated into the well-known Tilottama Municipality within the federal framework established by the constitution of Nepal.

Then the VDC was led by Romani Pathak, an educated, social and popular local leader who passed away recently. Though no such systematic studies have been conducted pinpointing relationship between civic capital and local government, especially to ascertain the extent to which active participation of civil society in local governance contributes to social accountability and development in Nepal, the pronounced differentials in governance and development outcomes in the local governments across the country can be attributed to the presence or absence of active, dynamic and responsible social and civic capital. 

Social capital

Robert Putnam, the well-known US political scientist, is best known for popularising the concept of social and civic capital. According to Putnam, social capital comprises the networks, norms, and trust that enable people to join and work together in an associative manner.  Robert Putnam’s well-known contribution to social capital in Northern Italy is his work titled “Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy”. In this study, he and his team spent quite a long period conducting research as to why some regional governments in Italy worked more effectively than others after the 1970s constitutional reforms, which had restructured Italy's governmental system and created governments at the regional level.

The research found that northern Italian regions had dense networks of civic engagement—such as local associations, cooperatives, sports clubs, cultural groups, and voluntary organisations. Citizens trusted each other and participated actively in public affairs, enhancing cooperation beyond family or close kin. In this study, it was traced that the centuries-old traditions of communal self-governance in the north, especially in medieval city-states, encouraged habits of cooperation and public-spiritedness. In short, Putnam argued that northern Italy’s strong tradition of civic participation and trust was the foundation for its effective democracy and good governance. This offers an example of how social capital improves institutional performance.

However, in his latest work, "Bowling Alone", Putnam lamented the growing trend of decline of social capital and civic virtue. In this book, he took the case of American society itself. He argued that social capital in the U.S. had been declining, as shown by reduced civic engagement, weaker community ties, and less participation in organisations. He distinguished between bonding social capital - ties within similar groups and bridging social capital - connections across diverse groups, emphasising that both are crucial for a healthy democracy and community well-being. 

Ever since the publication of Alexis de Tocqueville’s "Democracy in America", the United States has indeed played a central role in systematic studies of the links between democracy and civic capital. Although this is in part because trends in American life are often regarded as pioneers of social modernisation, it is also because America has traditionally been considered unusually “civic” - a reputation that has not been entirely unwarranted and unjustified. When French political scientist Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s to study democracy at work, it was the Americans’ propensity for civic association that most impressed him as the key to their unprecedented ability to make the US democracy work. 

Many students of the new democracies that have emerged over the past decade and a half have emphasised the importance of a strong and active civil society to the consolidation of democracy. Especially about the post-communist countries in Eastern Europe and former soviet socialist republics, scholars and democratic activists alike have lamented the absence or obliteration of traditions of independent civic engagement and a widespread tendency toward passive dependence on the state. The advanced Western democracies and, above all, the United States have therefore typically been taken as models to be emulated. 

Civic engagement 

Studies of trends in social connectedness and civic engagement have tacitly assumed that all the forms of social capital that we have discussed are themselves coherently correlated across individuals.  Members of associations are much more likely than non-members to participate in politics, to spend time with neighbours, to express social trust, and so on. The close correlation between social trust and associational membership is true not only across time and individuals, but also across countries. Recently, social scientists of a neo-Tocquevillean bent have found a wide range of empirical evidence that the quality of public life and the performance of social institutions are indeed powerfully influenced by norms and networks of civic engagement. 

Researchers in such fields as education, urban poverty, and unemployment, the control of crime and drug abuse, and even health have discovered that successful outcomes are more likely in civically engaged communities. Similarly, research on the varying economic attainments of different ethnic groups in the United States and many other countries has demonstrated the importance of social bonds within each group. In Nepal, our social and political scientists must conduct studies on various dimensions of social capital to rediscover the importance of fostering local governance, social harmony, and development. 

(The author is presently associated with Policy Research Institute (PRI) as a senior research fellow.  rijalmukti@gmail.com)