ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how social capital can alter the distribution and exercise of political power. It shows how social capital influences social, economic, and political exchanges among groups of rulers and civil society. The chapter explains that social capital is necessary for state legitimacy. Fundamentally, the civil society's rights and responsibilities are connected. In those regimes where citizens are given a large responsibility to participate, rights are more numerous and economic equality is higher. When participation falls, inequality grows and government legitimacy declines. Social capital in the form of attachment for state institutions encourages participation in working to provide high exclusion-cost goods (HECs), which in turn facilitates economic growth and political legitimacy in a virtuous cycle. Autocratic monarchies are those political systems in which a royal descendent assumes the throne peacefully through inheritance and maintains the executive power over the country. Liberal democracies are the rarest form of government, but also the most legitimate.
