ABSTRACT
Social capital and deliberative democracy theories share a crucial assumption: political participation can have – under certain specific conditions – positive developmental effects on individuals. Participation in deliberative institutions or voluntary associations could create “better citizens”. Social capital is defined here as the ties linking individuals through the creation of formal (e.g. associations) or informal (e.g. friends or family) networks. The question of the norms of trust and reciprocity is therefore deliberately excluded from this conceptual definition, their analysis being postponed to the interpretation of the sources and effects of social capital, which can only be drawn from empirical research. Generally, two types of democratic outcomes of social capital are distinguished: micro- and macro-effects. At the individual level – on which this chapter focuses – networks of civic engagement are believed to have positive effects on their members; they socialize them into democratic culture and teach them trust, cooperation and tolerance, making them better citizens. At the institutional level, these networks lubricate institutional settings, making them more legitimate and efficient. As Robert Putnam puts it, they make democracy work better by increasing institutional performances (Putnam 1993). The same kind of argument can be found, more or less explicitly, in the deliberative democracy literature. The transformative power of deliberation indeed underlies its definition. Joshua Cohen is perhaps the clearest on the political relevance of this process of collective will formation (Cohen 1997: 69): “Democratic politics […] shapes the identity and interests of citizens in ways that contribute to the formation of a public conception of the common good”. Participation in deliberative institutions, as they foster processes of mutual information and conviction, would enlighten and enlarge individuals’ preferences and interests, making them more tolerant, other-regarding and aware of the public good.
