ABSTRACT
The notion of social capital, defined by the rational choice sociologist James Coleman (1988,1990) and developed by Robert Putnam in his Making Democracy Work (1993), has achieved broad acceptance among social scientists working in various disciplines. Social capital, identified narrowly with the presence of trust in societies, has been understood as a key factor in explaining economic growth and political stability, among other phenomena. An important element in explaining the success enjoyed by Robert Putnam’s book over recent years, is that it manages to provide a certain connection, albeit somewhat strained, between the comparative politics perspective and the rational choice approach, while indicating their possible interrelationships. Perhaps for this reason, and despite the problems unresolved by Putnam and picked up by numerous critics, discussion and controversy have not stopped.1 In this respect, this chapter aims to review some rational choice models of collective action, in order to discuss the possibilities of reinforcing the theoretical basis of the concept of social capital.
