Civic Engagement as an Externality of Social Capital

Abstract

The concept of social capital that has become popular in the last decades has significant heuristic potential. It is developed through the broadening of the object of research. Today, the study of the externalities of social capital remains an under-investigated area. The use of social capital has a wide range of external effects. Most often, attention is paid to their occurrence in the economy. However, they are present in all spheres of social life and are significant there, too. Thus, in the sphere of political engagement, social effects may include various forms of civic engagement, which facilitate the functioning of civil society, and, in particular, the implementation of its function as a mechanism of feedback between the society and state. This article aims to demonstrate using empirical material the dependence of respondents’ civic engagement on their social capital. The empirical research base is represented by the results of public opinion polls of the population of Vologda Region, conducted in June 2016 by specialists of the Vologda Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences Federal Publicly Funded Institution of Science. During data analysis carried out on the basis of an indicator model of social capital measurement developed in the course of the Regional Social Capital in Crisis Conditions project, groups of social capital bearers different in accumulation level were identified. Data were analyzed with the use of the SPSS package. The research discovered that the civic activity demonstrated by respondents depends on their belonging to a group with accumulated social capital. Persons with social capital of higher level were to a much greater extent involved in various forms of civic engagement.