This book makes an important theoretical contribution by opening the “black box” linking social capital and democratic performance. Spurred by Robert Putnam's observed correlation between social capital and budget promptness (Making Democracy Work, 1995), Laura Brunell seeks to explain the causal mechanisms connecting a vibrant civil society to good government performance.
Brunell does so by introducing the concept of “institutional capital,” defined as “the assemblage of institutional traits that permits the state to penetrate civil society and afford itself of its resources and, at the same time, allows civil society to penetrate the state and appropriate public sector resources and state power” (p. 11). Where governments promote civil society and are open to working collaboratively with it, and where a vibrant array of civil society groups are present and are willing and able to work constructively with the state, she argues, “partnership performance” will emerge and democracies will work best. In the absence of either of these conditions, regime performance will be poor or attributable to idiosyncratic individual relationships that she labels “patronage performance.” Rounding out the fourfold table are two mixed outcomes that Brunell designates “statist performance” and “third sector performance.” The former occurs when government is strong and civil society weak, leading to high performance in policy areas where state-controlled resources are most important. The latter results when government is weak but a strong civil society is able to achieve high performance in some policy areas. The author makes an additional important argument: Because civil society may be stronger on some fronts than on others, and because different arms of government may have varying predispositions to engage civil society, regime performance may differ from policy area to policy area even in the same polity at the same time.
To test these theoretical expectations empirically, Brunell spent two years living in Lodz and Krakow, Poland, and studying their policy processes in great detail. Institutional Capital paints a fascinating and historical portrait of two very different cities. Drawing on secondary sources, Brunell finds that over the centuries, Krakow enjoyed self-government and a vibrant array of cultural and educational organizations. Despite the best efforts of communist rulers, these groups did not disappear under Soviet rule but were instead joined by well-organized workers. In the later years of communist rule, these organizations worked together with the church to carve out alternative spaces for Krakowites to express themselves. After the fall of communism, Brunell's own research found, this vibrant array of third-sector organizations continued to thrive, and many—but not all—in the city government were happy to listen to and provide information to these groups. Lodz developed quite differently. The city was traditionally administered by inept outside rulers, and civil society consisted primarily of labor unions and some German and/or Jewish professional associations. The latter were wiped out by World War II. Throughout history, Lodz's predominantly female textile workers clashed with factory managers, capitalist as well as communist. Brunell found that after Poland democratized, Lodz's third sector remained less diverse than Krakow's and that strained state–society relationships continued.
Given these varying stocks of institutional capital, Brunell investigates government performance in three areas: waste disposal, economic development planning, and assistance to domestic violence victims. Her conclusions are based on an impressive array of sources, including participant observation, surveys of nongovernmental organizations, personal interviews, and analysis of government documents. By choosing three disparate policy areas, she is able to portray variance in the democratic performance of the same city government.
In terms of waste disposal, Krakow and Lodz present stark and convincing contrasts in democratic performance along the lines that the institutional capital hypothesis would expect. Both cities were charged with relocating their solid waste facilities following the fall of communism. In Krakow, a broad range of environmental groups came together with the city government at a “Green Table” to plan environmentally sound waste disposal and recycling policies, resulting in the authro's partnership performance. In contrast, the Lodz city authorities clashed with neighborhood groups, and the two sides failed to agree on a new waste disposal facility. As a result, the city resorted to the costly solution of exporting its garbage.
The two cities exhibited similar patterns in terms of economic development planning. Following the fall of communism, Krakow's “Oval Table” was established as a forum for city officials and national and international organizations, as well as local economic, cultural, and other NGOs, to collaborate on extensive development plans. In contrast to this high level of partnership performance, Lodz failed to create a comprehensive development plan at all and simply decided to rely on the presence of low-wage labor as a means of attracting international investment. While these latter outcomes are consistent with the amount of institutional capital present, this case seems overdetermined. Given its world cultural and historical importance, Krakow had many more development options open to it in the 1990s than did industrial Lodz; the latter's lack of planning may represent more its lack of development options than its lack of institutional capital.
Lodz, however, also failed to structure coordination with civil society in the realm of social service provision. In contrast to Krakow, the city has not established a shelter for its high number of domestic violence victims. Here, “third sector performance” has at least emerged, as competent independent women's organizations have been able to provide a high level of services to victims of domestic violence at an independently run hostel that receives some public funding.
In the realm of social service provision, Krakow failed to obtain the partnership performance it did in the first two policy areas. Although a vibrant array of women's organizations were present in the city, there was a lack of will on the part of public administration to collaborate with them. The city's Department of Social Services shut an experienced feminist NGO out of the bidding process for a contract to run a shelter for battered women, failing to provide them with comprehensive information about the bidding process and changing the deadline for bids immediately after receiving a bid from an inexperienced Catholic charity that the department's Catholic bureaucrats found amenable. The latter organization has failed to provide appropriate services to domestic violence victims in Krakow, and competent NGOs have been denied resources they could have used to provide such services. Here, Brunell makes a convincing case that there is not always a one-to-one correlation between a dynamic civil society and high government performance. If the government is hostile to the participation of voluntary organizations, their expertise cannot be used to improve policy outcomes. One wonders, however, if the author would have come to the same conclusion had feminist bureaucrats used similar tactics to exclude the Catholic charity from bid consideration.
On a stylistic note, the book would have benefited from better copyediting. Persistent grammatical and typographical errors throughout the book detract from Brunell's innovative theoretical framework and detailed empirical chapters. Footnotes often lead to irregular line spacing as well.
Overall, however, Institutional Capital offers a logically convincing mechanism linking civil society and government performance. The case of waste disposal provides strong empirical support for Brunell's hypotheses, while the economic development case is less persuasive. The discussion of domestic violence provides compelling evidence that high government performance is not always guaranteed, even when a dynamic civil society is present. The book tells an absorbing tale of two very different Polish cities, which is sure to be of interest to students of Polish politics, in addition to those who study civil society and government performance more generally.
