SCI Working Paper No. 9, May 1999. The objective of this paper is to explore the role of social capital in community-based rural water and urban sanitation delivery. This is done by reviewing the existing empirical literature on the impact of social capital on irrigation management, rural drinking water delivery, and urban sanitation. The paper reviews the performance of efforts that rely on the cooperation of users to deliver water and sanitation and the factors that influence that cooperation. SCI Working Paper No. 11, May 1999.
Social capital is defined as mutual trust.
Social capital might be a new production factor which must be added to human and physical capital, or it might enter as a reduction in either transaction or monitoring costs. The paper discusses both direct and indirect ways of measuring social capital. The crucial question is whether social capital can be changed. This paper also addresses how much harm totalitarian regimes do to social capital when they expand their area of central control. SCI Working Paper No. 12.