Social Capital, Democratic Stability, and Fostering the Right Political Culture

Political Science
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Political Science
An ethnic group refers to a social group which shares distinctive and common cultures, language or even religion. Ethnicity seems to prevail in many countries and hence it has been a hindrance towards achieving a democratic nation. On the other hand, democracy refers to a system of governance in which all the individuals are given a chance to participate in the decision making process through a voting process where they elect representatives to a parliament. In a democratic government, the supreme power is vested on the citizens of the country. Democracy has been the aim of every government to ensure that every individual has an equal right and no one is above the law. However, this has been challenging due to lack of serious participation from other parties involved directly or indirectly. In this case, the developing countries seem to be struggling more with issues concerning democracy. However, building social capital has been regarded as one of the ways to foster democracy in a society or a nation. This argument is based on the issues of democracy and using building in social capital as a way to stabilize a developing democracy.
Through social capital, we can achieve stability in democracy. Social capital refers to an economic and cultural form that stresses for social networks among individuals, building of trust, coordination and cooperation where the market participants produces goods and services for a common good. Fostering social capital in a society ensures that individuals are able to work together. Social capital is centered on the premise of social networks which emphasizes on a collective value in all the social networks (Lin, 2001). In addition, social capital also refers to the benefits that may arise as a result of trust that is associated with the networks created within people. In this regard social capital can be used in the promotion of democracy in a nation in a number of ways. In addition, there are a number of linkages between social capital and stabilizing democracy. The concept of individuals coming together is one that links democracy with social capital. In this regard, social capital entails people coming together a working through coordination and cooperation. This is the same case like democracy where individuals come together and decide to make certain decision. For example, when people come together they can decide to democratically choose a certain government to lead them. In addition, the trust build through social capital has a link with democracy in a way that people are able to work together in confidence thus removing any doubts hence there will be no biasness in activities and therefore this is one of the traits of democracy where every individual has an equal rights (Lin, 2001).
However, there are some of the limits towards these linkages that have prevented the two aspects to work efficiently. In this case, one of the limits is the issue of coordination that cannot be achieved without the willingness of an individual to work together with others in order to attain certain goals. In addition, these linkages can be limited due to the different interest that individuals may have. In this regard, some of the individuals may hav...