Role of non-governmental organizations in building social capital: the case of Slovakia

Alžbeta Brozmanová Gregorová and Mária Murray Svidroňová

Chapter 3 in A Research Agenda for Social Capital in Economic Development, 2025, pp 48-68 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter looks at the potential of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in building social capital and raises questions about how social capital created by NGOs can impact economic development. The chapter analyzes different approaches to the functions of NGOs in the case of Slovakia. It focuses on the community-building function, which aims at building social capital, i.e., building and cultivating relationships among individuals and organizations or both. In the case of social capital, we distinguish between bonding capital and bridging capital, each of which has different economic and social implications. Bridging social capital is considered more critical regarding economic development and civil society. It consists primarily of voluntary associations with open membership, and its attribute is the general (social) trust that enables collective action, which can lead to the production of public goods by NGOs. Using a questionnaire, we mapped the functions of Slovak NGOs on a sample of 773 respondents. The main methods were factor and correlation analysis. The analysis aims to answer the research questions: 1) What are the functions of NGOs in Slovakia, and what is their role in building social capital? 2) How are the functions of NGOs related to the legal form, area of operation, geographic scope and focus of NGOs in terms of their public purpose? This approach sheds new light on future research directions in the mechanism of building social capital and economic development in a country.

Keywords: Bonding social capital; Bridging social capital; NGOs; Slovakia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035315819
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