Agricultural innovation, and agricultural development more generally, is a vital condition for alleviating poverty in many developing countries (e.g. Duflo and Kremer 2005; World Bank 2007; De Janvry 2010; Diao et al. 2010; Christiaensen et al. 2011). This thesis has several implications related to the role of social capital in the design, implementation and evaluation of development initiatives that target agricultural innovation. These implications are important to the ever increasing number of policies, programmes or projects for which networks, trust and norms of cooperation are either the basis for success or form an outcome as such. This specifically applies to those initiatives that include the beneficiaries in the design and
management of the project and stress the importance of information sharing, capacity building, and strengthening civic societies that represent them (Mansuri and Rao 2004).
The first implication is that stimulating social capital, especially bridging social capital, may be a natural leverage point for policy makers to promote agricultural development. This is a dimension of social capital which is generally thought to be important, if not vital, to economic development. Insofar as education or other policies contribute to relaxing the push for conformity, enhanced adoption of agricultural innovation may be a by-product. However, it appears as if cognitive bonding social capital can also be a factor that impedes adoption of agricultural innovations. Therefore, it might be appropriate to do a careful evaluation of the context in terms of the existing level of different dimensions of social capital; especially focussing on the balance between bonding and bridging social capital. This can be done before implementation of a program based on existing social capital data- such as the World Value Survey –baseline data, or more qualitative research methods such as focus group discussions.
The second implication is that increased levels of social capital can indeed be an outcome of development initiatives, either intentionally or not. I have shown that an intervention such as IAR4D can successfully influence the networks linking a village to partners outside the village. This result was found in two regions with divergent institutional contexts. I also showed that creating an impact on structural social capital requires specific
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efforts, because traditional ARD did not yield similar results. However, IAR4D did yet not yet have a strong significant impact on cognitive bonding social capital. It thus remains
questionable whether development initiatives can influence cognitive social capital if this is required. At the same time, I find tentative results that the impact on cognitive bridging social capital might have been negative in a sustainable coffee project in Vietnam. Because these are not stand-alone results (e.g. Elder et al. 2012; Ruben and Heras 2012; Vollan 2012)
implementing agents should carefully reflect whether their initiatives might have a negative effect on social capital. This could for example be done by monitoring the changes in social capital using standardized monitoring tools or through frequent interaction with target group beneficiaries. Issues that could be addressed are the identification of unmet expectations, lack of downward accountability and transparency or poor coordination (e.g. Vollan 2012).
The third implication is that social capital might matter for the success of certain development initiatives, either as a source of heterogeneous implementation or impact. More specifically, I show that institutional trust is important for the uptake of training practices. Therefore, the existing level of trust should be taken into account when training is used as a tool to improve agricultural training practices. For example, by incorporating trust-building modules to create awareness of potential mistrust, the barriers this mistrust could create and ways to improve upon this.
A fourth implication is that it is vital to take into account the multi-dimensional nature of social capital and the fact that these dimensions might have different relations to agricultural innovation and development initiatives. Moreover, the different dimensions are not necessarily related to each other. These results should invite researchers and policy-makers to be cautious in interpreting social capital indicators in empirical models. On the one hand, different dimensions and indicators of social capital cannot be used as an effective indicator of general social capital. On the other hand, they can be used to create a social capital index, if this is useful for comparative country analysis in line with Doing Business or World Wide Governance Indices. This would be similar to variables such as “life expectancy” and “literacy” which are not necessarily correlated, but constitute weights for the Human Development Index. Moreover, organisations that try to enhance development by building social capital should carefully consider which dimension or indicator of social capital they try to influence, what kind of effects this may have on other dimensions of social capital, or to which extent other dimensions of social capital are essential for success.
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Combined these implications mean that indicators of social capital should be included in the design and analysis of evaluation tools of agriculture-related development initiatives. There has been an increased interest in measuring the impact of agriculture-related development initiatives, and of development aid more generally (Duflo and Kremer 2005; Deaton 2009; De Janvry 2010). Including social capital indicators in these impact evaluations might be used to enhance capturing the characteristics of the agents involved, the informal institutional context in which they operate, and the mechanisms through which these program results in impact. In doing so, impact assessment better captures the fact that impact results from a combination of the mechanisms, the institutional context and the agents involved (also see Ekboir 2003; Mackay and Horton 2003; Deaton 2009).
Some of the implications might also apply to initiatives in other sectors of
development. The role of social capital is much broader than its role agricultural development alone. For example, Woolcock (2010) identified at least nine fields of studies where social capital has played an important role: families and youth behaviour problems, crime and violence; schooling and education, community life, work and organisations, democracy and governance, collective action problems, and economic development. The implications related to agricultural development initiatives, might also apply to the design and evaluation of policies, programs and projects in some of these other fields of development.