America Needs a Social Capital Campaign
so·cial cap·i·tal: the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively.
If there was anything evident from the storming of the Capitol, it is that America is in dire need of a Social Capital Campaign. Our country is bankrupt, and without intentionally investing in social capital, we will not recover the trust necessary to develop and pursue a shared vision for the common good.
I worked in Congress for 16 years, and was in leadership for six, walking the halls of the Capitol daily. My office was just a few steps from the Senate Chamber. I remember saying to myself that it would be time to leave when I lost the sense of awe when I walked through the rotunda. I never lost the awe, although the senator I worked for lost his reelection.
Seeing images from the riots has shaken me like little else over the past year. When I hear others compare Wednesday’s events with violence undertaken by some protestors in response to the deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police officers, I am reminded of one of my earliest memories is as a six-year-old child, watching flames on the horizon in Washington, DC from the Virginia Theological Seminary campus where we lived. Angry crowds took to the streets, lighting cars and buildings on fire in response to the assassination of The Rev. Martin Luther King.
This past Wednesday was different. The assault on the Capitol was an effort to obstruct Constitutional proceedings by preventing duly elected members of Congress from carrying out the duty charged to them by the Constitution to certify the election of the President. It was an attempted revolution, and as far as revolutions go, thank God it was a poorly planned and failed one.
Capitol staffers barricading the doors last Wednesday, Image from Google
However, the violence this summer and at the Capitol last week do have one thing in common; they are the result of a nation-wide, gradual but now rapidly-accelerating decline of social capital. When social capital is strong, we are able to pursue justice within the framework of an ordered society. However, when we lose confidence and trust in our institutions, our neighbors, our nation and our future, some take to the streets violently.
As of September 2020, only 28% of Republicans and 12% of Democrats say they trust the Federal government (Pew). Today, 60% of Americans say they have either “very little trust” or “no trust at all” in mass media sources; in 1984, only 42% held this view (Gallup / Politico).
Public trust is declining in America and ranks below trust levels in Mexico, Turkey, China and Colombia. Experts are struggling to comprehend this unusual political, media, and societal moment in America.
Is distrust in traditional news sources and the emergence of “fake news” our “new normal”?
Americans decline of trust in government, Image from Pew research
Has the rise of social media made tribalism the norm and made scattered sources of “truth” (no matter how far-fetched) socially acceptable?
Has the vocal minority on the fringes – both left and right – paralyzed the center majority, undermining core democratic institutions?
Have we permanently lost the ability to trust one another, trust our democracy, and trust that there is a common good we can strive together to achieve?
Have we been taken hostage by our extremes, as Arthur Brooks has suggested?
Are we on the edge of the cliff? Have we fallen off?
“Social capital” is defined as mutual trust and civic engagement, and is linked to better substantive outcomes for citizens in democracies. It contributes to residents’ quality of life and overall well-being. Social capital is dependent on social networks and the norms of trustworthiness and reciprocity that arise from them. As Robert Putnam has observed in his work, social capital is a powerful predictor of many social goods, including health and happiness, levels of economic development, well-working schools, safe neighborhoods, and responsive government. Recently, scholars who link social capital to race and inequality have challenged this favorable picture of social capital in relation to the American Experiment. Relatedly, some experts have suggested that social media has actually drained social capital, rather than add to it. By all objective metrics, America is at its most divided in modern history, and it is critical that as a nation we invest in innovative efforts to rebuild our social capital if we are to come through this period of division stronger than ever.
The Pew Foundation has tracked growing polarization and distrust, and found that although Americans are fully aware of and discouraged by it, they have a wealth of ideas to address it. As our Congress and President-Elect Biden convenes in a week to set the agenda for the foreseeable future, we need it to invest in ideas and initiatives that will rebuild social social capital, notably Trust, Connectivity, Conflict Resolution, Good Will and Shared Vision for Common Good.
“Representative Andy Kim helped law enforcement officers clean up debris in the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday”, Photo from, New York Times, Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
Here at Clapham, we believe that America needs a national Social Capital Campaign that invests in:
Legislative initiatives that rebuild. As head of the Joint Economic Committee, Senator Mike Lee proposed to the last Congress a Social Capital Project which included a number of legislative initiatives that would potentially rebuild social capital. We propose that this project continue, with bipartisan involvement, encouraged and supported by Senate leadership. And in the same manner that we measure the impact of various legislation on the environment or the budget, we recommend that Congress put in place the mechanism to intentionally consider the impact of legislation that it is considering on our national social fabric.
A Social Capital Index that measures. With advances in information technology and AI, data-driven policy, whether in the public or private sectors, has allowed us to measure the impact, and hopefully success, of our investments in nearly real time. But to measure outcome, one needs to have identified the outcomes that need to be measured. A national social capital index that has been developed by the best minds in the government and the private sector will allow investment of financial capital into social capital to be scaled and reverse the spiral of polarization that we are in. New information technologies make possible—and affordable—a series of monitoring opportunities, data exchanges, analytical inquiries, policy evaluations, and performance comparisons that would have been impossible even a few years ago. A national commission to establish a Social Capital Index should be created by the incoming administration, possibly as a relaunch of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Platforms that educate and reward. We were involved in the architecture of several online platforms geared toward young Millennials that incentive positive behavior with near-term reward, including one that rewards putting money toward savings, investment, and philanthropy and one that incentivizes advocacy addressing global poverty by rewarding “creative capital” donated by musicians and artists (e.g. a concert ticket). We need a social capital exchange online platform that incentives actions and behaviour that rebuild social capital. Rather than the social media networks that have tribalized us, our culture (and certainly, the next generation) needs a platform that rewards on-line and off-line activity that builds trust, fosters authentic connections, and creates a habit of caring for our neighbor.
Stories that instill empathy. Stories have power to convict and compel unlike anything else. In our broken time, we need stories that awaken empathy, inviting us to imagine the experiences, perspectives and feelings of others - particularly of those who are different from us. If we are willing to walk a mile in another’s shoes (i.e. the shoes of a fictional character who is unlike us), we can be discipled in humility and empathy, virtues that are necessary for societal healing and cultural renewal. Rather than creating stories that stereotype and further divide, our streaming services should explore content that draws us together, including modeling practical conflict resolution tactics by witnessing them employed in fictional narratives. Rather than resort to bullets, which is a common trope, let’s appeal to our better angels. We “learn by doing” alongside characters we care about and are equipped to do the same in our own lives.
Sources that can be trusted. The decline of trust in our media has allowed us to develop competing narratives of truth, shaping worldview and beliefs at the deepest level. It is unclear how to create a shared reference point for facts that allow for constructure conversation to ensue. Some studies have shown that simply listening to an opponent's perspective can actually double down polarization (“They really are crazy”). “Despite decades of psychology research that shows fostering contact between "us" and "them" is a powerful way to reduce prejudice, scientists are starting to find that you can't just shove people together — online or in person — and expect the interaction to have miraculous effects,” (Washington Post). An effort to create a source of news that can be trusted by both sides of the divide will be difficult, but absolutely necessary if we are to rebuild social capital.
Leadership that models. It was a relief to see Vice President Pence announce his intent to attend President-elect Biden’s swearing in, and an equal relief to hear Biden welcome him. “I’d be honored to have him there and to move forward in the transition,” Biden said. “I think it’s important that as much as we can stick to what have been the historic precedents and circumstances of how an administration changes.” After years of public name calling and incriminations, with our elected leaders acting in ways that we rightly tell our children not to, it is time for leaders to model civility, and show us how to negotiate through and despite our differences for the common good. This starts as a very personal exercise; rebuilding relational capital. There have been articles written about ways to restore interpersonal trust in the Congress. We propose that these ideas be considered by the Congressional leadership, but that President-elect Biden makes it a priority to lead by action and example as well.
A Social Capital Trust Fund that innovates. Foundations and corporations are increasingly utilizing social impact investment, whether through program related investment (PRI), mission related investment (MRI) or high-risk micro investment (alternative investment) to advance social goals and societal change. The Ford Foundation has pioneered this approach at scale, but other efforts have been led by Steve Case’s foundation and Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective. We recommend that a number of foundations and other funders create an impact investment fund which would solicit proposals aimed at restoring trust in government institutions and news media, as well as rebuilding interpersonal social capital through technology and social media.
Through initiatives like this, we can begin the long and arduous process of rebuilding the trust needed to explore a common vision for the common good. But this will not be easy. As Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America observed: “Without common ideas, there is no common action, and without common action men still exist, but a social body does not. Thus in order that there be society, and all the more, that this society prosper, it is necessary that all the minds of the citizens always be brought together and held together by some principle ideas.”
These are just a few proposals, and there are certainly many more, but our main point is that America cannot reverse the slide we are on without an intentional effort to rebuild social capital.
But the most important investment is one that our policy makers and foundations can’t easily undertake. The stores in Minneapolis, the synagogue in Pittsburgh and the windows in the U.S. Capitol can be rebuilt with public and private funding, but the hearts that led to these acts cannot. The final, and possibly most lasting investment needs to be made by our religious leaders. Humility, an internal evaluation of our hearts followed by repentance, confession, restitution and reconciliation, needs to be modeled by our religious leaders, some of whom have encouraged and/or dismissed recent violence. These are the largely spiritual disciplines and attributes that need to be invested in to create the spiritual capital that undergirds the American Experiment.
As George Washington noted: “Of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, our religion and morality are the indispensable supporters. Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that our national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”