Collective Action Investment Theory: Concord Orgs' Role in Building Social Capital, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Korean Language and Literature

Download Collective Action Investment Theory: Concord Orgs' Role in Building Social Capital and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Korean Language and Literature in PDF only on Docsity! Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action: Evidence from The Concord Project Barbara J. Nelson Linda Kaboolian Kathryn A. Carver American Political Science Association September 3, 2004 Chicago, Illinois __________________ Barbara J. Nelson is Dean of the UCLA School of Public Affairs (Nelson@sppsr.ucla.edu). Linda Kaboolian is a faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (Linda_Kaboolian@harvard.edu). Kathryn A. Carver is a health and human rights lawyer (kac@sppsr.ucla.edu). Copies of this paper are available in PDF format from The Concord Project website at http://concord.sppsr.ucla.edu.  The American Political Science Association and Barbara J. Nelson, Linda Kaboolian, and Kathryn A. Carver Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 2 Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action: Evidence from The Concord Project1 Barbara J. Nelsona Linda Kaboolian Kathryn A. Carver I. The Problem of Creating Bridging Social Capital Consider September 11th, 2001 and its aftermath. Consider that there are 80,000 gang members in Los Angeles. While considering the violence in the South Central or Korea town neighborhoods of Los Angeles, consider too the rigors of everyday life in Belfast, Cape Town, Ramallah, and Jerusalem. Consider all these cases and it is clear that among the most urgent problems facing the world today are conflicts over religion, race, and ethnicity. These conflicts arise as much within countries as between them. Democracy, economic development, and peace hang in the balance if we cannot find ways to work effectively across these divides. Color and class divide Americans. Religion and national aspirations divide the Northern Irish. Color and economic development divide South Africans. Identity and statehood divide Israelis and Palestinians. The solutions to such conflicts are complex and long in coming. Reducing these conflicts requires the stability of acceptable, even if imperfect, political agreements, and real reductions in daily violence perpetrated by agents of the state and by groups in civil society. But solutions to conflicts over religion, race, and ethnicity also depend on working across contested boundaries in everyday life, on building bridging social capital, to use the phrase now as well known in popular commentary as in academic discussion. Our research focuses on the third of these solutions—building bridging social capital in everyday life. Our work focuses on the theoretical and practical question of how people with profound differences agree to work together, especially how they form organizations that explicitly bring them together across deep divides of history and values. We concentrate on the questions of why and how “concord organizations” form. Concord organizations bring together people with fundamentally opposing views or identities for the purpose of promoting civil society while recognizing group differences. They are durable sites for creating bridging social capital, especially but not exclusively at the community level. Creating bridging social capital is more difficult than creating bonding social capital, and as such, it is in shorter supply. But bridging social capital is an important activator, a social enzyme if you will, that allows the virtues of “pro-social” a Barbara J. Nelson is the Dean of the UCLA School of Public Affairs (Nelson@sppsr.ucla.edu). Linda Kaboolian is a faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (Linda_Kaboolian@harvard.edu). Kathryn A. Carver is a health and human rights lawyer (kac@sppsr.ucla.edu). Copies of this paper are available in PDF format at The Concord Project website at http://concord.sppsr.ucla.edu. Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 5 “frames”7 or approaches to problems are one component of social capital, but other components include individual and collective skills, relationships and their histories and expectations, and organizational structures that hold values, establish rules, and sustain work necessary for social problem solving. Our approach to social capital focuses more on the groups and organizations that hold and nurture it than do many other definitions. Highly relational definitions of social capital always seem a bit like nets adrift in a sea, unattached to the boats and fishers who will bring in the catch. Our research shows that organizations that create the physical and value spaces that let cross-community relationships develop are very important in creating bridging social capital. Data: The problems of studying a social process occurring at every level of analysis, with many different definitions, is compounded by the lack of primary data that address each level. Much of the research has used secondary analysis of survey or census data. It is not easy to determine an individual’s psychological frame shaping his or her approach to working in cross-community groups through existing survey data. Similarly it is rarely possible to determine whether the organizations to which people belong have bridging objectives or capacities. Working successfully across communities also requires considerable social and problem solving skills. Political and social surveys rarely identify and measure these skills. These limitations are the natural result of using data that are either gathered for other purposes or gathered early in the study of social capital, when the distinctive importance of bridging was not as well determined. One of the best approaches to gathering social capital data is being developed by the World Bank, which explicitly looks for bridging and bonding experiences among household members. The “Integrated Questionnaire for the Measurement of Social Capital”, designed mostly to be used in poor countries, measures groups and networks, trust and solidarity, collective action and cooperation, information and communication, social cohesion and inclusion, and empowerment and political action.8 It does not, to our knowledge, contain measures of personal optimism and optimism about one’s group, however. As a result of these limitations, research on social capital using survey and census data has for the most part not distinguished between its bonding and bridging forms. Thus, general studies of social capital fail to capture the distinct contributions of each. Because bonding social capital is so much more prevalent in all societies, and bridging social capital is harder to create, most studies of social capital are really investigations of bonding arrangements, with bridging being left out or constituting “noise.” This problem may account for some, but surely not all, of the recent findings that show that group membership is not always related to the positive consequences ascribed to social capital in early research. An exception to this trend is the analysis by Stolle and Rochon which imaginatively attempts to assess the diversity of associations (from our perspective a useful first proxy for bridging capacities) and found that associational diversity encourages generalized trust and involvement in community reciprocity.9 Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 6 Research Findings The earliest research on social capital showed that increased social capital, measured most frequently by indices combining trust and civic engagement, promoted better political and economic outcomes. For example, in the midst of several decades of decline in civic activity and in trust in American leaders and institutions, Putnam found that communities with higher level of social capital had higher levels of political participation and more economic advantages.10 In other studies, higher social capital was associated with more effective political institutions, more robust economic development and lower incidences of social problems such as teen pregnancy and delinquency.11 For instance, Saegert, Winkel, and Swartz found that three aspects of social capital, including membership in tenant associations, pro-social norms among tenants, and the structure of the building’s governance organization, all reduced crime in mostly minority low-income housing in New York City.12 But the general finding relating higher social capital—both trust and group participation—to better social outcomes was challenged almost immediately. Three lines of research delved deeper into the early findings. The first approach concentrated on the role of trust versus group membership, the second focused on the role of communal homogeneity and social capital formation, and the third investigated the importance of institutions in fostering higher levels of social capital formation. First, trust was more important than extensive group membership in promoting improved government and economic and performance. Knapp found that reciprocity in the form of trust, volunteering, and census responses, were associated with better government performance in American states, whereas group membership was not.13 Knapp and Keefer found that membership in formal organizations did not predict improved economic performance in 29 market economies, but “trust and civic norms are stronger in nations with higher and more equal incomes, with institutions that restrain predatory actions of chief executives, and with better educated and ethnically homogeneous populations.”14 Ulsaner, looking at the problem from the other direction, argued that higher levels of social equality lead to higher levels of generalized trust.15 Second, heterogeneous communities had lower levels of social capital. Both diversity itself and inter-group conflict created barriers to the virtuous circle of higher social capital and better performance. Putnam found these results in the early analysis of the Social Capital Community Benchmarks data.16 So too, Easterly and Ross found that ethnolinguistic fractionalization greatly reduced African growth rates in the post-colonial period.17 In a comprehensive review of the economic literature on social capital, Costa and Kahn found universally that “more homogeneous communities foster greater levels of social capital production.” 18 Hero examined social capital and racial inequality in America. He concluded that to the extent that increased social capital was associated with greater economic equality, “that association occurs only or mostly in the white population and/or around social class issues.”19 Importantly, heterogeneous organizations appear to counteract the deleterious effects of heterogeneous communities. The work of Stolle and Rochan, reported earlier, suggests that heterogeneous associations promote generalized trust and reciprocity. Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 7 Third, institutional capacities at the government level and organizational design at the group level can help to overcome the problems that communal diversity imposes on social capital formation. Importantly, in divided societies stronger institutional capacities are associated with better policy and social outcomes including more equal investment in education between favored and disfavored ethnic groups, better levels of economic growth, and lower levels of inter-communal violence. In a large cross-country analysis, Easterly found that in countries with “sufficiently” good institutions; as measured by freedom from government repudiation of contracts, freedom from expropriation, functioning rule of law, and fair bureaucratic norms; ethnic diversity did not lower growth or worsen economic policies.20 This work changed his earlier conclusions in research with Levine, which did not include institutional quality variables. When institutional variables are added, they protect societies from the original finding that ethnic interest group polarization leads to rent-seeking and reduces the demand for public goods. Varshney found similar results in his work on ethnic violence in India. Communities that had institutions that brought Hindus and Muslims together—for example, the traditional multi-communal Congress party—had lower levels of violence. Merely socializing privately across groups was not as predictive of tranquil group relations as was the existence of cross-community groups.21 III. Research Questions and Design As survey and census research shows, heterogeneous communities have a deficit of social capital. Similarly, bridging social capital is especially scarce in divided communities. But importantly, both political rules and local organizational capacities are particularly valuable in providing social benefits to divided communities. Our research questions arise from these findings: How do cross-community organizations with their potential to generate bridging social capital form? How do concord organizations start against the odds of daily conflict among racial, ethnic, and religious groups defined by too much particularistic history and too little common future? This question is important both theoretically and practically. Theories of collective action, especially those following the work of Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective Action, demonstrate that it is hard enough to create organizations when potential members have unity of interest. How much harder it must be to start organizations with members who belong to groups with historic hatreds. Practically, it was clear from the outset that concord organizations would embody the chronic instability of managing rather than resolving long-term conflicts members brought to their organizational participation. In her studies of the management of common pool resources, Ostrom breathed life into the practical as well as theoretical study of organizations with chronic instabilities. She noted that individual fishers or foresters had incentives to over-fish or to cut too many trees unless the group of fishers or foresters developed rules in practice about sharing common pool resources.22 Likewise, we felt it was important for us to determine what organizational design principles—the rules in practice—encourage people to create concord organizations, especially so because concord organizations produce neither public goods nor use common pool resources. . Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 10 The classical theory of collective action is consumerist. When considering contributing to public goods, The Logic of Collective Action states that no one will rationally pay for what he or she could get for free, unless he or she is bound by the norms of cooperation in small groups or is rewarded by selective incentives. In other words, potential collective actors are price sensitive. We argue differently. We suggest that potential collective actors are sensitive to the net rate of return on their investment, not the cost. The logic of investment and production is different from the logic of consumption. Specifically, the founders of concord organizations calculate a pro-social interest rate which includes the net returns on their participation in creating the organization, the experiential and material gains provided as private goods by the organization, and the highly valued externalities the organization produces. The investment theory of collective action robustly explains the creation of concord organizations in settings of both moderate communal conflict (United States) and intense communal conflict (Northern Ireland, South Africa, Israel and Palestine), and gives insight into collective action more generally. An investment approach to collective action also integrates some aspects of experimental, survey-based, and the ethnographic research traditions, while raising new questions. As it relates to starting concord organizations, the investment theory of collective action has five parts. The first is an understanding of the setting in which this kind of collective action occurs, that is, the political opportunity structure which makes up the resources for and barriers to macromobilization. The second is an understanding of type of goods concord organizations produce. The third is the limit of thin price rationality and the importance of the investment frame to micromobilization. The fourth is the iterative nature of collective action. And the fifth is the importance of institutional “incubators” and “banks” in holding partially completed collective action, and ultimately supporting the work that concord organizations do. Political Opportunity Structures: What characterizes the political opportunity structure that leads to the impetus to create organizations that work across communities riven with antagonistic divisions and histories of violence? Our research shows that concord organizations tend to form when two conditions are met. The first is the dissatisfaction with the status quo, often defined as the inability to win unequivocally longstanding cultural or political conflicts over values and identities. The second quality of the opportunity structure is a sense not so much of “no exit” but of narrow doorways through which chances for new conversations and social arrangements are available. In situations defined by recursive loops of non-agreement, mistrust, or violence, narrow doorways are not to be ignored. After twenty years of intense public conflict, a quiet non-public way to find a better way to talk about abortion made local Common Ground for Life and Choice groups, and other, spontaneous abortion dialogues seem like an opportunity that tired opponents could not afford to miss. Will concord organizations, by themselves, create the political and social changes necessary to end long-standing conflicts? No. Without the two larger conditions that we noted, reasonably stable and acceptable political arrangements and reasonably low levels Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 11 of violence by the state and communal actors, concord organizations have trouble forming or enduring. Concord organizations are not a substitute for peace negotiations, good power sharing arrangements, and state and communal restraint. The state must be strong and committed to solving racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts, and outside entities—other countries, NGOs, supranational entities like the EU and the UN—must play their brokering roles. Historically, concord organizations have sometimes acted as homes for developing larger political settlements or significant social change, but that is not their primary role. Types of Goods: What types of goods do concord organizations produce? Our first observation is that collective action and collective (public) goods tend to be used to mean the same thing in everyday social science conversations. It is important to remember that they distinct. All group formation—for private and public goods—faces some aspects of the collective action dilemma. For example, three friends who have complementary skills and assets and who want to start a new genetic engineering firm where they own all the stock still face the possibility of shirking, free riding, or duplicity, hence the need for contract law, transparency, joint fiscal liability as well as joint rewards, and other enforcing mechanisms. Collective action for public goods make these problems worse because the benefit is available to all equally and the consumption of the good by others does not diminish its supply. Thus the workers at the widget plant who want higher wages through unionization must create the union—an organization— through collective action. The union, in turn, provides a public good, the union wage. Free riding is most serious in collective action for public goods. In Olson’s price- sensitive approach, each worker wants to “buy” the union wage at the cheapest individual cost, and therefore each has an incentive to free ride, knowing she or he can get the union wage for free if others create the union. Thus it is important to know what kind of goods concord organizations produce. It is interesting to note how many times in discussions of The Concord Project the first assumption is that a concord organization produced public goods. This is not accurate. Concord organizations produce value-based experiential and (occasionally) material private goods, with highly valued pro-social externalities. Each part of this description deserves more attention. The value-based rather than economic quality of many of the goods provided by concord organizations is crucial to understanding the dilemmas of their formation and successful maintenance. Remember concord organizations bring together people from antagonistic communities to work together for the common good, while still recognizing their permanent differences. Most concord organizations bridge racial, ethnic, or religious differences—values based on identity and belief. Conflicts around identity and belief are frequently different in nature from conflicts over economic interests. By and large economic interests are divisible, and in some instances, substitutable. Conflicts over economic interests are subject to resolution through basic problem solving techniques like changing the price, splitting the difference, finding a proportional solution, taking turns, or trading for something else that is also Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 12 valued. Methods for solving economic problems also often have institutionalized rules, such as those that govern markets. Identity and value conflicts rarely have these qualities—as one of our interviewees said, “Either the Pope is the Vicar of Christ or he is not, but he cannot be the Vicar of Christ on even days but not odd days.” Values-based conflicts are rarely divisible or substitutable, although they are amenable to being modified by additional, overarching values. But even though the activities of concord organizations are located in the nondivisibility of competing values, the goods they provide are, by and large, private. When members of Corrymeela, a Northern Irish cross-community training organization, hold retreats to help Catholic/nationalist and Protestant/unionist understand and respect each other, there is no sense that the history of the conflict will go away. The experience of being Catholic or Protestant in Northern Ireland is greater than any weekend retreat can assuage. But the value that is provided by the retreat is first and foremost a value that goes to participants. Similarly, when the Project Change Fair Lending Center in Albuquerque makes loans available to people of color where such loans were difficult or impossible before, the advantage is quite specific to the borrower, even as the action challenges the history of red-lining. Likewise, when The Conflict Mediation and Transformation Practice mediates between ethnically based taxi companies whose violent competition is both reducing transportation in poor neighborhoods and exposing the community to danger, the taxi companies come out with a new plan for operation, and the community is safer. In Shifting Involvements, Hirschman suggested that participation itself is a value in group formation.30 Rather than considering participation a cost, he considered it a benefit. This is undoubtedly true for those who create concord organizations. But it is also true that those who create concord organizations highly value their positive externalities—especially the likelihood of ripple effects that make a community or society more deliberative, tolerant, and future oriented. The purpose of abortion dialogues was to increase the responsibility of all parties for their rhetoric and actions. Talking together reduced the great temptation for those on each side to demonize each other, an important outcome, as demons are outside the realm of obligation.31 By coming to trust each other through the dialogues, even as they continued to disagree profoundly, activists often extended their new relations to activities outside the dialogue. For example, pro- life protesters outside abortion clinics alerted abortion service providers that potentially violent newcomers had joined their ranks. Rather than wanting to keep all the value for the members of the group, the founders of concord organizations are gratified when they watch the ripples move outward from their actions. Investment Rather Than Consumption: Why don’t individuals who want the benefits of having concord organizations and their programs just free ride—that is, wait until the organization is formed and then join it or participate in its programs? Well certainly, some do. Indeed, some concord organizations start so that they can offer programs, therefore participation by others in programs is not considered free riding by the founders, although it might be by the participants. Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 15 of benefits and were willing, in fact, clever about the psychological aggregation of those benefits into a subjective rate of return. Some of the benefits were immediately personal, including the enjoyment of having created the organization, the solidarity, the problems solving, and the esteem associated with promoting the overarching value. Some of the benefits were material, such as the ability to send your children to an integrated school or being able to ride a taxi in safety. Some of the benefits were highly valued externalities like knowing that those who would participate in a cross-community skills training class would contribute to a different mode of community problem solving. Moreover, each person participating in the starting a concord organization could and did have a somewhat different set of values in his or her pro-social interest rate. There was a notable discount against this interest rate in forming concord organizations—the likely reaction of members of one’s home group who were suspicious of cross-group activity. But this too, was figured in the psychological calculations around the decision to invest. Step By Step: What gives investors confidence that their efforts are worth the resources used? The answer to this question is found in the inevitably large number of steps it takes to create an organization. It takes many steps to create a concord organization, union, or firm. People have to discuss and agree upon objectives, program, governance, participation and financing. For concord organizations, in particular, the founders of groups need to find ways to magnify the overarching value that keeps them together, even as other social forces pull them apart. At each step individuals can assess if their investment is likely to provide their return. This means that collective actors can leave if the return is not high enough, especially if the values embodied in the work are not congruent with their own. In addition, the iterative process of group formation means that groups with good decision making and social processes are more likely to form. Institutional Incubators and Banks: What keeps a nascent group together as it works out its organizational structure? If it takes time to work out the problems of group formation and to see if the investment is worthwhile, it also requires institutional incubators and banks to hold the interim agreements. Interim committees (and their notes), meetings at neighbors’ homes, sponsoring organizations which help with funds or neutral places to meet, and facilitators from outside organizations all hold the institution building process together. Walker recognized the importance of sponsoring organizations in creating interest groups.33 So too, Chowdhury and Nelson identified the crucial character of sponsorship in starting informal as well as formal women’s organizations.34 The shelter of such sponsorship allows potential collective actors to be more imaginative and to have the time needed to work out their agreements. Individuals creating a concord organization often express a spirit of organizational experimentation, careful intentionality about forms, and a willingness to create a larger organizational repertoire that is new to this conflict, though not necessarily new to organizational problem solving writ large. Together, they frequently see themselves as thoughtfully breaking the rules of the dance of engagement between the parties.35 The organization building stage is especially vulnerable to external shocks. We said earlier that building bridging social capital required a macropolitical opportunity structure that included reasonably stable and acceptable political arrangements and Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 16 reasonably low levels of state and communal violence. Part of the reason for these conditions is that members of antagonistic groups need to work face to face—something that is very hard if it is too dangerous to go to a meeting. Additionally, these conditions let people have longer psychological time lines, a component of figuring the likelihood of future returns on investments. Just as hyperinflation reduces economic entrepreneurship and economic growth, political instability and violence reduce collective action— especially cross-community efforts—because they shorten time horizons and impose high short-term costs.36 V. Design Principles and Necessary Practices Collective actors creating concord organizations see themselves as investors who need an adequate net pro-social interest rate. How can such a return rate be created in organizations that by their nature have the instability of members from antagonistic groups? Step by step, concord organizations must develop the interim organizational forms that allow a balancing frame turn into a functioning group. Once started, the concord organization becomes a social bank where cross-communities ideals, skills, and programs are held. Because they are social banks, they need rules in practice for protecting their assets. As Ostrom, Knapp, Knapp and Keefer, and Stolle and Rochon demonstrate, the structure of institutions and their rules are crucial to creating social capital. Successful concord organizations develop structures and behaviors that manage enduring pressures that keep people from antagonistic groups from seeing the connection between their personal and common interests and therefore investing in their joint futures. This section identifies ten organizational elements common to strong concord organizations. The first four are “design principles” which are structural and normative elements. The remaining six are “necessary practices,” that is, essential ways to enact the design principles. (Chart 1 provides a summary of these principles and practices). Strong concord organizations use all these principles and practices as an integrated whole. Because of the tension between the overarching shared value and the enduring antagonistic ones, concord organizations are perpetually in creation mode. Thus the rules in practice for engaging in collective action to create a concord organization also become the rules in practice for maintaining cross-community work. The fact that organizations that build bridging social capital are always in costly formation mode may help to explain the scarcity of bridging social capital. 1. Design Principle: Promote Overarching Values. Successful concord organizations find and continually enhance overarching shared values. In fact, this is the first task of concord organizations. The founders of such organizations, through a series of small, transformational encounters, often discover these shared values by getting to know individuals from other communities. They learn that they share generalized overarching beliefs that bridge their differences. Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 17 The creation of the first integrated school in Northern Ireland is a good example of finding an overarching value–educating children together for a better life together. The founders of Lagan College, as it was ultimately called, were drawn in part from a group of Catholic families who sent their children to Protestant schools, because the Protestant schools were closer to home or perceived as better for their children. But there were significant problems, not the least of which was that Catholic children were often “passing” in these Protestant schools and they were required to take a Protestant-oriented religious curriculum. Catholic parents first identified themselves by, very bravely, allowing Mass cards to peek out of pockets or purses or bags so that other Catholic parents could identify them. One or two Catholics had, unusually, Protestant friends who had worked outside of Northern Ireland and were conversant with religiously integrated education and who were willing to discuss integrated education in Northern Ireland. Bit by bit they explored and reinforced their belief that educating their children together was immensely valuable. They did so even in the face of significant religious and political conflicts. And they did so at a time when there were tens of thousands of British troops in Northern Ireland and no direct rule. 2. Design Principle: Balance Bridging and Bonding Values. Concord organizations have two enduring sets of values, bridging and bonding, and these values are always in contest within the members of organizations. Therefore, successful concord organizations deal with issues that divide their members as well as issues that bind them. Said another way, concord organizations do not avoid conflicts; they contextualize them together. They help people to hold several competing views of the same problem simultaneously and to keep the shared view in the ascendancy in their organizational work. The late John Wallach, the founder of Seeds of Peace, which runs a summer camp for children from divided communities including the Middle East, Afghanistan, and the Balkans, described the demands of this balancing act. The three-week program recognizes the stages its campers go through. In the first week, the youngsters are either unwarrantedly idealistic or completely certain their side is right. In the second week, they begin to see that there might be other views and why people might hold them. In the third week, Wallach reported that the campers “realize that they have to deal with the hatred and still need to accept each other anyway.”37 The Seeds of Peace International Camp would fail if it had a jolly “we are all one under the skin” approach. In this way, the camp recognizes that it cannot succeed in its mission if it does not acknowledge what divides campers as well as what unites them. 3. Design Principle: Establish Rules of Engagement. The most successful concord organizations do not rush to action without attention to rule making in organizational life. They begin with well-stated democratic decision making mechanisms, with specific attention to leadership transition and to basic mechanisms of solving future conflicts. Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 20 7. Necessary Practice: Avoid “Gotcha.” “Gotcha” is the practice of highlighting to others their failures to see a group the way the group sees itself. “Gotcha” is slang for, “I got you,” meaning I caught you doing something you should not be doing. An example of “gotcha” might be someone purposefully derailing an otherwise successful conversation to insert that the speaker had used, say, “Hispanic” rather than “Latina/o.” The purpose of the interrupter was not to engage in a discussion on respectful names, but to show that the speaker was thoughtless and not to be trusted and that the interrupter was the guardian of true understanding.39 Successful concord organizations avoid “gotcha” because it undermines the inquiring, learning culture of concord work. In practice, avoiding “gotcha” means that people in concord groups are committed to engaging with those in opposing camps even when they cause some pain or frustration. It means being able to see one’s self making the kinds of mistakes others have made about one’s own group. Such norms create a virtuous circle of both attentiveness to others and flexibility and generosity in the process of learning. Avoiding “gotcha” is a way of avoiding political correctness, which tends to emphasize monitoring behavior for failures. 8. Necessary Practice: Learn to “Not Understand” and to “Not be Accepted.” Successful concord organizations promote awareness that complete understanding of and acceptance by the “other” is neither likely nor necessary. Understandings of reality are products of lived experience and are not transferable in their entirety to those without the experience. Nor is it likely that a totally satisfactory joint definition of reality will emerge from cross-community work. Instead, the multiple narratives of lived experiences will reside simultaneously and, in the best circumstances, with respect and acceptance. The Oakwood Integrated Primary School held a meeting for parents where the Protestant/unionist and Catholic/nationalist symbols used during the violent struggle were placed in the middle of the room. These included balaclavas, paramilitary badges, and posters. Most people had never touched or seen up close these potent symbols, even those from their own community. In a mediated discussion, parents talked about what the symbols meant to them and to Northern Ireland. This process increased awareness of their common experience of violence, upheaval, and loss. But in the end, empathy and information do not equate with the experience of being Catholic in British-ruled Northern Ireland or Protestant in IRA-besieged Northern Ireland. 9. Necessary Practice: Support Single-Community Work. Successful concord organizations help individuals and communities develop strong, positive, single-community (that is, within home communities) identities.40 Concord organizations do this in two ways: by including single-community opportunities as part of their programming and by strengthening the capacities of single-community organizations to do cross-community work. These activities both advance concord Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 21 organizations and protect their participants. Cross-community work needs talented people, many of whom are drawn to these activities from outward-looking, single- community organizations. Equally important is the fact that most people who work in concord organizations are deeply connected to, and are nurtured by, single-community groups. It is jarring and disheartening to return to a single-community organization that is hostile to cross-community engagement. Genesis, the shared governance structure of the facility housing Temple Beth Emeth and St. Clare Episcopal Church made a profound commitment to the needs of one of its congregations. Over the life of the relationship one congregation grew while the other contracted. Genesis decided that in order to meet the developing needs of one community, a new sanctuary and a school facility would be built, requiring considerable indebtedness for both congregations. Genesis, the concord organization, recognized the need to keep its individual congregations strong by building a new sanctuary, a decision that allowed it to continue its cross-community work. The commitments of two South African organizations to individual communities are different but no less vital. U Managing Conflict (UMAC), a conflict mediation organization working mostly in Cape Town, and IDASA, which works nationwide, are successful multi-ethnic organizations that work as needed with single, often geographically defined, tribal or linguistic communities. They work to develop the problem solving skills necessary to respond to disagreements both within and outside these single-community groups. Paul Graham, the executive director of IDASA, notes that their single community work is done very much with bridging in mind. 10. Necessary Practice: Develop Leaders. Successful concord organizations develop leaders, in their own organizations and in single-community groups, who can maintain legitimacy while encouraging engagement. Concord organizations often challenge conventional definitions of leadership in divided societies and demand complex thinking about the value of joint activity. They ultimately depend on leaders who have enough political resources to withstand suspicions of disloyalty. Leaders with a tenuous hold on their own positions of authority or who fail to deliver value to their single-community members are seldom able to withstand attacks for participation in concord organizations or cross-community work. Strong leaders are those who can successfully engage in concord organizations, who know how simultaneously to understand and to satisfy some of the basic needs of their followers, and who encourage followers’ learning and critical thinking. At least one concord organization, NCCJ (the National Conference for Community and Justice)c has made the training of leaders for cross-community work in the U.S. one of its main missions. As its president Sanford Cloud, Jr. noted, NCCJ's task is “transforming communities to be more whole and just by empowering leaders to engage in institutional change.” Across the ocean, the Belfast Interface Project enhances leadership in a different way. It supports the development of effective mobile phone c The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) was founded in 1927 as the National Council of Christians and Jews. Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 22 networks across the city. Through these networks local community activists can respond quickly to reports of tension and violence at interfaces. Relevant information can be passed within, and where possible, between communities as well as to appropriate agencies, reducing rumors and miscommunication. The mobile phone networks help local activists reduce the number of incidents at interfaces and lessen the likelihood that those that do occur will escalate. VI. Conclusions The question we posed in our research was how do cross-community organizations with their potential to generate bridging social capital form? More specifically, how do concord organizations start against the odds of daily conflict among racial, ethnic, and religious groups defined by too much particularistic history and too little common future. Our answer is that concord organizations form because potential collective actors see their actions as worthy long-term investments rather than short-term high prices. They are primarily investors rather than consumers. Each person who decides to work to create a concord organization calculates a net pro-social interest rate. This return on investment includes consideration of the danger, the pleasures, the obstacles, the immediate costs, the opportunity costs, and the benefits of action. In particular, investors are attentive to the opportunity costs of the status quo, that is, of not acting, which they considered to have a high and enduring price. Collective action to create concord organizations is an example of thick rationality, the kind of considerations made by people embedded in social systems with multiple personal, organizational, and communal values. Becoming an investor, especially with people who belong to disfavored groups, requires a special micromobilizing frame—a balancing frame. This frame balances an overarching shared value with the enduring opposing values of participants. Because concord organizations never solve the conflicts of values they embody, they are always to some extent in formation mode. Our research determined the design principles and necessary practices that allow a balancing frame to endure. Without adherence to principles and practices, antagonistic group values overwhelm shared values, and the organization fails to form or to continue to function. The consequences of these findings branch in two directions. Theoretically, our research suggests that what is important to know about collective action is not the price of the good, but the return on the investment, including the cost of no action. This is certainly true for the private experiential and material goods with high pro-social externalities created by concord organizations. Indeed the genius of concord organizations is the matching of private goods with high pro-social externalities. People who start concord organizations are like other investors, they care about net returns. So too, these collective actors are like other entrepreneurs, they enjoy innovation and are willing to take risks. In sum, they are not irrational. They may be wrong in their calculations sometimes, but that is not the same as irrationality. Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 25 Chart 1: Ten Organizational Lessons for Strong Concord Organizations Design Principles and Necessary Practices Concord organizations bring together people with fundamentally opposing views or identities for the purpose of promoting civil society while recognizing group differences. 1. Design Principle: Promote Overarching Values 2. Design Principle: Balance Bridging and Bonding Values 3. Design Principle: Establish Rules of Engagement 4. Design Principle: Recognize and Reward Investment 5. Necessary Practice: Prevent Proselytizing 6. Necessary Practice: Acknowledge and Receive Legitimacy 7. Necessary Practice: Avoid “Gotcha” 8. Necessary Practice: Learn to “Not Understand” and to “Not be Accepted” 9. Necessary Practice: Support Single-Community Work 10. Necessary Practice: Develop Leaders Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 26 Appendix A: Concord Organizations (Interviews were conducted with bolded organizations) 1. The Abraham Fund (Intergroup relations within Israel) 2. All Children Together (Northern Ireland) 3. Andover Newton Theological Seminary/Hebrew College (US) 4. Asian Pacific American Legal Center (US) 5. Belfast Interface Program (Northern Ireland) 6. Boston Abortion Dialogues, of Public Conversations (US) 7. Center for Living Democracy (US) 8. Centre for Conflict Resolutions (South Africa) 9. Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (South Africa) 10. Civic Practices Network (US) 11. Columbia Interfaith Centers (US) Wilde Lake Center a. St. John the Baptist, United Methodist—Presbyterian (USA) Church b. St John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Community Long Reach Interfaith Center a. Long Reach Church of God Oakland Mills Interfaith Center a. Columbia Baptist Fellowship b. Lutheran Church of the Living Word c. Columbia Jewish congregation d. Temple Isaiah Owen Brown Interfaith Center a. Beth Shalom Conservative Congregation b. Christ United Methodist Church c. Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia 12. Common Enterprise Network (US) 13. COMmunity-St. Louis (NCJJ) (US) 14. Community Relations Council (Northern Ireland) 15. Community Foundation for Northern Ireland 16. Congregation Shir Hadash Jewish Muslim Dialogue Group (US and Middle East) 17. Cornerstone Community (Northern Ireland) 18. Corrymeela (Northern Ireland) 19. Days of Dialogue (US) 20. The East New York Forum, of Public Conversations (US) 21. 1898 Centennial Foundation (US) 22. Facing History and Ourselves (US) a. National Office, Boston b. Los Angeles Office 23. Forgiveness Project (US) 24. Future Ways (Northern Ireland) 25. Gender Equity Unit, University of the Western Cape (South Africa) Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 27 26. Genesis of Ann Arbor (US) a. St. Clare Episcopal Church b. Temple Beth Am 27. Harambee Christian Family Center (US) 28. Hotels Housing Trust (South Africa) 29. Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) 30. Independent Projects Trust (South Africa) 31. Institute for Democratic Renewal (US) 32. Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group (US) 33. KwaZulu-Natal Programme for Survivors of Violence (South Africa) 34. Lagon College (Northern Ireland) 35. Leadership Development in Interethnic Relations (LDIR) (US) 36. Malone Integrated College (Northern Ireland) 37. Marmsbury Intervention Team (South Africa) 38. The Mediation and Transformation Practice (South Africa) 39. Muslim Jewish Forum (United Kingdom) 40. National Centre for Human Rights Education and Training (NACHRET), Division of the South African Human Rights Commission 41. National Conference for Community and Justice (NCJJ) (US) 42. The Nehemiah Project (US) 43. Network for Life and Choice (US) a. Arizona b. Atlantic City Common Ground c. Aurora, Illinois d. Birmingham, Alabama (group did not form) e. Buffalo Coalition for Common Ground f. Cincinnati Common Ground g. Cleveland Common Ground h. Dallas (group did not form) i. Denver Common Ground j. Kansas City k. Madison, Wisconsin (group did not form) l. Milwaukee (1992-1993, second group did not form in 1996) m. Minnesota n. Newground Network (Massachusetts) o. New York Common Ground p. New York Common Ground q. Norfolk, Virginia r. Oregon s. Nation’s Capital, Common Ground of t. Pensacola Common Ground u. Quad Cities Common Ground (Iowa) v. Rochester, New York w. San Bernadino, California (group did not form) x. San Francisco Common Ground y. St. Louis Common Ground Association Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 30 5 For a review of this approach see: Theo Offerman, Beliefs and Decision Rules in Public Goods Games: Theory and Experiments (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997). 6 See Vidal, 1998, and de Souza Briggs, 1998, on bonding and bridging social capital. 7 David A. Snow, E. Burke Rochford, Jr., Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford, “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation, American Sociological Review, Vol. 51, August 1986, pp. 464-81; and David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization,” International Social Movement Research, Vol. 1, 1988, pp. 197-217. 8 Grootaert, et al, 2004. 9 Dietlind Stolle and Thomas R. Rochon, “Are All Associations Alike?” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 42, No. 1 (September 1998), pp. 47-66. 10 Paxton, in contrast, found that only trust in people had declined. Pamela Paxton, “Is Social Capital Declining in the United States? A Multiple Indicator Assessment,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol 105 (July 1999), pp. 88-127. 11 For a review of the early social capital results see John Brehm and Wendy Rahn, “Individual-Level Evidence for the Causes and Consequences of Social Capital,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 41, No. 3 (July 1997), pp. 999-1023, especially pp. 999-1001. 12 Susan Saegert, Gary Winkel, and Charles Swartz; “Social Capital and Crime in New York City’s Low- Income Housing,” Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 13, No. 1., pp. 189-226. 13 Stephen Knack, “Social Capital and the Quality of Government: Evidence from the States,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 4 (October 2002), pp. 772-285. 14 Stephen Knack and Philip Keefer, “Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 112, No. 4 (November 1997), pp. 1251-1288. Quote on page 1251. 15 Eric M. Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 16 Robert D. Putnam, The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survery, 2000. 17 William Easterly and Ross Levine, “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.112, No. 4 (November, 1997), pp. 1203-1250. 18 Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, “Civic Engagement and Community Heterogeneity: An Economist’s Perspective”, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 1, No. 1 (March, 2003), pp. 103-111. Quote on page 103. 19 Rodney E. Hero, “Social Capital and Racial Inequality in America,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 1., No. 1 (March 2003); pp.113-22. Quote on page 120. 20 William Easterly, “Can Institutions Resolve Ethnic Conflict?” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 49, No.4 (July 2001), pp. 687-706. 21 Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civil Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). 22 Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and Elinor Ostrom, Crafting Institutions Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 31 for Self-Governing Irrigation Systems (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1992). Ostrom’s studies of the principles that govern the use of common pool resources were path breaking in themselves. But she also gave a gift to the social sciences by reemphasizing the “how” as well as the “why” of collective action. “How” is a question that had fallen out of favor in many research traditions of the social sciences. 23 Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and The Theory of Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 2. 24 Russell Hardin, “Collective Action as an Agreeable n-Prisoner’s Dilemma,” Science, Vol.16 (September-October 1971), pp. 472-81 and Russell Hardin, Collective Action (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). 25 Robert Axelrod, “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 80 (December 1986), pp. 1095-1111; and Robert Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent Based Models of Competition and Cooperation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 26 Elinor Ostrom, “Collective Action and the Evolution of Norms,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer 2000), pp. 137-158. 27 C. P. Snow, Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959) and C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures: A Second Look (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963, 2nd edition). 28 David Snow et al, 1986, p.464. 29 Sidney G. Tarrow, Struggling to Reform: Social Protest and Policy Response During Cycles of Protest (Ithaca: Western Societies Paper, No. 15, Center for International Studies, 1983); and David S. Mayer and Suzanne Staggenborg, “Movements, Countermovements, and the Structure of Political Opportunity,” American Journal of Sociology Vol. 101, No. 6, (1996), pp: 1628-60. 30 Albert O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). For a more public choice approach to this question see Dennis Chong, Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 31 William A. Gamson, “Hiroshima, The Holocaust, and the Politics of Exclusion,” manuscript, 1994. 32 These queuing advantages were not selective incentives in the strict sense of the term, as the good— being able to send your children to an integrated school—was not limited to those people who engaged in collective action to start the schools. 33 Jack Walker, Mobilizing Interest Groups in America: Patrons, Professions and Social Movements (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). 34 Najma Chowdhury and Barbara J. Nelson, “Redefining Politics: Patterns of Women’s Political Engagement from a Global Perspective,” in Barbara J. Nelson and Najma Chowdhury, eds. Women and Politics Worldwide (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 3-24. 35 Linda Kaboolian and Barbara J. Nelson, “Creating Organizations of Concord: Lessons for Collective Goods Theory,” manuscript, 2000. An earlier version of this paper was given at the meetings of the International Society for Third-Sector Research, Geneva, Switzerland, July 7-12, 1998. 36 For a discussion of how terrorism shortens time horizons and impacts on trust see: Eric M. Uslaner, Daphna Canetti-Nisim, and Ami Pedahzur, “Terrorism and Trust: Sustained Violence and the Social Fabric in Israel”, manuscript, no date. Nelson, Kaboolian, & Carver: “Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action”, 2004. 32 37 Ruth Andrew Ellenson, “My Friend, My Enemy,” The Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2002. 38 Anne Fowler, Nicki Nichols Gamble, Frances X. Hogan, Melissa Kogut, Madeline McComish, and Barbara Thorp, “Talking with the Enemy,” Boston Globe, January 28, 2001. 39 Barbara J. Nelson, “Diversity and Public Problem Solving: Ideas and Practice in Policy Education,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 18 (1999), pp. 134-155. 40 The Northern Irish have coined two terms, cross-community work and single-community (often single- identity) work to distinguish between the bridging skills needed when working across communities and the bridging skills needed when working to develop greater capacities for cross-cultural engagement within communities. Single-community work refers to efforts within a community to develop community identities, skills, and organizational capacities that permit successful cross-community work.