In the last nineteen years we have witnessed an explosion of research on social capital in almost all the social sciences. The question addressed by this paper is the following one: what has been achieved during these years? The first part of the discussion is devoted to a review of the most influential definitions of social capital. The second point concerns the theoretical arguments on social capital’s impact on regional development: how social capital affects production, incomes and other output that we normally consider to be development. Starting from these considerations, the main theoretical problems in literature will be pointed out. Finally, the last part of this work refers to the future for studies on social capital and local and regional development.
COBISS.SI-ID: 31478621
'The configuration of elites, i.e. relationships between different factions of the political elite or between the political elite and other elites, along with the elite's prevailing cultural patterns, exert a strong impact on the course of societal development. Therefore, in order to understand the transitional process in Slovenia, it is necessary to analyze the character of political elites its evolution and dynamics in terms of reproduction/ circulation. The thesis is that the elite configuration and cultural profile decisively determined the selection of the particular model of socio-economic regulation and, consequently, the type of capitalism that was formed to replace the previous system. However, the changes and events connected with financial crisis and economic crisis after 2008 may indicate that entire architecture of Slovenian social corporatism in the framework of state (national) type of capitalism generated a sort of immobilismo and inability to execute the necessary reforms.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1024477505
The book presents a methodological critique of the model indicators in the Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS), which was (by European Innovation Scoreboard EIS) which was created in 2001, on the behalf of the European Commission with the purpose of monitoring the progress in innovation policy an capacity of EU member states. As evidenced in the book, the authors of a IUS model use inadequate indicators and pay insufficient attention to the quality of input data. Therefore IUS should be corrected and gradually elaborated on more complex (post-positivistic) basis.