rural communities seemed to do much better than others. 35 The first step in this process was to
create an index of viability, on which towns with populations between 1,000 and 2,500 were
ranked. The index contained quantitative indicators of down town tax receipts, presence of
selected retail businesses and medical services in the downtown area, as well as several
demographic change estimates.
Five communities were selected for in-depth study, two of which ranked high on the
viability index and three of which ranked low on that index. The research question addressed in
the study was, can high versus low viability be explained by the social network characteristics of
the community leaders. For this purpose, a combination of a positional and reputational
approaches were used to identify the fifteen top leaders in each of these communities.
While bridging networks to outside resources accounted for some of the differences
between the more and less viable places, the most striking difference was in the structural
properties of network relations between leaders within their respective communities. In the two
high viability places, leaders reported that, on average, they worked with slightly more than 11 of
the 14 other leaders identified. By contrast, leaders in the less viable places mentioned that, on
average, they had only worked with slightly less than 8 of the other leaders on their list.
Yet, the paths through which the leaders developed bridging ties within the two viable
communities were quite different from one another. In the German Catholic community the
mean number of other leaders with whom each leader had an informal relationship (i. e.,
socialized informally, ate breakfast on a regular basis or shared a meal in one another's home)
was almost 10 out of 14. Alternatively, in the other high viability place, with a Scotch-Irish,
English and Protestant tradition, on average leaders had informal ties to less that 6 of the 14 other
leaders. In the latter community, in which leaders had a much higher educational background
15