The crises to legitimacy just described have not, of course, been entirely resolved. This is
evidenced by the ongoing struggles over the fairness of international institutional arrangements,
such the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, that regulate global marketplaces.6 Nonetheless, in
the scholarly and public policy communities there is at least recognition that legitimacy issues
exist with respect to questions of fairness regarding the influence of different institutional
arrangements for regulating the use and development of physical and human capital. In turn, this
recognition makes possible a debate about public policy alternatives that might affect the
perceived legitimacy of specific institutional arrangements.
The relationship between social capital and the legitimacy of liberal democratic
institutions, however, is not clearly understood. There is a growing literature showing a positive
correlation between the presence of more extensive bridging social capital, trust, civil society
and economic development. 7 At the same time, however, much less attention has been given to
the much more difficult question, how can bridging social capital be created or strengthened
where it either does not exist or it is not very effective? The lack of attention to this issue leads
either to a disdain for indigenous social capital that is not associated with bridging social capital
and/or to a "one size fits all" view of the world.
The view that some types of indigenous social capital simply are incompatible with the
development of an advanced economy is articulated in Edward Banfield's classic work, The
Moral Basis of a Backward Society.8 He argues that the "amoral familism" of the southern
Italian peasant reinforces a strong distrust of strangers, thus hindering economic development by
blocking the establishment of bridging ties that would reduce transaction costs in business and
reduce corruption. The "one size fits all" view that there is essentially only one path to the
development of bridging ties is best articulated in Thomas Friedman's popular work, The Lexus