S’appuyer sur les théories et concepts du capital social pour interpréter une politique locale de développement économique : le cas du Grand Halifax, Canada

Abstract

Can a public-private economic development agency implement a strategy based on social capital? This paper proposes to look at some of the key answers. Our contribution, informed by fieldwork, shows that such a development strategy is founded on local actors accumulating social capital. The originality of our work lies in analyses of relations between local public action and social capital. A main theme is that social capital is a resource linked to territory. Our results confirm the hypothesis that stakeholders use, consciously or without knowing it, different features of social capital to develop and implement a local strategy based on proximity.

Keywords

• local development
• social capital
• public programs
• partnerships