Understanding the causes and mechanisms of Social Capital's effect on Regional Development: An Assessment of Community-Led Development in Ireland

我的博士提案旨在探讨农村发展背景下集体社会资本分配不均的影响，以及这如何导致区域不平等。如果像我所说的那样，社会资本是农村发展的重要投入，它将改变当前发展政策的理解方式和资源的分配方式。例如，目前的发展资金是根据经济需求、政治影响或申请的实力分配的。然而，这可能不是最佳的干预措施，可能的情况是，发展应侧重于向社会资本高的地区分配支持和/或量身定制支持，专门建立社会资本，而不是物质或人力资本。这种理解在过去受到了一些对社会资本理论的批评，如缺乏多元分析、循环推理和调查数据不准确。我的本科论文试图通过创建一个国家数据库来解决其中的一些因素，该数据库测量了文献中提出的解释区域发展资金分配的概念。该研究探索了结构模型控制其他可能解释的可能性，如经济因素、地理和政治影响。我提议的博士研究将以此为基础，通过延长时间周期和收紧因果方法。它还寻求通过使用社区主导的农村发展资金作为衡量工具来关闭循环推理循环。

My doctoral proposal aims to explore the effect of unequal distributions of Collective Social Capital in the context of Rural Development and how this contributes to Regional Inequality. If, as I contend, Social Capital is an important input into rural development, it will change the manner in which current development policy is understood and how resources are allocated. For example, at present development funding is allocated based on economic need, politicalinfluence or strength of an application. However, this may not be the optimal intervention and it may be the case that development should focus on either allocating supports to areas with high Social Capital and/or tailor supports that specifically build Social Capital instead of Physical or Human Capital. This understanding has been hampered in the past through a number of criticisms given to Social Capital theory such as lack of multivariate analysis, circular reasoning, and inaccuracy of survey data. My undergraduate dissertation sought to solve some of these factors by creating a national database that measured concepts that the literature proposed explained the allocation of regional development funding. This explored the possibility of a structural model controlling for other possible explanations such as economic factors, geography, and political influence. My proposed doctoral research would build on this by extending the time period and tightening the causal methodology. It also seeks to close the circular reasoning loop through the use of Community-led Rural Development funding as a measurement tool.