Social Capital, Rent Seeking and Community-Based Interest Groups

Abstract

While there is now a large literature on the negative aspects of social capital, recent discussions of social capital within the public choice literature have tended to focus on the positive role of social capital in solving collective action problems and promoting political accountability. Consequently, two areas of inquiry remain underexplored: (1) the role social capital plays in facilitating rent seeking, and (2) the availability of rents can cause community based groups to re-orient their stocks of social capital away from productive ends and toward rent seeking. This article examines the relationship between social capital and rent seeking in the post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans.

Keywords: social capital, rent seeking, Hurricane Katrina, post-disaster recovery