Topic1:社會資本及政治參與(Barrie Axford)

政治學者對政治參與的定義迄今仍為眾多紛紜，Eliza在此簡單地從政治行為下探討社會資本及政治參與之間的關聯：

美國政治學家普特南(Robert Putnam)曾針對義大利的政治行為做研究，其研究指出高度公民參與/政治參與以及公共事務之間兩者有所關聯。他發現決定治理成功的最主要因素即是公民的參與。有關這議題可另參考他著名的文章（譯：一個人的保齡球-美國衰落中的社會資本）則是從美國人越來越少參加保齡球聯盟的現象，探討美國自1950年代社會/社區參與活動逐漸式微，這也降低美國政治參與度。隨著政治參與度的降低，將恐導致社會信任的減少，就著名政治文化學者Almond而言，社會信任則是政治穩定的主要成份。Putnam所觀察導致美國社會公民參與度低落的主因為:1.漸漸富裕的人們；2.消費主義興盛;3.強調自我滿足的青年文化興起;4.工作模式的改變;5.女性在勞動市場上的參與度提高;6.「收看電視」。有趣的是，台灣政治參實際情況與跟Putnam所研究的結果似乎南轅北轍，所以該份研究仍遭受不少政治學者提出質疑。

在政治學的領域中，沒有完美的理論也沒有完美的研究報告，因為政治研究的是[人]的政治行為，但也因此為世人所棄....Eliza的主管曾言：切勿小看自己所學，雖然不可能拿得比工程師多（心酸），但是政治是真正操控人心的利器

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Putnam

Robert David Putnam (born January 9, 1941 in Rochester, New York) is a political scientist and professor at Harvard University. Putnam developed the influential two-level game theory that assumes international agreements will only be successfully brokered if they also result in domestic benefits.

His most famous (and controversial) work, Bowling Alone, argues that the United States has undergone an unprecedented collapse in civic, social, associational, and political life (social capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative consequences. Though he measured this decline in data of many varieties, his most striking point was that virtually every traditional civic, social and fraternal organization -- typified by bowling leagues -- had undergone a massive decline in membership while the number of people bowling increased drastically.
Putnam makes a distinction between two kinds of social capital: bonding capital and bridging capital. Bonding occurs when you are socializing with people who are like you: same age, same race, same religion, and so on. But in order to create peaceful societies in a diverse multi-ethnic country, one needs to have a second kind of social capital: bridging. Bridging is what you do when you make friends with people who are not like you, like supporters from another football team. Putnam argues that those two kinds of social capital, bonding and bridging, do strengthen each other. Consequently, with the decline of the bonding capital mentioned above inevitably comes the decline of the bridging capital leading to greater ethnic tensions.

Critics, such as sociologist Claude Fischer argue that (a) Putnam concentrates on organizational forms of social capital, and pays much less attention to networks of interpersonal social capital; (b) neglects the emergence of new forms of supportive organizations on and off the Internet;(c) the 1960s are a misleading baseline because the era had an unusually high number of traditional organizations.