Social Capital, Local Actor Networks and Differential Economic Performance in Rural Areas- Evidence from Case Studies in Germany by Helmut Schrader

An EU-funded international research project, which has been conducted in collaboration with Scottish, Swedish, German and Greek research institutes, focussed on the dynamics of rural areas (DORA2). The project aimed to examine the quantitative and qualitative factors explaining the differences of economic performance (DEP) in selected rural regions of the four member states involved. The approach is characterised by a number of pair-wise comparisons of differing rural study areas in terms of economic performance. In this paper the role of social capital will be determined in quantitative and qualitative terms and in relation to other "soft " factors of rural development. The analysis is based on exemplary results from the German part of the research project DORA. After clarifying the definition of social capital and explaining the case study approach an operational conception of indicators for measuring of social capital is presented with regard to regional-economic analysis. Statistical methods of location conditions and differences of the socio-economic context are considered. Furthermore, expert interviews with regional actors as well as findings derived from postal business surveys serve as information bases for the analysis. From the comparison of the tw