Counting the cost of bowling alone

Over the same period, research has found the costs of this fraying of the social fabric to be enormous, for individuals, communities and countries. Indeed, the depletion of social capital may be among the biggest causes of some of today’s greatest societal scourges – from low growth to stalled social mobility, from the epidemic of loneliness to our crumbling (and, on occasion, rioting) communities.

The policy response to these problems has so far been wholly inadequate. Among progressives, there has often been wilful blindness to the social costs and popular discontent associated with multiculturalism. Among populists, these costs and discontent can only be countered by rolling back economic, social and cultural integration - for example, through restrictions on trade and immigration.

Both sides have a point but neither has an adequate solution. Fortunately, there is an alternative course that would protect multiculturalism's benefits (which are real and considerable), while curtailing its costs (which are real and considerable too). This would come from a national programme to rebuild social capital, a strategy which for its success must straddle every aspect of public policy.

'Social connection' is the golden thread throughout the RSA’s programme this year. It needs urgently to become the golden thread running through public policy generally if we are to repair our social fabric and tackle society’s greatest scourges. I want to sketch some of the contours of that policy programme in the hope governments everywhere rise to the challenge of what I call the 'Great Division'.

The great division

Had I been on this stage a century ago, I would indisputably have been the finest macro-economist alive. That is because, a century ago, there was no such thing as macroeconomics. Economics had at that stage been around for well over a century. But economists’ tools for understanding and managing the economy at a macro level – statistically, conceptually, practically - were at best piecemeal and patchy.

What changed things, durably and decisively, were two tumultuous macroeconomic events: the Great Crash of 1929 and, in its aftermath, the Great Depression of the 1930s. The exigencies of these crises ushered in a policy revolution whose key pillars were the National Accounts (for measuring the economy), macro-economic theory (for understanding the economy) and monetary and fiscal policy frameworks (for averting future tumult).

A century on, we are all macro-economists now - armchair or otherwise. Small movements in GDP and inflation dominate public discourse. Taxes, interest rates and government spending shape political and public debate. Bond yields regularly master, and sometimes murder, politicians. A weak economy or high cost of living guarantees political ruptures, as the jettisoning of incumbent governments last year illustrated.

Underlying this has been a worsening of the economy’s prospects. Low growth means stasis in worker pay packets and harsher societal choices, including public services. So too does a higher cost of living. Both generate fear and foreboding (or loathing) among the public. A century on, some fear we could be on the cusp of worse still - another Great Crash or Great Depression.

While either is possible, the greater risk is a different Great: a further widening of the 'Great Division' - the cleaving apart, within and between our communities and countries, that has taken place over the past half-century. This has resulted in a rising tide of disconnection and mistrust among citizens and communities. And it has had increasingly disruptive consequences, locally, nationally and internationally.

The Great Division can be seen globally in the increasing numbers of wars, both real and trade-related, and the escalating international arms races in defence spending, tariffs and immigration restrictions. It can be seen nationally in the fractious and polarising elections that took place in 2024. It can be seen locally in the loss of pride in place in communities, manifest in anti-social behaviour or even rioting.

It is sometimes said we have entered an era of deglobalisation with flows of goods, information, finance and people in retreat after the halcyon post-war era of ever-greater integration of economies and societies. And the pace of global integration has indeed slowed notably this century. But so far at least, reports of the death of globalisation are exaggerated and obituaries for it premature.

Flows of goods and especially information, finance and people are in fact at or are close, to historical high-water marks. There is no time in human history when the global cats-cradle - economic, financial, social - has been more intertwined. Yet at the same time, this interwoven web has rarely felt more fragile. Our hyper-connected world seems increasingly disconnected. What explains this paradox?

The double-edged sword of diversity

The answer can be found in the dynamics of complex systems whose moving parts interact in complex ways. Uncertainty is intrinsic in these systems. So too is fragility. Whether natural or social, complex systems exhibit a 'flourishing-yet-fragile' property. Diversity is a double-edged sword. Public policy is about striking the right balance between the forces of flourishing and fragility.

On the benefits side, there is no ecosystem on the planet, natural and social, not enriched by diversity and complexity. In natural systems, the diversity and complexity of rainforests and oceans explain their richness and abundance. By contrast simple eco-systems, such as tundra or deserts, are stable but barren, starved of richness and dynamism.

The same applies in social systems. From the earliest civilisations, the cross-pollination of ideas, cultures and practices which arises naturally in multicultural communities has been the engine of human innovation and progress. By contrast, monocultural communities have tended to be stable but have neither innovated nor evolved at a rapid pace.

Empirical studies suggest increased flows of goods, people, money and ideas are beneficial to both sides of the exchange, stimulating innovation and growth. This century, the emergence of the world wide web has cross-pollinated ideas and practices at a faster pace and greater scale than ever previously. Pretty much everyone, everywhere has benefitted.

Yet every complex, diverse system has a dark side. The very complexity and diversity of a rainforest or ocean makes them vulnerable to cascading collapse when hit by a large, adverse shock – the arrival of antagonistic entrants such as timber or fish-seeking humans. The collapse in natural ecosystems over the past century, with levels of biodiversity falling by almost three-quarters, bears testimony to that.

The same is true in social systems. The more complex and interconnected, the greater their fragility in the face of large, adverse shocks – the arrival of new entrants with different cultures and practices. Multi-culturalism, without accompanying trust and cohesion, is a recipe for cultural clashes and fragility. And for all its benefits, the World Wide Web can amplify this fragility by promoting misinformation and social division.

There is, then, a tightrope to walk between the forces of flourishing and fragility in diverse, interwoven societies and environments. This balance is not, however, immutable. It can be altered, for good or ill, by policy action. The resilience of the world’s rainforests and oceans can be improved by policies that replenish the stock of natural capital through international regeneration projects such as the COP initiatives.

The balance between fragility and flourishing can be modified in complex, diverse communities too. Their resilience can be strengthened by building social capital - the strength and depth of networks of trust and relationships. The stronger these relationships, the larger the stock of social capital and the greater the resilience of social systems.

Reality, alas, has played out rather differently. As Harvard political scientist Bob Putnam pointed out at the start of this century in Bowling Alone, there has in fact been a sharp depletion in social capital over the past half-century in the US. This has been accompanied by a rise in individualism, isolation and anti-social behaviour – hence Bowling Alone.

In the period since Bowling Alone was first published, there has seen a further deterioration in social capital in the US, as Putnam’s recent Netflix documentary Join or Die? documents. Moreover, these patterns are no longer confined to the US. Disconnection, isolation and falling social capital have become a norm in many countries. We have entered the Anti-Social Century.

This is a dangerous moment. At this very point, the world is more connected than ever, and the social glue binding it together has rarely been weaker. Today’s connected economies are nested in increasingly disconnected societies. Neither can flourish in this setting. Recent research has shown just how large are the costs.

The rising costs of bowling alone

Putnam’s work has spawned rich research on the benefits of social capital for individuals, communities and countries. This research not only shows these benefits to be large and lifelong. It suggests the Great Division can go a long way to explaining some of society’s greatest scourges, from sub-par growth to stalled social mobility, from the epidemic of loneliness to the crumbling of communities.

Economic growth

Starting at the aggregate level, Putnam’s early work sought to explain the very different patterns of economic growth among different Italian regions. The explanation for these differences was not found in economic factors, such as education and skills. Instead, it was found to lie in the strength of community trust and relationships – in other words, social capital.

Subsequent research has shown these patterns are not unique to Italy. Cross-country evidence points to a strong link between social capital and economic growth, even after taking account of the other 'capitals' driving growth such as human and physical capital. The determinants of growth are as much sociological as technological. And the effects are large.

A recent meta-study found a 10% boost in trust raises an economy’s relative economic performance by over 1% of GDP. In a world of anaemic growth – probably in part caused by the depletion of social capital – boosting social capital could be a game-changer. If the UK achieved Scandinavian levels of trust, this could add £100 billion per year to GDP.

There are several mechanisms through which social capital spurs economic growth. Trust is a lubricant of exchange and the economy. Without it, the cost and inconvenience of doing business rises, such as through legal, administrative and enforcement fees. These impose a deadweight cost on business and are grit in the wheels of commerce.

Social mobility

A second key mechanism through which social capital can boost growth is by unlocking opportunities for individuals to progress. This is particularly potent when social capital takes the form of social connections - 'bridging capital'. Recent research by Harvard economist Raj Chetty underlines the importance of bridging capital in unlocking opportunity.

Chetty constructed a highly granular “opportunity atlas” for the US. This suggests large disparities in degrees of social mobility across the US, often even between adjoining districts. These variegations in social mobility are, on the face of it, difficult to understand. What factor, technological or sociological, explains them?

Chetty’s research 'Social capital II: determinants of economic connectedness', published in 2024, uses highly granular data from Facebook/Meta to construct social networks for the US. It finds that these social networks help explain spatial patterns of social mobility. More than that, even after other factors are taken into account, social connection is the single most important factor explaining generational progress. And the effects are large.

Chetty’s estimates suggest that providing a poor (typically disconnected) child with the social network of a rich (typically well-connected) child boosts their lifetime income prospects by around 20%. That is a remarkably high lifelong social return, secured at a potentially modest cost relative to the cost of other social mobility interventions.

At a time of stalled social mobility in many parts of the world, including the UK and US, these results are striking. At one level they may simply confirm what many suspected: it really is who, rather than what, you know that matters. More positively, the results suggest a rewiring of social networks could be a highly effective policy tool in improving social mobility.

The Meta data can identify not just if but how people are connected, whether through school, college, work, sports, church etc. This provides insights into those institutions best able to nurture social connection and thus social mobility. Interestingly, in the US churches are the institutions that deliver the most effective socio-economic mixing.

As part of our Revealing Social Capital work, we have been repeating the Chetty exercise on UK data, working with the Behavioural Insights Team, Neighbourly Lab, Stripe Partners and Meta, with funding from the Nuffield Foundation. This work links Meta data on social connections to UK patterns of social mobility, alongside ethnographic research in four UK communities with varying levels of connection.

The research has yielded some interesting similarities with the findings from the US, but some that are distinct to the UK and carry important implications for policy design. Our research partnership looks forward to sharing them in a forthcoming publication and at the RSA’s Patron’s Lecture in March 2025, where the star speaker will be the Godfather of social capital, Bob Putnam.

Wellbeing and longevity

Chetty’s work underlines the importance of social capital for lifetime income prospects. A complementary strand of research has looked at its impact on non-financial measures of health, such as physical and mental health and well-being. The evidence suggests the effects are just as large and lasting.

Perhaps the definitive study was conducted at Harvard University, looking at the determinants of the health and happiness of more than 100,000 people over the past century in the US. The length and breadth of the sample give this study unparalleled power when unearthing the true determinants of both the length and quality of someone’s life.

Contrary to the researchers’ original expectations, this study finds that the single best predictor of someone’s longevity and happiness is the quantity, and in particular the quality, of their relationships. While conventional economic determinants matter – human and financial capital – social capital matters most for how long and how well we live. This echoes Chetty’s findings, but along the non-financial plane of people’s lives.

As with Chetty’s research, the effects are large. The Harvard study finds the absence of good relationships can seriously worsen someone’s health. Loneliness and isolation are equivalent, in health terms, to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, being obese or an alcoholic. Who you know matters not only for our earnings but for how well and how long we live

This suggests the rising tide of bowling alone has been a potent contributor to surging mental health problems, especially among the poor and young. US Surgeon-General Vivek Murphy has called this an 'epidemic in loneliness'. Angus Deaton and Anne Case have documented the ascent in Deaths of Despair. Truly an anti-social century.

Cities and communities

Although there is an increasingly strong case for believing social capital is crucial to health, wealth and happiness, its geographical distribution is not even. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these effects are especially potent in poorer communities. In those places, surveys suggest safety and solidarity sit right at the base of residents’ hierarchy of needs, Maslow-style.

Humans are naturally pro-social - we would probably not have survived as a species otherwise. Behavioural psychology tells us reciprocity is our default setting. But it is not our only setting. Anti-social behaviour occurs when people feel 'othered' in their community, causing the default setting to switch. It is no surprise this is much more likely to occur in communities that are socially stratified and lack trust.

A well-functioning community and thriving economy cannot be built on those shifting sands. That makes social capital, and accompanying pro-social behaviour, essential to effective place-making. The international evidence on failing communities – and thriving ones – points clearly to the centrality of trust and social capital in success.

Work and business

Workplaces are communities too. When trust and connection are lost, organisations become unproductive and may even fail, just like communities. Research on organisational design and business practice suggests social is as important as human and financial capital in company success and failure, just as among individuals and communities.

The importance of social connection to business success has come into sharper (and more contentious) focus since COVID-19 due to the big increase in working from home. Many of these working practices have persisted long after the end of lockdowns. They form part of a new, and evolving, social contract between employers and employees.

The terms of this new social contract are still being debated, drawing on research on the costs and benefits of working from home. Much of that research has focussed on easier-to-measure benefits, notably the reduced cost and time of commuting. Because they are measurable and up-front, these benefits have tended to dominate the working-from-home debate.

By contrast, some of the organisational costs of working from home are harder to measure and slower to accumulate. One of those is the impact of home-working on relationship-building, trust and ideation. We have fewer metrics of these aspects of social and human capital in the workplace, even though they are widely recognised as essential to business success.

There are good reasons for believing that home-working affects relationship-building and ideation adversely. Digital infrastructure is great for meetings. But it is terrible for meeting, especially informally and serendipitously. These are the just settings in which social connections are forged and ideas co-created.

The evidence suggests social connection and capital should be given as prominent a role as the other capitals when shaping business practices. This is important for commercial, as well as societal, reasons - the often silent S in ESG. The social capital and ideation costs of working from home also merit far greater research and attention.

Social media and social infrastructure

In principle, social media expands our network of social connections. But there is increasing evidence this comes at some considerable cost to wider measures of social capital. One of those costs is reduced in-person socialising and interaction. People are no longer just 'remote-working' but 'remote-living' – hence the anti-social century.

These costs are more likely to be felt by young people, as the largest users of social media and whose social skills are still being nurtured. There is emerging evidence this has contributed to problems of mental health in young people, including attention deficit and other neuro-diverse disorders. They are what Jonathan Haidt calls the 'Anxious Generation'.

Modern technology has shifted our ties rather than severing them. There is evidence it enhances the closest ties (the 'inner ring' of family and friends) and distant ties (the 'outer ring' of social media followers). But this has come at the expense of the 'middle ring' of familiar (but not family ties) in communities. These ties are crucial for building social cohesion - the biggest casualty of exploding social media use.

Wider societal trends have played a supporting role. For example, physical play in schools has been in retreat. So too has investment in social infrastructure enabling people to interact in their communities – parks, cinemas, museums, youth clubs and community centres. These too have squeezed the middle ring of social ties and depleted social cohesion.

Government policy

The depletion of social capital matters along one further key dimension – the effectiveness of government. Government requires for its legitimacy and effectiveness the trust and understanding of the public. Without it, non-compliance becomes endemic. This was one of the key findings from Putnam’s work on Italian provinces.

It is, in one sense, not a new point. This year’s Nobel Prize winners in economics received it for their research showing how trusted and inclusive institutions have been key to the success of nation-states for many millennia. By contrast, untrusted, extractive institutions are the single most important reason why nations have failed.

With many public institutions suffering a trust deficit, this historical research has a resonance in the present climate. Depleted social capital may be blunting the effectiveness and legitimacy of government at just the time it is most needed to rise to the challenges we face.

In sum, research on social capital emerging this century tells a consistent and compelling story. Whether it is countries, communities, companies, governments or individuals, social capital is foundational to flourishing. In its absence, fragility and precarity thrive. While by itself insufficient, a strong endowment of social capital is a necessary ingredient of success, whatever the context.

Those findings make the relative neglect of social capital, from a policy perspective, hard to explain. To tackle effectively the scourges blighting our society today – weak growth, health, social mobility and communities – this needs to change. Social capital needs to be given a leading role in our policy programmes. How is this best done?

Towards a programme for bowling together

For much of the post-war period, the benefits of globalisation and multiculturalism were taken for granted. Those days are long gone. The debate today is whether increased openness and multiculturalism are a source of fragility not flourishing. This is a key point of departure between progressives (emphasising the flourishing benefits) and populists (emphasising the fragility costs).

For many progressives increased integration is, if not an unalloyed good for everyone, nonetheless a significant positive overall. But this judgement underweights evidence on the large and rising social costs of openness, especially in poorer communities. Ignoring those social spillovers leads progressives to be over-protective of the multicultural order.

For many populists the diagnosis is the polar opposite, weighing the social costs over the economic benefits. For them, the right policy response is to reverse course - for example, tightening restrictions or imposing taxes on cross-border flows of people or goods. It is no surprise these policies are popular, especially in poorer places, despite their economic costs.

This debate lacks both balance and imagination. There is an imaginative alternative path that, while recognising the validity of both sides’ arguments, strikes a better balance. That comes from pursuing a more active social policy, rather than ploughing ahead (the progressive instinct) or dialling back (the populist instinct) economic policy.

In practice, this means weaving social capital through every aspect of public policy. While simple in principle, doing so would require a revolution in policy design and execution as large as a century ago. The Great Depression and the Great Division, while different in origin, are both meta-challenges requiring a meta-response policy-wise.

We are not starting from ground zero. Many civil society organisations have been running successful programmes to build social cohesion and curb anti-social behaviour. However these initiatives tend to be partial and local. We know we have under-invested in them because otherwise, social capital would not have been falling for more than half a century. The policy record so far, at the national level, is fitful and flimsy.

In the US Senator Chris Murphy has proposed a National Strategy for Social Connection. This has gained little traction. In the UK, there has been a sequence of policy initiatives, including the review of social cohesion by Louise Casey in 2016. None of these initiatives has lasted and none of the Casey recommendations have been put into practice.

One of the reasons for this lack of policy action is because social capital and cohesion do not sit naturally in any one government department. Any social cohesion strategy, to be successful, needs to straddle many aspects of public policy. The government finds horizontal, or joined-up, policy a real challenge.

They are not alone. Experimental evidence shows that people tend to undervalue social connection too. For example, they systematically underestimate the benefits they personally feel from volunteering, philanthropic giving or even talking to strangers on public transport. Like government, we too need a social capital nudge.

I do not think any country has yet put in place a comprehensive, cross-cutting programme to rebuild social capital. With social fragilities rising, alongside their costs, it would be difficult to think of a better time to do so. But what are the ingredients, the social bonding and mixing agents, needed for success? Let me conclude by sketching some contours.

Data and evaluation

What goes unmeasured goes unmanaged. Among the reasons social capital has been neglected, policy-wise is because data on it is patchy, like data on the macro-economy a century ago. Then, as now, what is needed is a new or augmented set of National Accounts. This would do for social capital what has already been done for economic and natural capital.

Some progress has been made. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics publishes indicators of social capital. It is unclear, however, how these pieces of the jigsaw fit together. They are partial – Putnam used a wider array of indicators, including the incidence of picnicking and giving the middle finger in public. Some indicators lack the necessary granularity.

Raj Chetty’s research has shown it is possible to develop highly granular maps of social connectivity. This is just one of several possible dimensions of social capital. What is needed now is a systematic and comprehensive piecing together of the array of data, using an agreed conceptual framework, National Accounts-like.

This is where a data observatory could play a role. This could help develop the conceptual framework underlying social capital formation and, so armed, bring together data in a consistent fashion. Most likely, this would involve combining quantitative and qualitative data, as happens when building up a picture of the macroeconomy.

The RSA’s social connections work programme is exploring the data observatory approach as a means of building understanding and measurement of social capital. A data observatory could also serve as a 'What Works' centre for social capital, allowing lessons to be learned and shared on policy experience to enable improvement.

Education and learning

Social ties are best established early in life to shape lifelong prospects. Raj Chetty’s research finds social networks forged in youth are particularly effective in unlocking upward mobility among poor children. This underscores the importance of educational institutions for nurturing social capital, as key mixing and bonding agent.

Yet most education systems currently support social stratification, not mixing. In the UK, the sizable independent sector results in a clustering of children from high-income families. So too does the use of geographical catchment areas which results in house prices being higher in strong school catchments, pricing out poorer parents and crowding out their children.

The same separation occurs in access to extra-curricular facilities, including clubs, societies and sports – key conduits for social mixing and bonding. Their availability and quality are heavily skewed towards independent and high-performing schools attracting richer parents and already well-connected children.

Another factor in educational stratification is school exclusion. Exclusions have been rising rapidly in the UK, especially among poorer children. Children eligible for free school meals are five times more likely to be excluded from school. More still are self-excluding by 'studying from home', especially since Covid. These are extraordinary figures.

They result, in large measure, from the exam-based evaluation approaches used in schools. This provides strong incentives to exclude those distant from learning and least likely to make the grade. Yet these are the children likely to be most in need, and indeed to benefit most, from education to boost their life chances.

Among poorer, disconnected children, then, barriers to school inclusion and incentives for exclusion leave them doubly disadvantaged. This is at odds with the very purpose of universal education and opportunity being open to all. I see nothing in the education agendas of the main political parties addressing these issues.

Doing so calls for a rethink of access and exclusion criteria in schools. Could socio-economic mixing be central in setting school access criteria, as has been tried in some US schools? Could school exclusion criteria be re-engineered? Could pupil wellbeing, rather than exams, be the centrepiece of school evaluation?

We need also to rethink the school curriculum (as a bonding agent) and extra-curricular activities (as a mixing agent) in nurturing social cohesion. It is encouraging that citizenship has entered the school curriculum. But its teaching is patchy and partial and something more comprehensive is needed. Sharing and mixing of extra-curricular facilities and activities needs to become the rule, not the exception.

While this rethink needs to start in schools, it must not end there. These same principles should apply all the way up the educational ladder, including access to colleges and universities. They too play a crucial role in developing social connections and social capital. Indeed, this is among the key reasons Higher Education graduates attract a pay premium.

Housing and planning

Unplanned urban sprawl characterised the latter part of the 20th century. As well as being ugly, this contributed to the depletion and balkanisation of communities - culturally, ethnically, and socio-economically. It also often resulted in the public services and the public realm being under-invested in, including education, recreation and healthcare facilities.

This laissez-faire approach to planning helped sow the seeds of the discord and distrust which has spread in many left-behind places. A fundamentally different approach is needed, with active spatial planning, and access to public services - what some have called Universal Basic Infrastructure - and improved social mixing at its heart.

As one example, Richard Sennett has proposed sociable – as opposed to social – housing. By design, this would seek to connect diverse communities through mixed-tenure residences, communal spaces and an improved public realm. It is similar in spirit to the co-housing schemes successfully in place in Japan, the Netherlands and Denmark.

With the UK government having set itself the target of building 1.5 million new homes and several new towns, and with increased planning powers being given to local leaders, now is a perfect time to ensure that social cohesion is made a core design principle in town and city planning.

Work and business

Because businesses are communities, they have a key role in building social capital. We know from the past the crucial role businesses can play in building cohesive communities. Victorian capitalist philanthropists, such as the Levers, Cadburys and Salts, showed that employers could be pivotal to community as well as commercial success.

On the flip side, we have also seen how the loss of anchor employers can devastate community cohesion, as well as incomes and jobs. Experience in the US rustbelt towns and cities, and in the former heavy industrial towns and cities of the UK, illustrate this only too vividly. The social scarring in these places has been deep and generational.

As part of the RSA’s ethnographic work to build a deeper understanding of social capital, our partners at Neighbourly Lab have conducted in-depth interviews with residents in the neighbourhood of Stirchley in Birmingham. These have revealed fascinating insights about the role played by their large anchor employer in supporting community connections.

With a new wave of digital and AI technologies set to disrupt work, jobs and businesses on a scale at least as large as in the past, the social role of businesses in community cohesion may become even more important than in the past. This underscores the importance of looking afresh at corporate governance practices.

Should stronger incentives, or statutory requirements, be put in place for hiring and training local workers, procuring from local suppliers or supporting the local public realm? This is what a flourishing-but-resilient model of 21st-century corporate governance might look like. None of the UK’s main political parties has shown much interest in corporate governance. This is an important policy blind spot.

Social infrastructure

Social capital is built on strong institutions, formal and informal. This is sometimes called social infrastructure or the public realm; it can take a variety of forms from faith-based institutions to youth clubs and community centres, from parks, sports and leisure facilities to clubs and societies, and libraries and museums to theatres and cinemas, from men’s sheds to community flower beds.

So defined, investment in social infrastructure has been neglected. Investment in the public realm has been meagre relative to physical and digital infrastructure. And the picture recently has got worse. In the UK since 2010, spending per person on sports, community recreation and libraries has fallen by more than half, and on parks, libraries, museums and theatres by a third.

What explains this under-investment? Investment in social infrastructure has been seen as a luxury not an essential, the icing not the cake. There has been a focus among government departments and local authorities on commercial rather than social return. Almost by definition, this wedge is largest for social infrastructure and in the most disadvantaged places.

Yet evidence of the high social returns from social infrastructure investment is becoming increasingly clear. In the poorest places, citizens rank it as crucial for pride in place. It is telling, if not surprising, that the more than 30 places across the UK where rioting occurred last summer had the weakest endowments of social infrastructure.

There is increasing evidence on the social benefits of investing in the public realm. Sport has long been thought to be a fantastic social mixing and bonding agent. The numbers bear that out. A recent study looked at its positive effects on the economy, health and social connections. Sport resulted in almost 62 million new social connections in the UK in 2023.

A similar evidence base has emerged on the social value of arts and culture and clubs and societies in promoting health, wellbeing and social connection. The social returns on investment are often large. Social prescribing gives activities such as these a central role in promoting health. It has shown evidence of significant success at a materially lower cost.

At present, these wider societal benefits of social infrastructure investment are often not overlooked when evaluating options. This calls for looking afresh at the Treasury’s Green Book on project evaluation and at the statutory objectives and evaluation approaches of local authorities. Standardised measurement of social infrastructure would help in doing so.

Citizen governance

If citizen trust is to be rebuilt, models of governance need to be rethought with citizens at their heart. The people most likely to engage in anti-social behaviour are those feeling voiceless and helpless in their communities. A different model of governance could provide voice and agency, flipping the default setting from anti- to pro-social behaviour.

Evidence is emerging on the efficacy of a variety of alternative, citizen-led, governance models. For example, citizen assemblies have been found to be effective in building trust and cohesion on culturally contentious issues. For example, Ireland used citizen panels when debating such culturally contentious issues as gay rights and abortion earlier this century.

As subsequent experience in Ireland has shown, the design of these approaches is crucial for their effectiveness. For example, the case is strong for using sortition methods to ensure citizen representation is diverse and balanced. A second key feature is a commitment to act on the recommendations unless there are overwhelming reasons not to.

In his review for the then-opposition Labour Party in 2022, Gordon Brown made a set of recommendations for improving governance across the UK. Some of those measures are being put in place by the new government, such as a Council of the Regions and Nations. That has not, so far, extended to Brown’s recommendation on local citizen councils.

There is a strong case for doing so, both as part of a programme to build social cohesion and to support improved accountability among newly empowered local leaders. The ideas are hardly new: the original Greek model of governance gave citizen-led approaches a central role in representative democracy.

There is also more that could be done at the community and neighbourhood level to build networks, as occurred informally during the pandemic. For example, the charity Local Trust has recently launched a National Network for Neighbourhood Improvement with the aim of developing richer community networks.

Media and communications

Media has always been a key conduit for social connection and its alter ego, social division. In Bowling Alone, Putnam argued that TV played a prominent role in the decline of clubs and societies and the depletion of social capital. During this century, social media has exploded. Like TV, it can both build and erode social capital.

There is a fine line to walk between promoting free speech and avoiding online harm. Many governments are finding it difficult to walk this line. In an attempt to strike a balance, many are legislating to avoid online harm. For example, in the UK the Online Safety Act 2023 seeks to protect children and adults online, with new duties on social media companies.

Even if more is done to reduce online harm, this may still leave too little being done to support online good. If public information and social cohesion are public goods, private sector media are likely to under-invest in them. Indeed, some may actively undermine the public good through misinformation or algorithms encouraging social division.

Historically, the role of public service broadcasters has been to, in the Reithian words, inform, educate and entertain. Given today’s media landscape, with misinformation and social division actively seeded, that role may need to be refreshed and strengthened. How other than through public broadcasting can these public goods be preserved?

In many countries, public broadcasters are being questioned, including for their implied biases. There is a deep irony that this is occurring at the same time as private sector media providers, whose biases are typically much more overt and damaging, are expanding their reach.

We see the same patterns in local newspapers and radio. They have been decimated over the past few decades, eliminating local sources of public information. This was particularly costly at the time of the riots last year when social media misinformation was fanning the flames of the riots.

In the UK, BBC Verify does fantastic work to tackle the blight of public misinformation. But its resources are tiny relative to the operations of the BBC and private media providers. The BBC has made significant efforts to reflect the multiculturalism of modern Britain. Should it go further, including through a more expansive social media presence?

Machinery of government

One of the main reasons for the neglect of social capital, policy-wise, is a lack of leadership. Another is that, by its very nature, social capital requires a cross-government response. Most countries find joined-up government difficult. A new policy ecology is needed if social capital is to be laced effectively through every arm of policy.

One possibility is an Office of the President or Prime Minister, with a designated responsible Minister. In the recent past, the UK had a Minister for Loneliness. What is needed now is a leader with a broader portfolio and powers to coordinate across government departments. Their mandate and powers should be set in statute to provide leverage and longevity.

These would be big shifts in policy. But given the false starts of the past and the fragile state of the present, something new and different is needed in the future. With newish governments in place in a number of countries, there is the opportunity to put social capital at the centre of the machinery of government and national renewal.

Conclusion

A century ago, the Great Depression was the blow-out heralding a revolution in economic policy. Today’s Great Division is a slow puncture but no less damaging to economic and social prospects. It has seeded and amplified many of today’s largest challenges. Rebuilding social capital will require as large a leap in policy design and practice as occurred a century ago.

Doing so is asking a lot of governments themselves lacking public trust. But history gives grounds for optimism. In the Upswing, Bob Putnam showed how social capital was built in the first half of the 20th century, before being depleted in the second. We can repeat those successes now through a concerted, cross-cutting national programme for social cohesion.

I have sketched some of its contours. At the RSA, through our social connections programme, we are crafting those contours working with communities. At stake is more than a shift in policy. If successful, this would signal a decisive shift in capitalism itself, a 'social capitalism' better able to bridge progressives and populists, the me and we.

Note: the text above may differ slightly from what was delivered at the CEO Lecture event on 21 February 2025. Every effort has been made to replicate it verbatim however some inaccuracies may be present.