The Effect of Social Capital on Economic and Political Development

The main question of this research is about the optimal level of social capital in a society. In this regard, considering utility as development and relying on secondary analysis using different databases (the global database and human development report), we investigate the relationship between social capital, economic development, and political development. This relationship has been clearly approved both theoretically (there are a lot of theories about the relationship between the mentioned variables in the research literature) and experimentally (Pearson correlation test and Partial Pearson correlation test). In the second step, we investigated the level of social capital that is necessary for economic and political development. To answer this question, first the cutoff point of social capital was determined by ROC test, and then, the components of development were compared at each of the cutoff points. According to ANOVA, only high levels of social capital can significantly influence the development components.