Different disciplines study social action by non-state, non-market actors and often place them under different labels (Vakil 1997; Johnson and Prakash 2007). Sociologists and political scientists study activism by NGOs, activist networks, and social movements to shape public policy (Tarrow 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998). Other scholars study nonprofits that supply goods and services. Nonprofits are distinguished by their unique institutional structure; the non-distributional constraint (Hansmann 1980). In addition to NGOs and nonprofits, yet another literature studies hobby groups and community efforts to provide local public goods or club goods. While Putnam (2000) focused, inter alia, on community groups such as bowling leagues, which bring together citizens with shared interests, Ostrom’s (1990) work focused on the communitarian efforts by user groups for sustainable use of resources.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s ([1840] 1945) book, Democracy in America noted the importance of associational activity in American politics and society. Since Tocqueville, several scholars have documented contributions of community groups in the social, economic and political processes across countries. In recent decades, Coleman (1988) in sociology and Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti (1993) in political science, produced systematic and careful work on the emergence and deployment of social capital. The phrase “social capital” has two components, social and capital. Capital – financial, physical, human, or social – pertains to assets that create future benefits for capital owners. Asset creation typically involves forgoing benefits emanating from these investments today in order to capture a larger stream of benefits in the future. It involves making choices between short-term sacrifice and risk-adjusted long-term gains.

The “social” aspect of social capital refers to its emergence due to social interactions and the fact that it resides in social ties. ⁴ As with any capital, social capital requires individuals to make valuable investments in social ties. ⁵ These investments could be in form of time or tangible resources. Social ties lead to repeated interactions. This creates inter-personal trust, which can help individuals in a range of tasks. Trust, the belief that other actors in the transaction will honor their commitments, generated in one set of interactions can sometimes spill over to other interactions (Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti (1993); Fukuyama 1995). Because many social transactions are based on incomplete contracting, fearing opportunism including free riding and shirking, individuals may not enter into these transactions. Alternatively, they may invest valuable resources to unproductive or suboptimal task such as buying “insurance” to protect themselves from ex post opportunism. While social capital might emanate from routine interactions, it can entail valuable payoffs in the future.

According to Ostrom and Ahn (2008), the concept of social capital has important implications for understanding collective action. Olson (1965), a first generation collective action theorist as per Ostrom and Ahn, challenged the assertion that individuals with common interests will tend to act together to pursue common interests. Olson noted that if group action creates non-excludable benefits which can be appropriated by all, then individuals can have incentives to free-ride on efforts of others. To mitigate free riding, organizations must provide excludable, selective benefits. Ostrom (1990) notes that the temptations to free ride can be mitigated by social ties. This is because the social ties in which they are embedded can generate trust, allowing individuals to rein in their incentives to free-ride and contribute to collective endeavors in the expectation that others would do the same.

The mechanism through which social capital impacts collective action is the generation of inter-personal trust. Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti (1993) showed how the differences in densities of social ties between the regions of Northern Italy and Southern Italy explain variations in their economic performance. The crucial point is that social ties developed in even routine social interactions can generate inter-personal trust whose effects can sometimes spillover beyond these interactions. Given the situation of incomplete contracting and potential for free-riding opportunities, these social ties provide the assurance that other parties in the social interaction will rein in their opportunism and the individual will not be faced with a sucker’s payoff.

So far this article has suggested that social ties generate inter-personal trust. But would these lead to the development of generalized trust that allows individuals to trust others who are not in their social group? What types of ties create in-group cohesion, thereby strengthening social cleavages, and what types of ties incentivize individuals to surmount these cleavages? This is a debated subject in the social capital literature. Putnam (2000) differentiates between bridging and bonding social capital. The former pertains to “social ties that link people together with others across a cleavage that typically divides society (like race, or class, or religion)” while the latter pertains to “social ties that link people together with others who are primarily like them along some key dimension.” ⁶ Thus, some types of social capitals enhance intra-group harmony but fuel inter-group tension. They support the “us versus them” mentality, which undermines the broader social cohesion.

What is crucial is that an individual might be embedded in different social networks promoting different types of social ties. Thus, one must recognize multiple dimensions of social capital without assuming that all dimensions are equally significant for an individual in a given “action situation” (Ostrom 1990), or incentivize this individual to contribute to collective action in the same way. Thus, while social capital can enhance inter-personal trust and enhance the prospects for collective action, this article suggests looking at different types of social capitals and examining how they enhance or even impede different types of collective action. For example, in communal activities involving the production of local public goods that require participation of people with different types of social ties, bridging social capital will enhance local participation but bonding social capital might reduce it. Or, instead of the bridging versus bonding divide, we should look for the frequency of face-to-face interactions in understanding the efficacy of different types of social capital.

As is discussed in the next section, types of social ties that generate social capital have an important bearing on explaining participation in community action to clean up illegal dumpsites. This article finds that some types of social capital played an important role while others did not. Importantly, these variations in the efficacy of different types of social capitals cannot be explained by the traditional distinction between bridging and bonding social capital. Instead, we need to focus on social capital rooted in frequent face-to-face interactions as opposed to social capital generated by a common identity only. This article suggests that it is the face-to-face interactions that allow for local mobilization for the provision of local public goods.

Slovenia is a transitional economy in Central Europe. It was a part of the former Yugoslavia and attained independence in 1991. Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004. Given its high per capita income (about $30,000 in 2014) it is a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Yet, Slovenia like other Central European countries is transitioning society with an uneven development of its civil society sector (Dolšak and Prakash 2013; Mondak and Gearing 1998; Baker and Jehlička 1998; Bădescu, Sum and Uslaner 2004; Howard 2003). It is often assumed that under the communist rule, any collective action outside the communist party was actively discouraged and the truly autonomous civil society was replaced by “compulsory pseudo-associations” (Kolakowski 1971, 41). ⁷ Demonstrating that social ties helped communitarian action in a transitional economy can be viewed as a hard case to test the efficacy of social capital.

However, civil society was not entirely absent in European communist countries (Leskinen 2015). Slovenia had some fairly established secular civil society groups such as hunters clubs. It also has an active Catholic church that was allowed to function during the communist era. Importantly, the distinguishing feature of Slovenia is its language, not ethnicity. Hence, both religion and language are an important source of social identity. Yet as this article shows, shared identity by itself may not suffice for local mobilization; it must be accompanied by frequent face to-face-interactions.

As in most transitional economies, the modern NGO sector, specifically, the advocacy NGOs and nonprofits, is on the rise in Slovenia. These NGOs tend to rely on foreign support (foundations, governments, inter-governmental organizations) and not on financial contributions from their members (Fagan 2002; Henderson 2003). While in some transitional economies, NGOs’ legitimacy and power in the 1980s lay in anti-regime protests, in the new era, the modern NGOs have needed to learn how to oppose specific policies as well as collaborate with the government on other issues. Importantly, if they seek to mobilize local population for specific tasks as opposed to limiting themselves to policy advocacy, they need to engage with traditional groups whose relative advantage is their grass-roots support base.

This article examines local participation in the provision of local public good via cleanup of illegal dumpsites. The clean-up project is a trans-world movement. It started in 2008 in the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. Since 2008, about 16 million volunteers have engaged in clean-up projects across countries, now called “Let’s do it World”. ⁸ Participation levels have varied substantially across countries. In 2010, Slovenia, with almost 15 % participating level held the record, followed by Latvia with 10.5 %, Sweden with 7.4 %, and Lithuania with 7.0 %. ⁹

In Slovenia, the clean-up project was started in 2009 by a small modern NGO, Ecologists without Borders (EWB). These activists followed the Estonian approach. When Nara Petrovič, one of the founding members of EWB, attended a conference in Finland in summer of 2009, he learned about the Estonian project. He shared a video about the 2008 Estonian efforts with his Slovenian friends and asked whether this could be replicated in Slovenia. Inspired by the Estonian example, a group of environmental activists established EWB in the fall of 2009. Thus, the core idea to clean up illegal dumpsites emerged abroad. The transnational linkages among environmental activists afforded Nara Petrovič the opportunity to learn about this effort, which he, along with his friends, replicated in his home country. This is an excellent example of policy diffusion – here it is via the agency of non-governmental actors – and the role transnational networks play in this regard.

EWB formed working groups and established a list of volunteers with their specific skills. Although a young organization, it recognized the importance of grassroots mobilization to accomplish this task. It also recognized that it did not have the grassroots infrastructure to accomplish its goals. It therefore adopted two strategies. First, instead of hiring a paid workforce for the cleanup, it decided to organize local community level action. Second, it understood the need to involve established, traditional NGOs and government agencies. In some ways, EWB’s strategies resemble what Ostrom (1996) has termed as co-production of public goods and what Petrova and Tarrow (2007) called transactional activism – the combined efforts of both government and nongovernmental actors working together to produce collective goods.

To elaborate on the collaboration process, EWB involved a range of actors including schools, waste collection companies, and local governments. It involved local churches and reached out to traditional civil society groups. The Slovenia Forestry Service, aided by the police and the army, agreed to map all illegal dumpsites in Slovenian forests. Further, seeking to exploit its expertise in modern marketing tools, EWB hired a firm to develop a logo, and a website enabling citizens to report illegal dumpsites. In January 2010, EWB presented the clean-up project to the Association of Municipalities of Slovenia and secured the support of key politicians across the political spectrum, including the Prime Minister and the President. This was also the time when the media began covering their efforts. By February 2010, EWB had documented about 10,000 illegal dumpsites.

The Slovenian clean-up project “Očistimo Slovenijo” (Let’s clean up Slovenia) took place on April 17, 2010. This was a single-day event. Local government helped in the coordination of efforts in each district and waste disposal firms removed collected waste. In total, 194,000 adults, 15 % of the adult population ¹⁰ participated in this effort and cleaned up about 7,000 illegal dumpsites. However, the clean-up efforts exhibited large variations across 192 districts in Slovenia, as depicted in Figure 1.

Source: http://www.geopedia.si/?params=T1558#T1558_x499072_y112072_s8_b4

Figure 1:

Number of participants in the 2010 clean-up (by district – “Občina”).

What explains variation in participation levels across districts? Typically, the modern NGO sector is supposed to be the strongest in urban areas. Interestingly, areas around two large cities, Ljubljana, the capital city, and Celje (lying northeast of Ljubljana), exhibited the lowest levels of participation.

As indicated earlier in the article, this cleanup was aimed at producing local public goods such as improved sanitation, aesthetics, and ground water quality. Illegal dumpsites have been identified as an important ecological problem of Slovenia. ¹¹ While legal waste dumpsites follow the EU Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control for proper treatment of water runoff and gas emissions from these sites, illegal dumpsites cause multiple problems. They become breeding sites for carriers of infectious diseases (mosquitos and rodents). Waste paints, motor oils, and other liquid pollutants contaminate surface and running water. ¹² Much of waste emanates from the construction industry (Smrekar 2007). Given the decentralized nature of this industry, which makes monitoring difficult, coupled with resource scarcity at the district government level, which also makes monitoring difficult, these sites have proliferated. ¹³

How did EWB, a modern NGO of a recent vintage, encourage grassroots mobilization? Interestingly, even during the communist era, some traditional community groups concerned with environmental protection were active. Because they did not seek political mobilization under the garb of environmental protection, the communist state did not suppress their activities. ¹⁴ In particular, the role of Hunters Club is important in the clean-up efforts. This club was established in 1907. ¹⁵ While this is a hobby group for hunters – arguably even more established than Putnam’s famous Bowling Leagues – it encourages its members to protect the environment. Hunting is popular activity in Slovenia; for reference Slovenia has 58 % of its land area under forest; only Sweden and Finland are ahead of Slovenia in this regard. ¹⁶ Thus, environmental protection coheres with the mission of these clubs that bring together Slovenian citizens who enjoy hunting. EWB targeted such groups with a presence in every district of Slovenia. This shows how a modern NGO recognized and worked with traditional community groups for grass-roots mobilization.

This paper has important policy implications for thinking about the role of NGOs in the transitional societies. As I find in the paper, some sort of civil society existed in several transitional countries even during the communist rule. The new and modern civil society organizations need to finds ways to collaborate with these traditional organizations. There is a literature that speaks to the dualism in the civil society sector where the “modern” NGO sector co-exists with the traditional civic groups but overtime the former seems to be the displacing the latter (Chahim and Prakash 2014). Yet, the modern sector typically does not have the deep roots and social embeddedness to organize large-scale social action. This article suggests that possibility of organizing large-scale social action is increased when modern NGOs with their relative advantage in marketing and publicity are able to join hands with traditional groups who have established institutionalized mechanisms for social mobilization. Overseas donors (both governmental organizations and large foundations) have tended to neglect local groups, especially locally hobby groups. There is also a tendency to shy away from funding religious groups. This paper suggests that this sort of approach needs to be revisited if donors want civil society actors to mobilize the community for specific projects.

This article also speaks to the literature on communist legacy underlining the challenges in the development of civil society in former communist countries (Michnik 1998; Tucker 2000; Howard 2003; Fagan and Carmin 2011). It suggests that social capital can be important for collective endeavors even in societies with communist legacies. In part, countries have had varying experiences regarding how the communist party treated community organizations outside the party. In the Yugoslavian experience, the party tolerated the Catholic Church and hobby groups such as hunters clubs. The Yugoslavian communist party also allowed its “republics” to conduct governmental work and education in their own languages. Hence, language and religion became a source of strong social ties but of the bonding variety. Yet, they had important differences: social ties via religion were strengthened by regular face-to-face interaction while language provided a shared identity only. Hence, religion is a more potent form of social capital for organizing communitarian efforts.

Future work should examine how social capital created by nationalism or shared ethnicity, history, or language, differs from one that is rooted in face-to-face interactive activities. Arguably, while language can help develop a shared identity, it does not necessarily provide incentives for face-to-face activity. While the identity-based bonding capital might be useful in the mobilization of “us” versus “them”, it seems to be less useful in mobilizing “us” for tasks that do not bear on core issues of identity politics. Future work should seek to develop more sophisticated categories of social capital, or suggest contingency theories that help us understand conditions under which different types of social capital – even within a given subcategory – might motivate collective action. This study has some obvious limitations in terms of generalizability. It is limited to one country and examines a one-shot event. While this focus has enabled a statistical analysis with the micro-level data, generalizability of the finding to other contexts needs to be established, not assumed. These results need to be validated in terms of other events requiring communitarian action to assess the level to which insights from the study of “illegal dumpsites cleanup” can illuminate them.

Face-to-face interactions can take place in a variety of settings. In the context of this paper, face-to-face interactions took place within a highly institutionalized setting, which allowed mitigating collective action problems in organizing social action (Sampson et al. 2005). A highly institutionalized setting perhaps also has a history of facilitating social action in some other context. Thus, there is probably also some sort of institutional knowledge at work on how to mobilize members for a given social task. Arguably, high frequency face-to-face interactions in a less institutionalized setting where the rules of interactions are less defined (meeting same set of people during the evening walk, for example) would probably be less successful in organizing social action, an issue future research should examine.

Finally, while I do not find the bonding-bridging dichotomy useful in explaining motivation for social action, as opposed to the frequency of face-to-face interaction, it is quite possible that bonding-bridging dichotomy is analytically useful in other types of situations. Think of the success of ethnic or religious organizations for identity-focused causes, even in the absence of high frequency face-to-face interactions. Thus, the effectiveness of various types of social capitals in mobilizing social action needs to be understood in specific contexts.