Legal Regulations Impact on Social Capital. The Case of Poland

The article’s goal is to examine the impact of legal regulations on social capital on example of Poland. Due to specific conditions of Poland’s history of the last 200 years, legal institutions were not supposed to contribute to creation of social capital and in fact made it difficult. Our objective is to investigate the role of positive law in social capital building process. In the authors’ view, the relationship between statutory law and social capital is a complex one. On the one hand, a large stock of social capital supports statutory law, which can therefore be applied more effectively. Moreover, in such a situation, legal regulations do not have to be too detailed and casuistic. On the other hand, inadequate legal regulations may reduce the resource and quality of social capital, while well thought-out regulations can, in turn, support social capital. After review of literature referring to the relationship between the law and social capital, factors influencing social capital are discussed. It is followed by a short history of social capital evolution in Poland. After WWII, Polish legal system contributed to stressing the differences between identified groups, each of them enjoying different privileges. Due to bureaucratic character of this law, it did not help to strengthen social capital. Final section deals with general issues of the law-making process. We are presenting a tentative proposal to expand regulatory impact assessment (RIA) methodology, used in Poland and other OECD countries, by aspects important from social capital perspective. In our opinion, social capital building aspects were formally and practically forgotten during legislative process. Our suggestions on how to deal with social capital in the law-making processes are meant to propose corrective measures.