A new paper by Dr Katja Mirwaldt has been published in the EPRC European Policy Research Paper series. Drawing on her PhD research, the paper examines the small projects fund, an EU-funded initiative to promote good citizen relations across borders.
The paper presents this fund as an attempt to foster 'social capital', i.e. social trust and citizen networks, in the Polish-German border region. The fund is examined in the light of seven conditions of social capital formation. In the Polish-German border region, the fund scores well on the first four conditions that are related to the promotion of individual trust. It performs less well on the three conditions for scaling up individual trust to form social capital. However, it remains to be seen whether small project support can deliver improved citizen relations.
The research presented in the paper is being developed as part of an EPRC programme of studies on European territorial cooperation. A copy of the paper can be downloaded here