Strategia Rozwoju Kapitału Społecznego 2020 (2013) by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, published online at: http://strateg.stat.gov.pl/strategie_pliki/Strategia_Rozwoju_Kapitalu_Spolecznego.pdf

What is it about?

The Social Capital Development Strategy 2020 (SCDS) is the main document of cultural policy in Poland. The work on the strategy was carried out in 2009–2012, and it was adopted by the Council of Ministers in 2013. The scope of the strategy was defined in the 2009 amendments to the Act of 6 December 2006 on the Principles of Development Policy that underlies the creation of a new strategic order in Poland. These principles were also alluded to in the report Poland 2030 (Boni, 2009) that was produced by the Board of Strategic Advisors to the Prime Minister of Poland. This report described 10 challenges for the development of the country including economic growth, demographic changes, and social and regional solidarity. In addition, it also defined the so-called “polarisation and diffusion model of development”. This model is intended to support the most competitive sectors of the economy and urban centres in Poland (polarisation) as well as ensuring the diffusion of benefits (e.g. to rural areas and people in poverty). This diffusion requires strategic interventions in regional policy and involves the introduction of instruments and structures that will allow different configurations of institutions (stakeholders) involved in policy-making and co-ordination. Moreover, Poland 2030 highlighted that the building of social capital is crucial to the delivery of the plan. This assumption is based on the observations from the European Social Survey and Polish panel research entitled Social Diagnosis (Czapiński & Panek, 2014) that identified Poland to have one of the lowest levels of generalised trust and other indicators of civil society amongst all of the European countries. According to Putnam et al.’s (1993) theory of social capital, these sorts of trusts, norms, and relationships are crucial to the cooperation and effective implementation of the complex tasks of groups and organisations. As such, the assertion of the Poland 2030 report is that the cultural characteristics of contemporary Polish society are not supporting the socioeconomic development and the SCDS is intended to contribute towards changing this situation.

Featured Image