Social Capital and Local Governance Regimes: Early Childhood Development Roundtables in British Columbia

The concept of social capital has received enormous attention in the social sciences and beyond. Researchers have shown a particular interest in “neighbourhood effects” – how neighbourhood social capital and local area environments might impact a variety of outcomes in positive and negative ways. However, insufficient attention has been given to issues of local governance in the social capital literature, despite much of the public policy, urban politics and multilevel governance literature associating local democracy with positive policy outcomes. Surprisingly, little such research has considered local governance in the area of early childhood development (ECD). Therefore, the paper will explore the relationship between “neighbourhood effects” and local democracy within the setting of policies for families and children. It will map and compare the community governance structures at work in the area of ECD in several communities in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Through the lens of feminist political economy, the paper canvasses the ECD roundtables across BC communities, and identifies at least three regimes: Traditional Public Administration (TPA), New Public Management (NPM), and Community Democracy (CD). While all three are strongly shaped by the dominant neoliberal context, community democracy seems to be the most successful in bringing together procedural and substantive democracy in the realm of ECD.