Does Cooperation come for Free? Institutions and Social Capital in England and America (1884-1905)

This paper seeks to explore the intentional creation of social capital by two communities of entrepreneurs, with the aim of shedding light over the nature of trust and cooperation between competing economic agents. In doing so, this investigation will compare the institutions created in late Victorian England and Postbellum America to offer a reinterpretation of small scale producer capitalism in these two countries. Since the mid-1980s de-industrialisation, the shrinking of the welfare state and, for economic historians, the questioning of the Chandlerian paradigm have brought to the fore the importance of social networks capable of generating positive economic outcomes based on cooperation and trust. What underpins much of this literature is the desire to move away from static and monocausal notions of efficiency. The idea that economic „efficiency‟ comes in many forms was analysed extensively by Michael Piore and Charles Sabel when they launched the flexible specialisation manifesto in 1984. Flexible specialisation was intended as a strategy of permanent innovation, accommodation to ceaseless change, rather than as an effort to control it; a strategy based on flexible, multi-use equipment, skilled workers and co-operative arrangements between firms. Since the publication of The Second Industrial Divide