Kapitał społeczny sołtysów

The main goal of the article is to assess the level of social capital of village heads (sołtys) in Poland. The applied measure refers to formal membership of NGOs and political parties. The theory of social capital of Pierre Bourdieu was adopted as theoretical perspective. The study was conducted in 2014 and 2015 in two regions (voivodships) – Lubelskie and Wielkopolskie, which differ from each other in terms of history and social characteristics. The data comes from a quantitative research on 380 village heads and from auxiliary interviews with local governments’ representatives. The results show a very high level of social capital of village heads, however, with a certain profile. The strictly social activity of sołtys is significantly more common than the political activities (ca 70% of the leaders declared membership of NGOs while 15% of respondents were members of political parties). The crucial factor determining the level of the social capital of village heads is the social activity of their parents. As for Local Action Groups, the membership is related to village head’s level of education and source of income. The activity of village heads in political parties bears relation to the sex, age and job status. A high level of social capital as well as strong social networks allow leaders to succeed in elections to local governments. Over 70% of village heads running for the seats in the municipal councils succeeded with being elected. The results of the study suggest that rural leaders from Wielkopolskie are endowed with more social capital compared to those from Lubelskie.