Le capital social comme protection sociale ? Le cas de la Mauritanie

The associative or communal approach presupposes that the spontaneous organization of individuals and the issuing binding norms suffice to ensure adequate protection and a whole set of social goods and services. This article illustrates the difficulties that such a proposition may be confronted with in the case of Mauritania. While distinguishing voluntarily mobilized social capital as opposed to social capital mobilized through constraint, it shows that in both cases, the well-to-do still get better social protection to the expense of the poor. This partly explains the shortcomings of social protection based on associative capital.