Contemporary society is marked by the presence of institutions that organize, regulate and govern the social relations of work. While institutions can be designed individually, they also have the ability to organize into networks that aim to strengthen intra and inter- institutions. Given this context, the aim here is to perform a theoretical incursion into public administration, institutionalism and social capital, showing the possible conceptual interfaces in order to elucidate the contributions of institutional and social capital to better understand contemporary public administration. On the one hand, the theory of social capital promotes understanding of the set of investments that are channeled into socioeconomic and cultural activities to meet specific social needs arising from organized groups in civil society. Thus, according to the assumptions of the capital, people interact with each other for access to public resources in order to achieve the collective targeting of several common interests. Meanwhile, institutionalism sets out on the assumption that any institution that is formally constituted and legitimately recognized by the legal attributes of society loses when the reason for the logic of its constitution can no longer be any more effective than individual action alone. Finally, the discussions surrounding the themes of social capital, institutional and public administration models invite us to reflect on the changes that take place in modern societies, especially regarding forms of government and trends in relations between state and society that take place in a globalized world.
Public administration; Social capital; Institutionalism
