If Bertie Ahern really believes in Robert Putnam's views, why has his own work followed such a different path? asks Robin Wilson.
According to the Taoiseach, he is "an extraordinary genius". And, indeed, the American academic Robert Putnam has contributed much to the debate about where developed societies are going, with his work over the last decade and more on "social capital". He addressed the Fianna Fáil think-in yesterday in Ballyconnell.
What social capital means is the relationships of trust, the widely-accepted norms and the strong social networks which prevail where there is a civic culture.
Prof Putnam has demonstrated that those Italian regions and those US states characterised by good governance and prosperity are also those which rate highest on measures of social capital.
While much less tangible than physical capital - money, machinery and so on - the beauty of social capital is that it is reinforced, rather than depleted, through use.
The more people get involved in social networks, the more they trust each other, the less likely they are to act against the common good.
Amid widespread concern, therefore, about the social malaise evident in the rich societies of western Europe and north America - where rising individual affluence no longer seems to bring greater wellbeing in its train - Putnam's work has kindled the hope that troubling issues like crime and disorder can be addressed by encouraging civic participation.
Having joined this privileged group, Bertie Ahern believes that is "the kind of connectedness we need in our community in the modern age". He sees community groups and the GAA as examples of the vibrancy of civic associations.
There are, however, two big - two very big - problems with Ahern endorsing the work of Putnam so enthusiastically. At a de Valera commemoration during the weekend, he described the goals he sought by the next election as lasting peace in Northern Ireland, irreversible economic and social progress, and "honest and open politics".
The third aspiration, given the recent history of Fianna Fáil, might be described as the triumph of hope over experience. But on the first two, the difficulty Ahern has is that the implications of Putnam's work go in precisely the opposite political direction to that in which the Taoiseach has been travelling.
Take the second first. A fascinating reassessment of Putnam's work has just appeared in a book on the impact of inequality on health, with the catchy sub-title "How to make sick societies healthier". The author, Richard Wilkinson, is professor of social epidemiology at Nottingham University.
Wilkinson shows conclusively that Putnam's own data indicate a critical relationship between social capital and social equality.
The regions and states which are the most trusting and civic-minded are also the most equal.
Translated on to the international arena, Putnam's social-capital scale places egalitarian Sweden at the top and hugely-unequal Brazil at the bottom. And this, Wilkinson argues, is common sense: we are most likely to show solidarity with our fellow citizen if we do not feel socially distant from them.
But this is where Ahern faces his first difficulty. Also at the weekend, in an interview he reiterated his preference for the Progressive Democrats as a coalition partner.
One of that party's Ministers, Michael McDowell, has argued recently that inequality is necessary in a capitalist society. It provides an essential incentive, he claims.
McDowell is wrong, as Putnam's and other data show. A society with deep inequalities undervalues the human capital of huge numbers of its population, and its lack of an accepted moral compass encourages free-riding and anti-social behaviour.
But he believes it, and so do his colleagues. Mary Harney, the PD leader, famously endorsed the Anglo-American social model over the European, when she said the Republic should position itself closer to Boston than to Berlin.
This has unavoidable consequences. The Republic spends just 14 per cent of gross domestic product on what the EU calls social protection expenditure, whereas Sweden spends 32 per cent.
So, for example, Sweden can provide universal, high-quality public childcare, whereas in the Republic it is rationed by ability to pay.
Similarly, according to Unicef, 16 per cent of Irish children live in poverty, as against 2 or 3 per cent in Denmark, Finland and Norway. This is based on children living in households below half the median income.
Of course it is said that such relative poverty doesn't matter. But Wilkinson's work shows that what matters in terms of our wellbeing is our status vis-a-vis others - whether our society is characterised by a hierarchy of dominance or by equality. So the healthiest societies, it turns out, are not the wealthiest but the most equal.
Ahern has taken recently to describing himself as a "socialist", to burnish his party's "caring" image. The trouble for him is that modern social democracy, as in Scandinavia, is not just about everyone being able to go to the zoo.
It is about counteracting through democratic politics the inherent tendency of unregulated capitalist economies towards ever-wider inequalities.
The second problem for the Taoiseach raised by Putnam's work is that the Harvard professor distinguishes clearly between what he calls bonding and bridging social capital.
By the first he means networks which are confined to particular ethnic communities and by the latter he means cross-communal associations. And he warns that bonding capital, "by creating strong in-group loyalty, may also create strong out-group antagonism"; whereas "bridging social capital can generate broader identities and reciprocity".
Indeed, he regularly instances Belfast and Bosnia as a warning of where bonding capital can lead.
Under successive Fianna Fáil-dominated administrations, policy towards the North has been premised on the idea that the role of the Taoiseach should be to speak for "nationalist Ireland". The Rainbow coalition, by contrast, adopted a more even-handed stance.
Putnam's work would certainly argue for an emphasis on reconciliation across the sectarian divide, not reinforcement of nationalist solidarity.
Indeed, with almost nightly reports in the North indicating just how mistrustful a society it has become - it is widely accepted that it is more polarised than ever - such a change of focus becomes all the more imperative.
Robin Wilson is director of the think tank Democratic Dialogue