To this end, in the sections that follow I consider some of the key findings of social capital research and debate in the specific domains of collective action, economic development, and democratic governance, but laying greater stress on their outreach to other realms of the academy and to public debate rather than to their narrow technical merits. Understood in this way, social capital’s positive impact largely takes the form of its status as a public discursive good, providing a common frame of reference around which a range of agreements and disagreements can be discerned and refined across disciplinary lines and professional boundaries, some- thing that is especially important for civil society groups and the types of issues around which they mobilize. For many of the issues to which the language of social capital has been directed—such as social justice and equity, whose resolution largely requires political, not technical, answers—it was precisely these kinds of debates that were (and remain) necessary to craft legitimate, supportable resolutions.