Organizational Capacity, Trusted Networks, and Local Access

This chapter uses a variety of original quantitative and qualitative data to document and describe how capacity facilitates local community protection. The authors define capacity as an organizational resource, encompassing networks, expertise, and human and material capital focused on public, as opposed to internal, operations. In local Catholic churches in the Philippines, public capacity may take the form of ministries focused on social welfare, election monitoring, or ecological affairs. The chapter traces levels of parish capacity to long-term embeddedness in local communities, and influence from members of Catholic religious orders, specialized elites with histories in the Philippines of mobilizing in public affairs. Parishes with high levels of public capacity are better able to access local state elites with discretion over the use of violence and disseminate information and moral messages to members through credible networks.