The Role of Social Capital in Bureaucrats’ Alienation From Tax Policies

One of the reasons for the failure of public policies is bureaucrats’ alienation from public policies. Alienation from policy is a psychological state that leads to the psychological dissociation of public policy enforcers from those policies. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of social capital in bureaucrats’ alienation from tax policies. The statistical population of the study was comprised of identification officers of the Qom Province Tax Affairs Administration. The required data was collected through a questionnaire distributed in 2020 among a sample (n=174) which was selected using simple random sampling. The hypotheses testing results were analyzed based on maximum likelihood test in structural equation modeling. The findings showed that social capital dimensions (namely structural, communicative, and cognitive) have a positive, significant relationship with bureaucrats’ alienation from tax policies. This means that the fulfilment of each of the three dimensions of social capital causes bureaucrats to feel less alienation from policies.