摘要：This article provides a non-comprehensive overview of social and economic theories regarding the contribution to the small communities' economy and society of institutions, in all forms of expression. Institutions, first analyzed in terms of local culture together with elites and leadership, as well as formal institutions organized by state or NGO's, generate a so-called spiritual infrastructure, intangible, but necessary for social progress on primary levels of aggregation. The study was accomplished using critical analysis of literature on which we grafted some exam- ples from Romanian society. Finally, the article proposes some practical ideas for community development institutional interventionism
