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Book Review Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy by
Robert D. Putnam, with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti
Article in American Journal of Sociology · March 1994
DOI: 10.1086/230417
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Book review - To be published in the American Journal of Sociology
Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. By Robert D.
Putnam, with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1993. Pp. ix+258.
Marco Maraffi
University of Milan
This is a challenging and ambitious book, and one that is bound to be
controversial. Prima facie, it appears as a case study: how to explain
the different performance of regional governments in Italy. In fact,
starting off from such a specific problem, the book addresses much
broader questions concerning representative institutions, the origins and
conditions of effective government, the role of social relationships in
shaping political behavior, and much more. The lessons that Putnam draws
from his case study go far beyond Italy and suggest important
implications for the development of democracy in the world. This is not a
book for area specialists and deserves to be widely read, and discussed,
by sociologists and political scientists alike.
The book brings together the results of more than two decades of
empirical research on the Italian regions by Putnam and his
collaborators. The original idea which sparked Putnam's interest is
fairly straightforward. In 1970 an entirely new set of fifteen regional
governments were established in Italy, fulfilling a long-forgotten
constitutional provision. Here was an excellent opportunity for a quasi-
experimental study of the dynamics and ecology of institutional
development and performance: The new institutions in fact had formally
identical structures and mandates, while their social, economic,
cultural, and political settings differed widely. To use the authors'
imagery, how would the same plant develop in such diverse soils?
The performance of the different regions is appraised by a
comparative evaluation of their policy processes, policy pronouncements,
and policy implementation. On the basis of a composite index of
performance (made up of twelve indicators of institutional success and
failure), Italy's regions show remarkable differences in institutional
performance, which remain stable over time. The most important result of
this comparative analysis is, not unexpectedly, that regions in the
Centre-North are more successful than their counterparts in the South.
How is this stark contrast to be explained? Established theory and
research link effective and stable democracy to socioeconomic
modernization. This generalization holds in the case under scrutiny as
well: the regions' institutional performance is highly correlated with
their degree of social and economic development. Yet, socioeconomic
modernity cannot explain the marked interregional variations in
performance within the country's developed Centre-North and less
developed South. At this point a wholly different explanatory variable is
introduced: "civic-ness". With Tocqueville in mind, and drawing on the
republican philosophical tradition, the authors describe a "civic
community" as one characterized by active participation in public
affairs, vigorous associational life, horizontal relations of reciprocity
and cooperation, mutual trust. The degree of civic-ness of each of
Italy's regions (measured on the basis of four indicators, again combined
in a composite index) appears to differ widely. What is crucial, "civic"
regions overlap almost perfectly with high-performance ones. Other
variables (social stability, education, urbanism, political
fragmentation, social conflict, etc.) do not add anything to the
explanation of why some governments work and others do not. Civic-ness is
the most important factor in explaining good government. Furthermore, the
civic traditions, or the lack of them, of the Italian regions can be
traced back to the Middle Ages and the different patterns of social
relationships which crystallized over this period (circa 1100): vertical
and hierarchical bonds of dependency and exploitation in the South,
horizontal and cooperative bonds of mutual solidarity in the Centre-
North. Such contrasting traditions of social relationships were, so to
speak, carried over to contemporary Italy through nine centuries of
history and make themselves felt to this very day in the operation of
regional institutions.
The general, and far-reaching, conclusion that Putnam draws from his
empirical research is that social trust, norms of reciprocity, networks
of civic engagement and successful cooperation - what he terms "social
capital" - are crucial factors in making democracy work (and in fostering
economic prosperity, too).
The argument developed in the book is highly sophisticated and
complex, both theoretically and empirically. A short review cannot
possibly do it justice. The book can, and will, be criticized on a number
of counts. I am not sure that the evidence upon which the argument is
built and the theory tested is appropriate (after all Italy's regions are
fairly weak institutions, not comparable with, say, the American states);
objections can be raised to the way key concepts (performance, civic-
ness) are operationalized; correlations are not causal explanations; the
reproduction over long periods of time of distinctive patterns of
behaviour is not adequately substantiated. Nontheless, the book makes, in
a lucid and elegant manner, a number of very important points and
represents a significant advance in our understanding of the thorny issue
of the interplay between "culture" and "structure" in social and
political life. The authors themselves readily admit that their work
cannot be conclusive, but they have travelled a good distance.
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