Institutions and Their Impact on Social Capital and Civic Culture: The Case of Italy

Abstract

Robert D. Putnam’s Making Democracy Work has propelled the issue of social capital to the front stage of the social sciences. It argues that the difference in the efficiency of regional governments in Italy— the northern ones being much more efficient than those in the south—results from the differentiated presence of social capital in both parts of the country. Social capital, defined as the “features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating co-ordinated actions” (Putnam 1993, 167), is, according to Putnam, much more present in northern than in southern Italy. As a consequence, northern Italy is characterized by its cooperative and civic culture sustained by a strongly rooted associative life, contrasting with the southern culture of “amoral familism,” based on the exclusive defense of the interests of the nuclear family. The civic communities of the North are “bound together by horizontal relations of reciprocity and co-operation, not by vertical relations of authority and dependence,” characteristic of the South. In a civic community, citizens develop attitudes that enhance cooperation. They are “helpful, respectful, and trustful toward one another” (Putnam 1993, 88), and they can hence count on reciprocal trust, even in the case of self-interested transactions.