Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy [Hardcover]

Robert D. Putnam (Author), Robert Leonardi (Author), Raffaella Nanetti (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0691078890 | ISBN-13: 978-0691078892

Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? In a book that has received attention from policymakers and civic activists in America and around the world, Robert Putnam and his collaborators offer empirical evidence for the importance of "civic community" in developing successful institutions. Their focus is on a unique experiment begun in 1970 when Italy created new governments for each of its regions. After spending two decades analyzing the efficacy of these governments in such fields as agriculture, housing, and health services, they reveal patterns of associationism, trust, and cooperation that facilitate good governance and economic prosperity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Harvard professor Putnam offers an in-depth examination of Italian politics and government.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

It is rare that one comes across a classic in political science, yet in Robert D. Putnam's "Making Democracy Work" we undoubtedly have one. . . . Mr. Putnam's seminal work addresses in a rigorously empirical way the central question of democratic theory: What makes democratic institutions stable and effective? . . . [His] findings strikingly corroborate the political theory of civic humanism, according to which strong and free government depends on a virtuous and public-spirited citizenry--on an undergirding civic community. . . . One crucial implication of "Making Democracy Work" is that feeble and corrupt government, operating against the background of a weak and uncivic society, tends not to foster the creation of wealth, but rather to renew poverty. Overmighty government may stifle economic initiative. But enfeebled government and unrepresentative government kills it, or diverts it into corruption and criminality. . . . This may not, perhaps, be a universal truth; but it is directly relevant to the prospects of democracy in the United States today.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 286 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr (December 29, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691078890
• ISBN-13: 978-0691078892
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #710,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and founder of the Saguaro Seminar, a program dedicated to fostering civic engagement in America. He is the author or coauthor of ten previous books and is former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For students of civil society, this is a must read., November 3, 1998

By 

Shawn Denney ([e-mail]) (Indianapolis, Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Paperback)

Which came first, responsive government or civic participation? Much like the chicken and the egg, this has been a question with no end of debate. However, some new ammunition for the civil society camp may be found in Dr. Robert Putnam's research on Italian civic origins. Over the last two decades, Dr. Putnam has been collecting data on this issue from the various regional governments throughout Italy. The central question behind his research has been what are the conditions for creating strong, effective, responsive, and representative institutions in a democracy? Extremely well written, Putnam's work takes the reader logically through the research process and into the conclusion: that a region's level of civic engagement has a direct relationship to effective democratic institutions. Beginning with an overview of the research, Dr. Putnam tells us that there exists a definite difference between performance in the northern regions as compared to the southern regions. Using heightened chorale and soccer club association as a litmus test of social capital, Putnam argues that good government must first be preceded by a foundation of trust towards one's neighbor. Putnam's analysis takes the reader through three broad modes of explaining institutional performance: institutional design, socioeconomic factors, and finally sociocultural factors. The former, institutional design, we find should be discounted from the start as all of Italy was provided the same governmental backdrop. As for socioeconomic affects, Putnam points out that the southern regions, those with the least responsive institutions, were actually more industrialized and better developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than their northern counterparts! Why then such a disparity in performance if the two leading arguments for predicting performance are demonstrated not to hold true? As one might have guessed, sociocultural factors are to blame. The argument being that social background is linked with public policy decisions. The way a society holds its values defines how institutions are developed. For the northern regions, medieval communes and guilds from the 11th century provide a "fabric of organized collective action for mutual benefit" that is lacking in the south. Putnam argues that these foundations of community spirit are the basis for northern Italy's heightened level of social capital. The south, having a separate history, never developed such community spirit, and instead relies on individual action for the fruit of one's own labor. One then can only conclude that the seeds of civil society in any culture were planted long ago. So why read the book? Putnam's conclusions actually have bearing on today's discussion of civil society in America. As in northern Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, America appears to have a declining level of social capital. But does decline equate to elimination of social capital? Clearly northern Italy seems to be social capital rich when compared with other regions. So then America, like northern Italy, can come out of its slump. When will we know? Putnam states that it would be impossible to measure northern Italian social capital at 1100 ad from the perspective of 1120 ad. So to will it be impossible for us to judge America of the 1980's and 90's from the perspective of 1998. The result, we will just have to wait and see. Good news for civic researchers of the next millenium!

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's NOT the economy, stupid . . . it's civics!, February 22, 2001

By 

ChairmanLuedtke "SchumpeterWasRight" (Princeton, NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Paperback)

The central concept of Putnam's study is "institutions," but he frames these institutions as both an independent and a dependent variable. Positing that institutions shape politics, but institutions themselves are shaped by history, Putnam is able to explain both the causes and the effects of political institutions among Italian regions. The "effects" portion of his study is the lesser of the two in importance; basically, the fact that all Italian regions got identical institutions in 1970, and yet the performance of these institutions varied widely across Italy, sheds much doubt on the questionable theory that formal institutional design itself is a primary determinant of government performance (although most Italians North and South agree that the new regional governments have been a change for the better).

But if institutional design has limited explanatory power, then what other variable can better account for institutional performance? This is the more important half of Putnam's work, for it is where he shows that "social context and history profoundly condition the effectiveness of institutions" (182), by unveiling his more controversial and powerful independent variable: civic culture. What is civic culture? It goes by many names and concepts for Putnam (civic traditions, political culture, civic involvement, social capital, republican virtues) but in its most basic form it is "norms of reciprocity and networks of civic engagement" (167).

In contrast with the existence of this civic culture in Northern Italy, identified as having a millenium-long pedigree due to the North's highly decentralized political history, Putnam uses the concept of "amoral familism" to characterize the civic culture (or lack thereof) in Southern Italy. Amoral familism implies that reciprocity and engagement are limited to family relations and to vertical networks of hierarchical power alone (in contrast to more participatory and egalitarian horizontal networks in the North), and that all other social relations, as a consequence, are characterized by material self-interest. Tracing the evolution of amoral familism to Southern Italy's monarchical past, Putnam finds that Southern regions have been doomed to institutional failure by their civic legacy, just as the North was guaranteed a relatively easy success by theirs. Putnam summarizes these two divergent starting points as "vicious and virtuous circles that have led to contrasting, path-dependent social equilibria" (180).

To prove this main causal argument, that civic culture determines institutional performance, one would obviously need adequate measures for both civic culture and institutional performance. As evidence of institutional performance, or "good government," Putnam chooses twelve indicators: cabinet stability, budget promptness, statistical and information services, reform legislation, legislative innovation, day care centers, family clinics, industrial policy instruments, agricultural spending capacity, local health unit expenditures, housing and urban development and bureaucratic responsiveness. Putnam then further evaluates the validity of these indicators by surveying both elite and public opinions regarding the institutional performance of their regional governments, to see if the public's perception matches his own.

For evidence of his primary independent variable, civic culture, Putnam proposes four indicators to put his finger on this elusive entity. These indicators are: voluntary associations, newspaper readership, referenda turnout, and (lack of) personalized preference voting. Putnam also correlates these "objective" measures with more opinion-based survey indicators of civic culture.

Most of Putnam's evidence coheres quite well with his causal argument. His quantitative indicators of both institutional performance and civic culture are relatively broad and accurate, with the minor exceptions that would be inherent in any attempt to quantify a complex, multi-dimensional concept like "civic culture". The strong statistical correlations identified by the measurement of his indicators, backed up with corresponding qualitative evidence (some, but not all of it historical), can probably be taken as reliable evidence of a meaningful causal relationship (in Italy) between civic culture and institutional performance. Perhaps the most striking implication of these results is that the ubiquitous relationship between economic development and democracy is actually shown to "disappear" in a statistical sense. In other words, Putnam has controlled for economic development and found that civic culture predicts both democracy and economic development, perhaps even better than economic development itself. This finding, if confirmed in other studies and settings, would obviously topple quite a few of the canonical theories in comparative politics.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing Thesis - with reservations, November 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Paperback)

Putnam's thesis on the importance of social capital in engendering the successful functioning of democracy is an intriguing idea that merits serious reflection in our context today. His study of the community-organizations in Italy, and their effects on the effective workings of democracy on a regional and national level, highlight the importance of civic organizations and their ability to inculcate in their members a sense of civic duty - which consequently leads to a vibrant democracy. This book is perhaps especially fitting in the American context today in light of declining interest in politics, diminishing belief in the efficacy of governing institutions in solving problems, and the general ethos of apathy and frustration felt around the nation in the realm of democracy (something that the most recent election's low voter turnout indicated). Although the study is interesting, the idea is perhaps a little less useful in the pragmatic sense; one could run into the question of a chicken-and-egg scenario where there is a debate between which came first: vibrant democracy or civic organizations. Regardless, the book is one of the best in its subject area and a recommended read for any student interested in such issues.