Putnam paper

[anne.w@mail.utexas.edu (WOMER; ANNE K.)]

Summary and Response to Putnam

	When the regional governments in Italy were formed and given more powers, many Italians were optimistic.  Although this idealistic optimism soon gave way to pragmatism, the regional governments survived and the political structure in Italy was successfully changed.  However, the governments in the southern Italian regions lag far behind those in northern Italian regions.  In his book Making Democracy Work, Robert Putnam has put together a strong argument, based on many years of research, that “civic community” is the reason that the northern regional governments are more effective than those in the south.
In proving this main point, Putnam first describes the criteria he uses for measuring government performance.  He believes that a good government is both responsive and effective.  A good government must be comprhensive, internally consistent, reliable, and responsiveness to the objectives and evaluations of its constituents.  According to Putnam, there are twelve indicators of institutional performance.  The first group of these indicators measure policy processes and internal operations.  They include 1) cabinet stability, 2) budget promptness, and 3) statistical and informational services.  The second group measures policy decisions. They include 4)reform legislation, 5) legislative innovation.  The last group measures policy implementation and includes 6) day care centers, 7) family clinics 8) industrial policy instruments, 9) agricultural spending capacity, 10) local health unit expenditures, 11) housing and urban development, and 12) bureaucratic responsiveness.  Putnam found that the regional governments in the north were better (based on these measures) than those in the south.  The level of citizen satisfaction was also higher in the north, presumably because governmental performance was better.  Putnam did indeed find a correlation between the two.  
Perhaps the biggest question asked in this book is that given similar governmental structures and funds, why is there such a large discrepancy in governmental performance between the north and the south?  The two most likely possibilities, according to Putnam, are socioeconomic modernity and “civic community.”  The north was wealthier and more industrialized at the time the regional governments were established, but is unclear whether the south’s continued poverty was the cause or the result of poor governmental performance.  Putnam elaborates on the socioeconomic factors later in his argument.  Here, he focuses on the idea of civic community and its effect on democratic government.  In a healthy civic community, citizens participate in public affairs and avoid the narrow view of “amoral familism,” in which they focus only on the short-term advantage of the nuclear family.  In this community, citizens are equals, rather than patrons and clients.  There are also feelings of solidarity, trust, and tolerance among them, regardless of their political views.  In a civic community, there should also be an abundance of associations, or as Putnam describes them, “social structures of cooperation.”  Members of associations learn cooperation and gain a sense of shared responsibility.   
Putnam goes on to apply these concepts of “civic-ness” in his assessment of Italy.  In Italy, clubs (sport clubs, in particular) are far more dense in the northern regions, indicating a high degree of cooperation among the citizens.  Electoral turnout, specifically for a referendum vote is a good indicator of civic involvement.  The northern regions show a consistently greater turnout for referendum votes than the South.  In his research, Putnam found that there was a positive correlation between civic community and governmental performance.  This indicates that one of the reasons that the southern regional governments perform poorly is because the lack of civic community in those regions.
After defining civic community, Putnam looks for its origins in Italy.  In the Middle Ages, the people in the south of Italy lived under the autocratic rule of kings and later feudal lords.   In the North, however, the cities formed small, communal republics, based on the principle of horizontal collaboration as opposed to the vertical hierarchy of the South.  Because of their activity in trade, the northern republics such institutions as money, markets, and law.  They also introduced the idea of credit, which implies mutual trust among the communities.  Although by the 17th century, none of the cities in Italy were republics, there were still accepted civic responsibilities (for example, patronage of the arts).  After unification, mutual aid societies, cooperatives, and labor unions appeared.  The places where these societies flourished seemed to correspond to the location of the old republics, mostly in north-central Italy.  In the South, however, the patron-client brand of politics persisted.  
It is this history of civic community in the north that Putnam uses to argue that civic involvement is a stronger predictor of governmental performance than socioeconomic conditions.  While the socioeconomic conditions of the Italian regions have changed throughout history—sometimes the south has been wealthier than the north—the North seems to have consistently had a stronger civic community.  
Putnam then uses concepts from game theory to describe why some places have developed civic community and others have not. It is rational for people not to trust each other.  However, given an infinite number of games, it is possible for them to develop trust and know that it will work to their mutual advantage.  Some communities (such as in the North of Italy) are more likely to have strong civic communities.  Cooperation is “easier in a community that has inherited a substantial stock of social capital, in the form of norms of reciprocity and networks of civic engagement.”  When there are existing norms and associations, people will easily fall into the habit of civic engagement.  Putnam’s final conclusion is that there is more to producing good government than a new constitution or a restructuring of the system.  It takes time as well as social capital to make a government work. 
While Making Democracy Work is a convincing argument, the need for social capital as Putnam describes it can be a controversial idea.  It implies that part of the reason for ineffective government is inherent in a local culture; they lack social capital, for one reason or another.  Government officials in southern Italy did not like being told that the reason for their poor performance was a lack of civic engagement that was rooted in the Middle Ages.  People in other cultures would probably like being told this even less.  They may view the civic community and social capital argument as Orientalist.  There are certainly parallels between them.  Orientalists would no doubt agree that poor government is the result of certain characteristics of Oriental culture.  Granted, Putnam acknowledges that nobody in southern Italy wants their government to function the way it does (or doesn’t).  However, he states that a major reason that their governments perform poorly is the lack of social capital which results in a lack of civic community.  People are only used to dealing with others on a patron-client basis and have been unable to develop the collaboration skills needed to work toward the greater good of society.
One could look at the Middle Eastern governments in the same way.  In his book Politics in the Middle East, Robert Springborg describes most Middle Eastern governments as patrimonial, based on patron-client networks.  He traces this back to the early periods of Islam, when the Prophet ran his household and community based on kinship ties and patron-client relationships.  The question is whether the ineffectiveness of the Middle Eastern governments is a result of this patron-client structure, and whether this is something that should be changed in order to improve government performance.  Putnam would probably argue that it is.  An Orientalist would agree with him.  One could argue that the failed Pan-Arab movement (and the continuing inability of the Arab League to produce any results) is evidence of a lack of cooperation.  However, we cannot forget that despite the presence of cultural roots and social norms, the lines of civilization are fuzzy.   The ideas of democracy and civil society are not rooted solely in the West.  There are groups throughout the Middle East that are working for electoral reform, human rights, and countless other causes.  There are also social and community service groups.  While such groups and NGOs may find it difficult to function in an oppressive environment, their very presence indicates that people are collaborating, working for a common goal.  Putnam reminds us that, although it will be slow, change can take place.  If this civic-ness continues to develop in the Middle East, perhaps the people will someday see the result of it in better government.  


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