Putnam:Making Democracy Work Review
Maverick Fisher (mavfisher@mail.utexas.edu)
Mon, 2 Oct 1995 12:31:27 -0500
After the fall of the communist states of Eastern Europe and with the
current global trend towards democratization, the subject of establishing
viable civil societies has become increasingly relevant as more and more
the seeds of civil society are planted on soil where they never before
have sprouted. If the world is not to slip back into authoritarianism and
confrontation, then it will be essential for nations with no traditions
of civil society to make the transition into successfu, flourishing
democracies. Robert Putnam's "Making Democracy Work: Civic traditions in
Modern Italy" casts serious doubts on the tenability of this prospect. In
his well-researched and organized book, Putnam draws a disturbing
comparison between the divergent fates of an identical experiment with
regional government in the regions of both Northern and Southern Italy.
Northern Italy, with its regions' long history of civic traditions, saw its
newly created regional governments functioning quite well after two decades.
On the other hand, the Southern Italian regions with their equally long
history of poor civic tradition were plagued with poorly functioning
regional governments after the same time period. Putnam draws the
distressing conclusion that any attempt to foster a successful civil society
will depend largely upon the already-extant civic traditions of the region
in question; areas with weak civic traditions will not succeed in quickly
developing the traditions that lead to a flourishing civil society, if
they succeed at all.
In comparing Northern Italy's civic traditions with Southern Italy's
lack thereof, Putnam puts forth criteria that define civil society. One
criterion used measures the civic orientation of the citizens themselves.
Are citizens interested in politics? Are they active participants in the
political process? Putnam's research showed that citizens' interest and
active participation in politics was directly proportional with the
"civicness" of a particular region. Northern Italy, with its successful
regional governments, showed a high level of participation and interest in
the political process. Conversely, the languishing regions of the south
demonstrated a large degree of apathy and ennui towards politics and active
political participation. Another method Putnam employed to measure the civic
orientation of citizens in the regions of Italy studied the
"associativeness" of the people. That is, did citizens form private
organizations? Did they ally themselves in clubs, sports leagues, and other
such groupings? Once again, citizens in the successful regions of the North
demonstrated a high degree of associativeness. They united in all sorts of
groups with all sorts of purposes. Once again, the South lagged far behind.
Another major criterion Putnam employed to measure the civility of
Italian society related to the relative efficiency of the governments in
each region. A large part of Putnam's demonstration of this criterion
revolved around how long it took a government agency to complete a request
from Putnam. In one ingenious study, Putnam tested the regional governments'
efficiency by requesting some information from each government. The amount
of time each government took to respond was inversely proportional to that
government's efficiency. By this standard, the Northern governments across
the board were more effcient than their Southern brethern. Also, citizens of
each region were asked to express their satisfaction with their particular
government's performance. Not surprisingly, people in the North were much
more satisfied with their governments' efficiency and quality than were
people in the South. Another survey asked officials in the governments
to rate their own government's performance. Once again, officials in the
North were much more satisfied than were those in the South.
To explain the difference between North and South, Putnam went back to
the year 1000 AD to trace the roots of civil society. At this time, Southern
Italy began a 900 year ferment under authoritarian, client-patron style
governments starting with the Normans and not ending until the unification
of Italy in the late nineteenth century. Northern Italy fared quite
differently. It flourished under a relatively pluarlistic league of
city-states, where the roots of a nascent civic tradition were clearly
beginning to form.
Putnam went on to conclude that Northern Italy enjoys its modern civic
traditions thanks to a process that can be traced back almost one thousand
years. Southern Italy suffers its current predicament by virtue of its lack
of these same civic traditions over the past millenia.
"Making Democracy Work" owes much of its authority to Robert Putnam's
meticulous, well-documented research and statistics gathered over a twenty
year period. Putnam makes every effort to be open about his methods of
research, offering generous amounts of graphs and loading figures, plus
other background information that went into his charts.
If Putnam's thesis has a weakness, it can be found in his rather
nebulous prescription for societal change in Southern Italy. Putnam proposes
a gradual build up of social capital, whereby civic traditions slowly
develop; first through small organizations of citizens such as the rotating
credit associations that he cites. Gradually, these fledgling units of civic
trust and cooperation will continue to grow according to the theory, until
a healthy and thriving civil society has been created. While this is a
credible theory for how a civic society could develop, Putnam offers the
reader no inkling of how such a process could be started or how it could be
sped up once in motion. It would be fruitless to condemn Putnam for this
weakness. No great mind to date has come up a solution that can transform
an uncivil society into a civil one. Perhaps there exists no answer to this
conundrum; and if there were, it would not be reasonable to expect Putnam
to come up with it. Putnam leaves the reader in doubt as to whether Southern
Italy or the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe will ever have any
recourse under his thesis other then time.
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