Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, by Robert D. Putnam
Urbinati, Nadia
MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK: CIVIC TRADITIONS IN MODERN ITALY, by Robert D. Putnam. Princeton University Press, 1993. 258 pp. $24.95. Why do some democratic governments fail or work badly, whereas...
...What is missing in both cases is a spirit of cooperation...
...If a region did not have such and such a historical experience, is it forever barred from enjoying democratic life...
...They love political disputes and, for this reason, they appreciate and look for differences of opinion as much as for consensus...
...Only because of this can we speak of renaissance and restoration, decadence and rebirth...
...The history of free republics in the Middle Ages may help us to understand public life in some Italian regions, but it is not a sufficient explanation for the crisis of legitimacy of democratic institutions in Italy...
...Putnam studied the implementation of local and regional political decentralization from its beginnings in 1970 until the end of the 1980s...
...Twenty years of data allow the author to check the growth of one democratic seed in many different soils...
...Why, Putnam asks, are the citizens of EmiliaRomagna and Umbria more satisfied with their local and regional governments than the citizens of Campania and Calabria...
...To understand that, one must go back to a more recent past: to the way in which the political unification of the country took place in the last century...
...If the answer cannot be found in the present, the past can help...
...But Putnam can demonstrate empirically that civic spirit does not entail an antiliberal attitude and, above all, that a democracy needs this spirit if it is to survive...
...Scholars can find in Italy widely varied social and cultural conditions: from the backwardness of preindustrial societies to the complexity of postindustrial ones...
...Using the "Italian case," Putnam confronts a major question facing political scientists: do political institutions shape social reality or does social reality shape political institutions...
...The strength of civic associationism has always found a way to resurface: it came back to life, for instance, in the nineteenth century through land labor day guilds, trade unions, mutual associations, and cooperatives...
...But this allows too little space for human will and, above all, for political action...
...His conclusion would seem to be that where a tradition of civic virtue is absent, one cannot have good institutions...
...What are the conditions that allow representative institutions to perform well...
...On the contrary, writes Putnam, a society inhabited by individuals who do not attend to public life, who consider politics an obstacle to the pursuit of their private interests, faces a progressive deterioration of its democratic institutions...
...Yet the former are able to translate those lesser resources into more and better services...
...Thus, writes Putnam, economic development alone is not enough to make a good democracy—nor is it true that where civic spirit is lively, the economy is backward or lacks competition: the region of Emilia-Romagna is characterized by one of the most advanced economies in the world...
...First, it represents a critique of "libertarian" liberalism, which claims that civic values are incompatible with liberal-democratic institutions, which are necessarily based on individualism...
...A defender of Putnam's thesis about the weight of the past might object that those factors did not prevent the "civic" regions from using the representative institutions of democracy well...
...they stimulated a spirit that was never completely lost...
...Historical reconstruction helps us to explain many present events, but history does not control us: we remain sufficiently free to determine the direction of things through our will and projects...
...to the authoritarian and paternalistic politics of the liberal governments, especially in the south...
...Their numerous cooperatives and neighborhood associations are a permanent school of democracy...
...One should finally add the fact that the young Italian democracy (which was born only after the Second World War), experienced almost half a century of one-party government as the consequence of cold-war politics...
...Through a succinct historical survey, Putnam demonstrates that the origin of "civic-ness" 572 • DISSENT Books lies in the remote history of the free cities of the Middle Ages...
...Even in the "uncivic" regions, civil society is showing its will to change the rules that have dominated public life during the last decades...
...Why do the former regions have many more public services and why do those services work better...
...They are asking for a deep political renovation...
...from deeply religious communities to thoroughly secularized ones...
...The map of contemporary democratic success is virtually identical to the map of Renaissance republicanism...
...On the contrary, they have a lively sense of individuality—which they express, in part, precisely through participating in public life...
...The achievement of the book, however, is not merely to demonstrate that context matters, but to describe what features of the context make democratic institutions perform well...
...The second reason why this book is important is its counter-proof: local democracy has not worked well in southern Italy, which did not have a history of free republics, or in those parts of northern Italy where large industrial corporations have reproduced the very "evils" that the south inherited from its history of political despotism: fragmentation of civil society, atomistic individualism, hierarchy, and corruption...
...The libertarians' argument pivots on the claim that civic and participatory values promote a highly anti-individualistic and intolerant society...
...It is a fact that the weakness of democratic institutions manifests itself as a weakening of civic spirit, the transformation of politics into a mere instrument of group or "family" interests...
...Nevertheless, the evolution of contemporary political life in Italy may yet challenge Putnam's argument...
...Putnam's thesis is important for at least two reasons...
...For the first time in their history, the citizens of southern Italy have broken the wall of omerta (the Mafia's code of silence) and organized movements of protest against a corrupt political regime...
...In spite of this theoretical problem, Putnam's book shouldn't be thought to invite resignation...
...The inhabitants of Emilia-Romagna's or Umbria's cities, where decentralization worked, are neither communitarian saints nor perfect citizens...
...Why do some democratic governments fail or work badly, whereas others have at least qualified success...
...Socialist ideals and left politics (particularly rooted in Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Umbria) did not in these cases create good government...
...q FALL • 1993 • 573...
...But they did perhaps prevent the evolution of "civic-ness" in those regions where republican tradition had not taken root...
...Similar also is this conclusion: democracy is robust where civic values are widely shared by ordinary people and expressed through a rich tradition of active and passionate citizen participation...
...Associationism is based on reciprocity and cooperation, but also on dissent, conflict, and renewed search for consensus...
...Reading Putnam's book produces a peculiar effect, because it gives us sufficient evidence to reach a conclusion that is, in some ways, opposed to its own...
...they practice the art of tolerance...
...His theoretical perspective is similar to that adopted by Alexis de Tocqueville in his more celebrated journey to America...
...He declares his own preference for the second view, suggesting that historical context (socio-cultural-political) is decisive in determining the performance of democratic institutions...
...For all these writers the urgent question has been that of encouraging political and moral autonomy through "civic education...
...Putnam's book will certainly encounter criticism, above all in Italy...
...Indeed, isn't it true that, since the last century and even before, Italian intellectuals, whether radical or conservative, liberal or socialist, have always sought to promote a moral and civil improvement of their fellows...
...to decades of ironclad centralism and statism...
...nor are they intolerant...
...The moral earthquake that has hit Italian political life during the last year is evidence of this...
...Financial resources do not explain this difference: the Italian central government distributes more money to the latter regions (because they are poorer) than to the former ones...
...In Italy the golden rule of democracy—to govern and be governed in turn — nneevveerr worked...
...For Robert Putnam, recent experience in Italy provides useful material for answers to these questions...
...The reform of political parties and democratic institutions is necessary precisely to cultivate, or stimulate the birth of, the fundamental element of what Tocqueville called the spirit of democracy: the tendency to concern oneself with the public good, to practice the arts of self-government, political control, and social criticism through the associations that constitute civil society, the core of democratic life...
Vol. 40 • September 1993 • No. 4
