Civics or Structure? Revisiting the Origins of Democratic Quality in the Italian Regions

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 123-135

  Solt, Frederick ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0346040472     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123403000383     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
2. Sidney Tarrow, 'Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work', American Political Science Review, 90 (1996), 389-97; Filippo Sabetti, 'Path Dependency and Civic Culture: Some Lessons from Italy About Interpreting Social Experiments', Politics and Society, 24 (1996), 19-44. Although he did not directly address Putnam, Hendrik Spruyt presented an explanation of the decline of the medieval northern Italian city-states in the face of the challenge of the nation-state that completely contradicts Putnam's version of northern Italian history. Spruyt argued that the northern Italian city-states declined because they were riven by internal distrust. He noted that individual neighbourhoods commonly maintained their own military forces to defend against attacks by then- fellow citizens and recounted the well-documented tradition of many northern Italian towns that brought inhabitants together in the central plaza - to chuck rocks at each other (Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 138, 245, n.53).
3. Sidney Tarrow, 'Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work', American Political Science Review, 90 (1996), 389-97; Filippo Sabetti, 'Path Dependency and Civic Culture: Some Lessons from Italy About Interpreting Social Experiments', Politics and Society, 24 (1996), 19-44. Although he did not directly address Putnam, Hendrik Spruyt presented an explanation of the decline of the medieval northern Italian city-states in the face of the challenge of the nation-state that completely contradicts Putnam's version of northern Italian history. Spruyt argued that the northern Italian city-states declined because they were riven by internal distrust. He noted that individual neighbourhoods commonly maintained their own military forces to defend against attacks by then- fellow citizens and recounted the well-documented tradition of many northern Italian towns that brought inhabitants together in the central plaza - to chuck rocks at each other (Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 138, 245, n.53).
4. Sidney Tarrow, 'Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work', American Political Science Review, 90 (1996), 389-97; Filippo Sabetti, 'Path Dependency and Civic Culture: Some Lessons from Italy About Interpreting Social Experiments', Politics and Society, 24 (1996), 19-44. Although he did not directly address Putnam, Hendrik Spruyt presented an explanation of the decline of the medieval northern Italian city-states in the face of the challenge of the nation-state that completely contradicts Putnam's version of northern Italian history. Spruyt argued that the northern Italian city-states declined because they were riven by internal distrust. He noted that individual neighbourhoods commonly maintained their own military forces to defend against attacks by then- fellow citizens and recounted the well-documented tradition of many northern Italian towns that brought inhabitants together in the central plaza - to chuck rocks at each other (Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 138, 245, n.53).
5. Ellis Goldberg, 'Thinking About How Democracy Works', Politics and Society, 24 (1996), 7-18, p. 8.
6. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, p. 86.
7. Following Putnam, the northern and central Italian regions are defined as Piemonte, Valle d'Aosta, Lombardia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto, Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Liguria, Emilia-Romagna, Toscana, Umbria, Marche and Lazio. The southern regions are Abruzzi, Mouse, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicilia and Sardegna (Putnam, Making Democracy Work, p. 85). Some other authors have considered Lazio, the region around Rome, to be part of the South, but this choice does not qualitatively affect the analyses presented below.
8. I am grateful to Robert Putnam for generously sharing his original dataset on the Italian regions with me. Putnam constructed his indicators as follows: 'Preference Voting' is a principal-components factor index of the percentage of voters casting a preference vote, that is, specifying the particular candidate in addition to the party list of their choice, in six national elections held from 1953 to 1979; all loadings on this index are 0.97 and higher. 'Referendum Turnout' is a principal-components factor index of the percentage of voters participating in five national referendums held from 1974 to 1987; all loadings exceed 0.98 for this index. 'Newspaper Readership' is measured as the percentage of households that received a daily newspaper in 1975. Putnam defined 'Scarcity of sports and cultural associations' as the number of residents per sports or cultural association in 1981 (Putnam, Making Democracy Work, pp. 91-6).
9. All statistical analyses for this article were conducted using Intercooled Stata 7.0.
10. See Stephen Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 45.
11. Arend Lijphart, 'Unequal Participation: Democracy's Unresolved Dilemma', American Political Science Review, 91 (1996), 1-14, p. 1.
12. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, p. 93.
13. As Robert Jackman and Ross Miller noted, turnout in referendums has steadily declined since the 1970s as referendums have become more frequent and the number of issues to be decided increased, consistent with the voter fatigue hypothesis (Robert W. Jackman and Ross A. Miller, 'A Renaissance of Political Culture?' American Journal of Political Science, 40 (1996), 632-59, p. 642 n.11). Indeed, several recent referendums have been rejected for failing to meet minimum turnout requirements. Of course, it is not the absolute levels of political participation, but rather the relative levels of participation across regions, that are important in an explanation of relative government performance.
14. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, p. 94.
15. As newspaper readership and the scarcity of sports and cultural associations are not closely correlated in the north (r = 0.06) or the south (r = -0.13), Putnam's two measures of social engagement cannot be meaningfully combined into a single index.
16. Multicolinearity does not impact any of the results presented in Table 3. The highest variance-inflation factor is that for self-motivated political participation when all regions are considered, 3.4; multicolinearity is typically considered problematic when the variance inflation factor reaches 4.0, the point at which standard errors are doubled. The reported results, further, are robust to the introduction of controls for the structural variables discussed in the next section.
17. In the interests of space and clarity, several additional factors suggested in the literature are not presented in the analysis below. Although André Blais and Agnieszka Dobrsynska, in their article, 'Turnout in Electoral Democracies', European Journal of Political Research, 33(1998), 239-61, found some support for demographic factors as predictors of electoral turnout cross-nationally, population size and density do not have statistically significant relationships with self-motivated political participation in Italy when controlled by the other factors considered, and their inclusion does not substantially change the results reported. Margaret Kohn has argued that the explanation for variation hi the Italian regions lies in neither civic community nor directly in socio-economic structure, but in the role of the red subculture anchored in the Italian Communist Party (Partita Communista Italiano, PCI) in mobilizing and integrating subaltern classes into political life (Kohn, 'Civic Republicanism Versus Social Struggle: A Gramscian Approach to Associationalism in Italy', Political Power and Social Theory, 13 (1999), 201-35). The strength of the PCI, however, does not have an independent impact on rates of self-motivated political participation when included in the analysis presented. It has also recently been argued that the northern regions' greater 'proximity to the epicenter of liberalism on the European continent in the 18th and 19th centuries, France', accounts for the differences between north and south in Italy; see Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstcin, 'Regime Type, Diffusion, and Democracy: A Methodological Critique of Designing Social Inquiry in Comparative Politics' (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 2000). This argument lacks even face validity, as the most effective governments and highest rates of self-motivated political participation are not found in the regions closest to France, but in the central regions of Emilia-Romagna, Toscana and Umbria. Valle d' Aosta, which borders France, actually scores lowest among the northern and central regions on these variables. Institutional effects on democratic quality and political participation have garnered increased attention recently, but because the Italian regions share a common legal-institutional structure, variation across them cannot be attributed to different political institutions or voting laws.
18. In the interests of space and clarity, several additional factors suggested in the literature are not presented in the analysis below. Although André Blais and Agnieszka Dobrsynska, in their article, 'Turnout in Electoral Democracies', European Journal of Political Research, 33(1998), 239-61, found some support for demographic factors as predictors of electoral turnout cross-nationally, population size and density do not have statistically significant relationships with self-motivated political participation in Italy when controlled by the other factors considered, and their inclusion does not substantially change the results reported. Margaret Kohn has argued that the explanation for variation hi the Italian regions lies in neither civic community nor directly in socio-economic structure, but in the role of the red subculture anchored in the Italian Communist Party (Partita Communista Italiano, PCI) in mobilizing and integrating subaltern classes into political life (Kohn, 'Civic Republicanism Versus Social Struggle: A Gramscian Approach to Associationalism in Italy', Political Power and Social Theory, 13 (1999), 201-35). The strength of the PCI, however, does not have an independent impact on rates of self-motivated political participation when included in the analysis presented. It has also recently been argued that the northern regions' greater 'proximity to the epicenter of liberalism on the European continent in the 18th and 19th centuries, France', accounts for the differences between north and south in Italy; see Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstcin, 'Regime Type, Diffusion, and Democracy: A Methodological Critique of Designing Social Inquiry in Comparative Politics' (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 2000). This argument lacks even face validity, as the most effective governments and highest rates of self-motivated political participation are not found in the regions closest to France, but in the central regions of Emilia-Romagna, Toscana and Umbria. Valle d' Aosta, which borders France, actually scores lowest among the northern and central regions on these variables. Institutional effects on democratic quality and political participation have garnered increased attention recently, but because the Italian regions share a common legal-institutional structure, variation across them cannot be attributed to different political institutions or voting laws.
19. In the interests of space and clarity, several additional factors suggested in the literature are not presented in the analysis below. Although André Blais and Agnieszka Dobrsynska, in their article, 'Turnout in Electoral Democracies', European Journal of Political Research, 33(1998), 239-61, found some support for demographic factors as predictors of electoral turnout cross-nationally, population size and density do not have statistically significant relationships with self-motivated political participation in Italy when controlled by the other factors considered, and their inclusion does not substantially change the results reported. Margaret Kohn has argued that the explanation for variation hi the Italian regions lies in neither civic community nor directly in socio-economic structure, but in the role of the red subculture anchored in the Italian Communist Party (Partita Communista Italiano, PCI) in mobilizing and integrating subaltern classes into political life (Kohn, 'Civic Republicanism Versus Social Struggle: A Gramscian Approach to Associationalism in Italy', Political Power and Social Theory, 13 (1999), 201-35). The strength of the PCI, however, does not have an independent impact on rates of self-motivated political participation when included in the analysis presented. It has also recently been argued that the northern regions' greater 'proximity to the epicenter of liberalism on the European continent in the 18th and 19th centuries, France', accounts for the differences between north and south in Italy; see Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstcin, 'Regime Type, Diffusion, and Democracy: A Methodological Critique of Designing Social Inquiry in Comparative Politics' (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 2000). This argument lacks even face validity, as the most effective governments and highest rates of self-motivated political participation are not found in the regions closest to France, but in the central regions of Emilia-Romagna, Toscana and Umbria. Valle d' Aosta, which borders France, actually scores lowest among the northern and central regions on these variables. Institutional effects on democratic quality and political participation have garnered increased attention recently, but because the Italian regions share a common legal-institutional structure, variation across them cannot be attributed to different political institutions or voting laws.
20. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, pp. 90, 92. At least one recent study has purported to provide some support for the civic-engagement hypothesis. Amber Seligson, on the basis of survey data collected in the six Spanish-speaking countries of Central America, concluded that participation in certain neighbourhood associations increases democratic political participation, although participation in recreational associations does not (Amber L. Seligson, 'Civic Association and Democratic Participation in Central America: A Test of the Putnam Thesis', Comparative Political Studies, 32 (1999), 342-61).
21. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, pp. 90, 92. At least one recent study has purported to provide some support for the civic-engagement hypothesis. Amber Seligson, on the basis of survey data collected in the six Spanish-speaking countries of Central America, concluded that participation in certain neighbourhood associations increases democratic political participation, although participation in recreational associations does not (Amber L. Seligson, 'Civic Association and Democratic Participation in Central America: A Test of the Putnam Thesis', Comparative Political Studies, 32 (1999), 342-61).
22. Blais and Dobrsynska, 'Turnout in Electoral Democracies' ; Jan E. Leighley and Jonathan Nagler, 'Individual and Systematic Influences on Turnout: Who Votes? 1984', Journal of Politics, 54 (1992), 718-40.
23. Blais and Dobrsynska, 'Turnout in Electoral Democracies' ; Jan E. Leighley and Jonathan Nagler, 'Individual and Systematic Influences on Turnout: Who Votes? 1984', Journal of Politics, 54 (1992), 718-40.
24. Istituto Centrale di Statistica (ISTAT), Annuario Stanstico Italiano (Rome: ISTAT, 1985), p. 53.
25. Robert Leonardi, 'The Role of Tuscany in the European Union', in Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, eds, Regional Development in a Modern European Economy: The Case of Tuscany (London: Pinter, 1994), pp. 3-21, at p. 15.
26. Both education and gross domestic product per capita remain strongly and significantly correlated with the index of development within the northern regions as well as within the southern regions; all of these correlations are greater than 0.85.
27. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: p. 153. Putnam's analysis, however, was flawed by bad data. As Italian economic historian Vera Zamagni established even before the publication of Making Democracy Work, the pre-First World War Italian national population censuses on which Putnam's analysis relied greatly overstated the industrial workforce of the southern regions because the censuses 'considered female domestic production of textiles for the family a form of "industrial" occupation', a phenomenon much more common in the south (Vera Zamagni, 'A Century of Change: Trends in the Composition of the Italian Labor Force, 1881-1981', Historical Social Research, 44 (1987), 36-97, p. 37). Using data from concurrent national industrial censuses, she was able to correct these inaccuracies. When the corrected figures are used, the correlation between industrial employment in 1911 and turnout in the first elections under universal manhood suffrage a decade later (r = 0.57) is almost exactly identical to that between 1961 industrial employment and referendum turnout in the 1970s (r = 0.54). This stable relationship between industrial employment and political participation can hardly be seen as evidence that economic development has been magnetically 'brought into alignment'.
28. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: p. 153. Putnam's analysis, however, was flawed by bad data. As Italian economic historian Vera Zamagni established even before the publication of Making Democracy Work, the pre-First World War Italian national population censuses on which Putnam's analysis relied greatly overstated the industrial workforce of the southern regions because the censuses 'considered female domestic production of textiles for the family a form of "industrial" occupation', a phenomenon much more common in the south (Vera Zamagni, 'A Century of Change: Trends in the Composition of the Italian Labor Force, 1881-1981', Historical Social Research, 44 (1987), 36-97, p. 37). Using data from concurrent national industrial censuses, she was able to correct these inaccuracies. When the corrected figures are used, the correlation between industrial employment in 1911 and turnout in the first elections under universal manhood suffrage a decade later (r = 0.57) is almost exactly identical to that between 1961 industrial employment and referendum turnout in the 1970s (r = 0.54). This stable relationship between industrial employment and political participation can hardly be seen as evidence that economic development has been magnetically 'brought into alignment'.
29. Because of data limitations, the sample for this analysis, like that of Putnam's original 'horse race', omits Valle d'Aosta, Trentino Alto and Friuli Venezia-Giulia and treats Abruzzi and Mouse as a single region, yielding an n of 16. Early political participation is operationalized as turnout in the national and local elections held between 1919 and 1921, the only elections conducted under universal manhood suffrage during Italy's first, brief experience with democracy. Levels of early economic development are measured using literacy rates from 1911 and 1936, as complete data on GDP per capita across regions for the early decades of the twentieth century are unavailable. Reported significance levels, given the directional hypotheses, are based on one-tailed tests.
30. A partial, if crude and largely under-theorized, exception may be the traditional use of a dummy variable or a separate regression for the US south in work on turnout in the United States. See, e.g., Leighley and Nagler, 'Individual and Systematic Influences on Turnout'; Samuel C. Patterson and Gregory A. Caldeira, 'Getting out the Vote: Participation in Gubernatorial Elections,' American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 675-89.
31. A partial, if crude and largely under-theorized, exception may be the traditional use of a dummy variable or a separate regression for the US south in work on turnout in the United States. See, e.g., Leighley and Nagler, 'Individual and Systematic Influences on Turnout'; Samuel C. Patterson and Gregory A. Caldeira, 'Getting out the Vote: Participation in Gubernatorial Elections,' American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 675-89.
32. Pntnam, Making Democracy Work, p. 233, n.96.
33. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971); Barrington Moore Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1966); Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
34. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971); Barrington Moore Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1966); Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
35. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971); Barrington Moore Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1966); Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
36. Dahl, Polyarchy, pp. 82-6, Evelyne Huber, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and John D. Stephens, 'The Paradoxes of Contemporary Democracy: Formal, Participatory, and Social Dimensions', Comparative Politics, 29 (1997), 323-42, p. 334.
37. Dahl, Polyarchy, pp. 82-6, Evelyne Huber, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and John D. Stephens, 'The Paradoxes of Contemporary Democracy: Formal, Participatory, and Social Dimensions', Comparative Politics, 29 (1997), 323-42, p. 334.
38. Kohn, 'Civic Republicanism Versus Social Struggle', p. 226.
39. Sydel F. Silverman, 'Agricultural Organization, Social Structure, and Values in Italy: Amoral Familism Reconsidered', American Anthropologist, 70 (1968), 1-20.
40. Sabetti, 'Path Dependency and Civic Culture', p. 30.
41. Silverman, 'Agricultural Organization, Social Structure, and Values in Italy', p. 18.
42. Dahl, Polyarchy, pp. 82-6.
43. The two mechanisms are likely to reinforce each other. Institutionalized patterns of political participation rooted in earlier landholding patterns bolster the reproduction of the distribution of economic resources autonomous political organizations provide the means of checking a new concentration of wealth, while notables use their patron-client networks to ensure that redistributive policies do not reach the political agenda. The reproduction of patterns of economic inequality similarly reinforces associated institutions: continued relative equality makes certain that existing autonomous political organizations are not choked off, and the maintenance of a highly skewed distribution of economic resources allows patron-client networks to retain their importance.
44. Kohn, 'Civic Republicanism Versus Social Struggle'.
45. The PCI membership data used here is taken from Kohn, 'Civic Republicanism Versus Social Struggle', and is for the years 1981 to 1984. The operationalizalion of the strength of family farms is described in the next paragraph.
46. Valle d' Aosta was excluded by the survey, and fewer than a hundred households were surveyed in Molise, rendering the resulting distribution unreliable. Further information on the survey and the Luxembourg Income Study is available on the internet at http://www.lisproject.org.
47. According to this data, income inequality was lowest in Umbria (1.59) and Toscana (1.76) and highest in Campania (2.46) and Calabria (2.35). The ratio of incomes of the top 10 per cent of households to the bottom 10 per cent and that for the top 20 per cent to the bottom 20 per cent display nearly identical patterns.
48. Istituto Centrale di Statistica del Regno D'Italia, Censimento Generale Dell'agricoltura, 19 Marzo 1930, vol. 2, pt. 2 (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico Dello Stato, 1935). In addition to regional data, the survey also provides provincial (sub-regional) level data that allowed me to calculate the percentage of land in family farms in Abruzzi and Mouse (they are reported jointly in early regional-level statistics), for Valle d'Aosta and Piemonte (Valle d'Aosta was part of Piemonte until after the Second World War), and for Friuli Venezia-Guilia (much of the region's area during the interwar years eventually became part of Yugoslavia and now Slovenia).
49. Alfredo De Polzer, Statistiche Agrarie, ed. Corrado Gini, Trattato Elementare Di Statistica (Milan: Istituto Centrale di Statistica del Regno D' Italia, 1942), p. 124. Operationalizations with different ranges - those varying the lower limit from 10 to 3 or 5 or 20 hectares or the upper limit from 100 to 50 hectares - although not included here, yield substantially similar results.
50. Interestingly, the 1930 census does not support the revisionist view, based largely on the incomplete agricultural census of 1947, Istituto Nazionale di Economia Agraria, La Distribuzione Delia Proprietà Fondiaria in Italia, vol. 2 (Rome: Edizioni Italiane, 1948), that latifondi were rare and unimportant in southern Italy by the start of the twentieth century: approximately half of all agricultural lands in Basilicata, Calabria and Sardegna were held in estates greater than 100 hectares in 1930, although these estates of course composed a relatively small fraction of the total number of farms.
51. Istituto Centrale di Statistica del Regno D'Italia, Annuario Statistico Dell'agricoltura Italiana, 1936-1938, vol. 1 (Rome: Tipografia Failli, 1940).