Trust in renaissance electoral politics

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 34, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 601-614

  Jurdjevic, Mark ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 56249105858     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219504773512561     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. Robert D. Putnam, with Robert Leonardi & Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993).
2. Robert Rotberg, "Social Capital and Political Culture in Africa, America, Australasia, and Europe," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIX (1999), 339-356;
3. Gene Brucker, "Civic Traditions in Premodern Italy," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, ibid., 357-377;
4. Edward Muir, "The Sources of Civil Society in Italy," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, ibid., 379-406;
5. Raymond Grew, "Finding Social Capital: The French Revolution in Italy," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, ibid., 407-433;
6. Leonard Rosenband, "Social Capital in the Early Industrial Revolution," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, ibid., 435-457;
7. Marjorie McIntosh, "The Diversity of Social Capital in English Communities, 1300-1640 (with a glance at modern Nigeria)," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, ibid., 459-490;
8. Jack Greene, "Social and Cultural Capital in Colonial British America: A Case Study," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, ibid., 491-509.
9. See the exchange between Gianfranco Pasquino, Samuel Cohn, and Putnam - Pasquino, "La politica eclissata dalla tradizione civica" (307-313);
10. Cohn, "La storia secondo Robert Putnam" (315-324);
11. Putnam, "Lo storico e l'attivista" (325-329) - in Polis, VIII (1994).
12. On microhistory, see Karl Appuhn, "Microhistory," in Peter Stearns (ed.), The Encyclopedia of European Social History (New York, 2001), I, 105-112.
13. Marvin Becker, review of Putnam, Making Democracy Work, in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXVI (1996), 306-308;
14. Brucker, "Civic Traditions";
15. Muir, "Sources of Civil Society." For the sake of simplicity and style, the term Renaissance is used herein to denote the period discussed by Putnam, Brucker, and Muir, though Putnam concentrates most closely on the late medieval period, and Brucker and Muir concentrate on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
16. On Venetian historiography, see James Grubb, "When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Historiography," Journal of Modern History, LVIII (1968), 43-94.
17. For an excellent survey of the prevalence of mistrust in Florentine social relations, see Ronald Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982), 1-42.
18. On the various electoral strategies in Florence and Venice, see Antonio Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale della Repubblica fiorentina (Rome, 1969), 1-22, 121-148;
19. John Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280-1400 (Chapel Hill, 1982), 3-78;
20. Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, N.J., 1980), 44-196.
21. Putnam compares civic virtue and social capital: "Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to the properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals - social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called 'civic virtue.' The difference is that 'social' calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social relations. A society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital" (Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community [New York, 2000], 19).
22. On the discontinuity between republican politics and humanist rhetoric, see remarks by Muir, "Sources of Civil Society," 387;
23. Najemy, "Political Ideas," in Guido Ruggjero (ed.), A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance (New York, 2002), 389-392.
24. On the political valences of virtue in civic humanism, see James Hankins, "Humanism and the Origins of Modern Political Thought," in Jill Kraye (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge, 1996), 118-141.
25. Muir, "Sources of Civil Society," 381;
26. Brucker, "Civic Traditions," 365.
27. On the centrality of officeholding as the function and identity of government, see Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus, 3-16.
28. John Kenneth Hyde, "Contemporary Views of Faction and Civil Strife in Thirteenth-and Fourteenth-Century Italy," in Lauro Martines (ed.), Violence and Civil Disorder in Italian Cities, 1200-1500 (Berkeley, 1972), 296-302;
29. Giovanni Villani (ed. Guiseppe Porta), Nuova cronica (Parma, 1990);
30. Dino Compagni (ed. and trans. Daniel Bornstein), Chronicle of Florence (Philadelphia, 1986), 22;
31. Dino Compagni (idem (ed. Guido Bezzola), Cronica delle cose occorrenti ne'tempi suoi (Milan, 1982);
32. Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (London, 1929);
33. Petrarch (ed. Mario Emilio Cosenza), The Revolution of Cola di Rienzo (New York, 1996), 14.
34. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, in Allan Gilbert (ed.), Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others (Durham, 1989), I, 271;
35. Finlay, Politics in Venice, 197.
36. On the pursuit of office, see Andrea Zorzi, "I fiorentini e gli uffici pubblici nel primo Quattrocento: Concorrenza, abusi, illegalità, " Quaderni storici, LXVI (1987), 725-751:
37. the collection of essays in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento (Florence, 1987).
38. On appointment to office and political strife, see Machiavelli, A Discourse on Remodeling the Government of Florence, in Gilbert (ed.), Chief Works, 101-102;
39. Machiavelli, idem, The History of Florence, Book 4, Chapter 10, ibid., 1197.
40. On Medici suspicion of confraternities, see Lorenzo Polizzotto, "Confraternities, Conventicles and Political Dissent: The Case of the Savonarolan capi rossi," Memorie domenicane, CIII (1986), 285-300.
41. In 1978, Richard Trexler asked essentially the same question that Putnam raised. "Rarely . . . has unrelieved modernism paused to ask when, how, and why men trusted each other in pre-bureaucratic secular governments. . . . How could self-governing burghers trust each other?" Trexler studied the appointment of clerics to critical tasks in the assessment and levying of taxes (Trexler, "Honor Among Thieves: The Trust Function of the Urban Clergy in the Florentine Republic," in Sergio Bertelli & Gloria Ramakus [eds.], Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore [Florence, 1978], 317-334).
42. For praise of Renaissance electoral systems, see Leonardo Bruni, Panegyric to the City of Florence, in Ronald G. Witt and Benjamin G. Kohl (eds.), The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society (Philadelphia, 1978), 168-170;
43. Leonardo Bruni, idem (ed. James Hankins), History of the Florentine People (Cambridge, Mass., 2001; orig. pub. Venice, 1476),
44. I, in which he praised the ability of sortition to prevent factional discord, but acknowledged that it allowed for unqualified people occasionally ascending to the chief councils of the republic - discussed by Najemy in Corporatism and Consensus, 312-315.
45. On the ubiquity of sin, vice, and corruption in the medieval chronicles, see Hyde, "Faction and Civil Strife."
46. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, 90-91.
47. Frederick C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973), 109-111;
48. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, 141-144.
49. On the Florentine electoral system, see, in addition to Najemy, Corporation and Consensus,
50. Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici (1434 to 1494) (Oxford, 1997; orig. pub. 1966), 1-76.
51. On Venetian (largely futile) attempts to prevent electioneering, see Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, 196-226.
52. For Machiavelli and the origins of the Florentine scrutiny, see Machiavelli, History of Florence, 1113-1114.
53. On Medici manipulation of electoral purses, see Rubinstein, Government of Florence, 1-154.
54. The shrewd observer was Giovanni Cavalcanti: "Il Comune era più governato alle cene e negli scrittoi che nel Palagio, e che molti erano eletti agli uffici e pochi al governo," Istorie Fiorentine (Florence, 1838), 29.
55. On the subject of personal trust, see John Martin, "The Myth of Renaissance Individualism," in Ruggjero (ed.), Companion, 215-217;
56. John Martin, "idem, "Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe," American Historical Review, XII (1997), 1309-1342;
57. Morelli quoted in Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood, 30.
58. George of Trebizond, Preface to His Translation of Plato's Laws, in Kraye (ed.), Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts. II. Political Philosophy (Cambridge, 1997), 130;
59. Girolamo Savonarola (ed. Elisabetta H. Schisto), Trattato circa il Reggimento e Governo della Città di Firenze (Rome, 1999), 65, 67-80);
60. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (ed. Franz Newmann; trans. Thomas Nugent), The Spirit of the Laws (New York, 1949), 8-13;
61. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, in Peter Gay (ed.), Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings (Indianapolis, 1987), 207;
62. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, in Isaac Krammick (ed.), The Federalist Papers (London, 1987), 393.