Putnam

Making Democracy Work Ch. 3 and 5.

Two aims have been carried out in this piece: in the Ch. 3 the goal of measuring different levels of efficacy in municipal governmental performances in the context of the comparison of Italian municipal governments is sought for, while the Ch.5 in turn tries to explain why municipal governmental performance differs so drastically according to the location of the government.

In measuring the governmental performance, two features are identified as particularly important as definitions of good government in the context of democratic polity. They are responsiveness to citizens' needs and efficiency in implementing actual policies. In measuring governmental performances in terms of their fulfillment of these two fundamentally important goodies, the measurement scale in turn must possess several characteristics, Putnam claims. They are, comprehensiveness, internal consistency, reliability in terms of durability in spite of the temporal change, and correspondence to the subjective views of governmental performance held by actual leaders and citizens of the measured region. In more substantive and concrete terms, Putnam divides 12 indicators of governmental performance he is actually going to measure into 3 broad categories of (1) policy processes, (2) policy pronouncements, and (3) policy implementation.

The first category measures the smoothness and efficiency of governments in terms of their ability to handle their internal operations, and this category contains the quantitative measurements for: cabinet stability based on the number of different cabinets installed in ten years of 1975 -85, budget promptness based on the date of the actual approval of budget, and a measurement for the breadth of statistical and information facilities. The second category evaluates the substantive content of the legislations made by each governments and uses two different indicators. The first is an evaluation of the form of legislation, focusing on the characteristics of comprehensiveness, coherence, and creativeness of legislations. Putnam admits this evaluation is somewhat subjective and imprecise, but justifies the efficacy of making this judgement by asserting that his evaluation later was found to match closely those judgements made by citizens of each region. The second is the measurement for the legislative innovativeness, based on how early each governments adopted several "model laws" on progressive issues. The third category measures actual capacity of each governments to implement policies. This is divided into 6 different indicators, most of them controlling for initial availability of resources by measuring how efficiently municipal governments have been able to carry out implementations after receiving certain fixed revenue, i.e. subsidies, etc., from the central government. They are the measurements for: number of day care centers, number of family clinics, number of sophisticated industrial policy implemented, agricultural spending capacity, local health unit expenditures, disbursement for housing and urban develoment, and finally, the measurement for bureaucratic responsiveness.

And the result of these measurements from the Italian cases? The remarkable finding is the general level of comprehensiveness and internal consistency achieved. That is, in general municipal governments that scored high on one indicator tended to score high on all other indicators. Each of these indicators showed high degree of correlation with one another. Moreover, Putnam claims these results to be reasonably stable and reliable, as they correspond well with the results from preliminary investigation he conducted using data from the years 1970-76. Furthermore, concurrence of Putnam's objective measurement and subjective evaluations of their municipal governments by Italian voters is also claimed for. Broadly, constituencies of high-scoring regions tended to express high level of satisfaction of their government's performance, while those of low-scoring regions showed a reverse trend. Moreover, this result tended to be quite comprehensive in that people from different social categories all tended to express satisfaction in the high-scoring region, while in the low-scoring regions regardless of the social characteristics people uniformly expressed dissatisfaction.

In conclusion, in this chapter Putnam speaks of the feasibility of developing reasonably objective, stable, and comprehensive measurement of governmental performance, against the excessive cultural relativism approach that assumes people have certain type of government because they want it. At least in Italy, people are found to recognize good and bad governments that can be classified according to objective criteria, which are efficiency, creativity, coherence, responsiveness, and practical achievement.

Explaining why there are so large of differences in governmental performance across different locales of Italy is in turn the focus of the ch.5. Basically, Putnam's explanation is a political culture explanation that imputes socio-cultural factors a strong and independent explanatory power in engendering certain political and economic consequences. Of focus throughout the chapter is the contrast of "civic" culture of the North Italy characterized by spirit of cooperation and mutual assistance, horizontal association, sense of trust and autonomy, and will for self-governance, as contrasted to the clientalistic culture of the South Italy characterized by politics based on patronage and clientalism, vertical associations, sense of mistrust, reliance on someone "above" for subsistence and consequent exploitation. How did these two vastly different socio-cultural characters develop in different regions of Italy? To trace this Putnam first engages in the historical analysis of how historical events since early Medieval shaped different cultures in different regions - again this is basically written in North - South dualism, and the basic flow of historical events is as follows:

For South,

Authoritarian regime of Norman kingdom that reached its zenith of political and economic achievement in the 11th and 12 th C. - combining the elements of feudal, bureaucratic, and absolutist government - After King Frederick's death barons gained power and autonomy, but cities and towns did not. Hierarchical structure of South remained essentially unchanged. - South remained largely unharmed of the destructive calamities of Black Death and foreign invasions from 14th to 16th C., and sourthern cities as Naples flourished economically. Still, social structure remained highly autocratic and hierchical, with kings and barons retaining autocratic powers and the vertical relations based on exploitation and dependence remained.

For North, an entirely different picture,

communities based on mutual assistance, common defense and economic cooperation sprung up as history moved out of the Dark Ages - in Florence, Venice, Bologna, Genoa, Milan and virtually all other major towns of northern and central Italy. - Political reforms were soon sought for by citizens, and the political power gradually became diffuse rather than concentrated. - Forms of collective life based on covenants and contracts developed, in a time when force and family were only alternative in other parts of Europe. - Powerful sense of civic committment developed - Commerce expanded, based on legal institutions to settle disputes, exchange information, and share risks - Key features of mercantile developments further flourished - money, markets, law, and credit. - Though after 14th C. onward the northernmost provinces fell back to signatorial control, and other regions were also devastated by Black Death and foreign invasions, elements of civic culture remained - This element of civic culture remained yet firm even after 16th C. when most of northern city-states lost independence - so that autocratic rulers of north, unlike in south, accepted the "civic reponsibilities."

So, in short, the northern and southern regions of Italy followed a drastically different path of history in their development. These differential developments are to have significant repercussions on the course of political/social/economic development in the modern history after the Italian Unification. Briefly, all the elements of the northern civic culture remained - as particularly well exemplified by rapid developments of mutual aid societies, cooperatives, and the labor unions. Meanwhile, the South remained just as well hierarchical in structure as they always have been. Typified by latifondo, or large estate worked by impoverished peasants, the social relationships were characterized by mutual hostility and distrust. Social bonds remained to be based on vertical bonds of dependency and exploitation, while the political structure was founded upon patronage and clientalism that fostered fragmentation and disorganization. In this context of distrust, dependence and fragmentation, it was a rational strategy to resort to clientalistic dependence and occasionally, a recourse to protection by organized crimes (See Gambetta for further material on this topic).

Lastly, to turn to the modern context. How important are these historical developments in terms of their effects on the contemporary difference in governmental efficacy different regions are facing today? For this, Putnam finds a striking correlation of historical evidence and contemporary situation. For instance, almost perfect correlation is found between the previously mentioned indicator for "civic" character for contemporary governments and that based on the index of civic traditions from 1860-1920 is found. Further, correlation between the index for the performance of contemporary governemnt and civic traditions of 1860-1920 is also very high. It seems that "civic culture" has strong level of tenacity.

Yet, isn't the civic culture found in northern regions of Italy in contemporary terms merely the results of superior economic development? In another word, isn't the correlation of past civic traditions and contemporary civic culture spurious effects of better economic development? Or else, does the "civic culture" have independent effects of its own? To test this, a multiple regression analysis has been conducted. The finding is supportive of the latter idea giving the civic culture the independent causal power. That is, while civic involvement in the 1900s had a strong positive effect on the contemporary socioeconomic development, the past socioeconomic development was found to have almost no effects on contemporary civic involvement. Further, while the continuity of civic involvement was very high from 1900s to contemporary times, very little continuity in terms of socioeconomic development was found. In another word, the contemporary socioeconomic development was better explained by past civic involvement, not by past socioeconomic development. Obviously, Putnam is careful enough to not to claim these socio-cultural factors as being a sole deterministic factor of the political developments. All this spoken of, it seems that Putnam's claim that socio-cultural elements played a significant causal role in engendering certain political structures seems to be a very well-grounded one.