Culture as a Determinant of Institutional Effectiveness: Putnam

Putnam's survey of Italian political institutions reveals that those in the North tended to be better performing. In that the structure of these local institutions was identical (there having been instituted across the country by Federal action), other forces had to be at work. Many attributed the greater vitality and democratic character of Northern political institutions to greater socioeconomic development. But Putnam demonstrates, quite convincingly I might add, that differences in levels of institutional stability and representativeness in the two regions is attributable to profound differences in political dating back to the 12th century. P. finds that socioeconomic development is not only a poor predictor of institutional performance but is itself determined in large part by the level of civic involvement. (see the attached diagram reproduced from page 157).

The Contrast Between North and South

I will deal with these only briefly in that the primary lesson to be taken from this piece is that culture in a key element of the democratic equation, that structural and materialist explanations will not suffice if we are to understand why democratic institutions thrive.

According to Putnam " two distinctive political regimes, born innovative and born destined to have far reaching social economic, and political consequences, appeared in separate parts of the peninsula" (121).

The regime that emerged in the south, founded by Norman mercenaries, was singularly advanced, both administratively and economically. But it was fundamentally autocratic. Though residents of the region indicated desire for self-government, they were soon incorporated into the empire and subject to the control of local officials who reported directly to the king. As time passed, the steep social hierarchy came to be increasingly dominated by a landed aristocracy with feudal powers.

At the same time to the north an unprecedented form of communal republicanism was emerging. The republican regime was, as was the south, a response to the violence and disorder endemic in medieval Europe, but whereas in the south the solution was sought in vertical hierarchy, in the north, strategies of horizontal collaboration were employed. Communes emerged in major northern cities, in which neighbors swore to render one another mutual assistance, to provide for common defense, and engage in economic cooperation. The extent of popular participation in government affairs Putnam describes as "extraordinary", republican leaders being far more ready that the regime to the south to share power with others as equals. Elaborate legal codes developed. Public offices were ultimately professionalized. Hand in hand with republicanism occurred rapid growth in commerce. Credit actually originated in the Italian republics. This prosperity served to promote and sustain civic involvement.

In short,

" . . . by the beginning of the fourteenth century, Italy had produced not one, but two innovative patterns of governance with their associated social and cultural features-the celebrated Normal feudal autocracy of the South and the fertile communal republicanism of the North . . . Collaboration, mutual assistance, civic obligation, and even trust-not universal, of course, but extending further beyond the limits of kinship than anywhere else in Europe in this era-were the distinguishing features in the North. The chief virtue of the South, by contrast, was the imposition of hierarchy and order on latent anarchy" (130). (This absence of trust is integral to Gambetta's account of the Mafia, a southern Italian phenomenon for the most part).

Though by the 17th century republicanism had collapsed, Italy experiencing a sort of "re-feudalization", the heritage of the North was "transmitted in the form of an ethic of civic involvement, social responsibility, and mutual assistance among social equals" that for Putnam explains the viability of contemporary Northern political institutions (135).