IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/340.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Revisiting the Origins of Democratic Quality in Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Frederick Solt

Abstract

What determines the responsiveness and effectiveness of democratic governments in meeting their citizens needs? Based on his 1993 study of the twenty Italian regions, Robert Putnam argued that civic community, a self-reinforcing syndrome of social engagement and political participation, is the explanation. A re-examination of Putnams data reveals little evidence of such a syndrome, but confirms that where more citizens participate in politics outside of networks of clientelistic exchange, more effective democratic government results. To discern the causes of variation in this self-motivated political participation, I then test Putnams measures of social engagement against aspects of Italian socio-economic structure. Economic development and the historical distribution of land, not social engagement, are found to be powerful predictors of selfmotivated political participation and in turn democratic quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Frederick Solt, 2002. "Revisiting the Origins of Democratic Quality in Italy," LIS Working papers 340, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:340
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/340.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ellis Goldberg, 1996. "Thinking about how Democracy Works," Politics & Society, , vol. 24(1), pages 7-18, March.
    2. Patterson, Samuel C. & Caldeira, Gregory A., 1983. "Getting Out the Vote: Participation in Gubernatorial Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(3), pages 675-689, September.
    3. Filippo Sabetti, 1996. "Path Dependency and Civic Culture: Some Lessons from Italy about Interpreting Social Experiments," Politics & Society, , vol. 24(1), pages 19-44, March.
    4. Tarrow, Sidney, 1996. "Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(2), pages 389-397, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christos J. Paraskevopoulos, 2007. "Social Capital and Public Policy in Greece," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 09, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    2. repec:gig:joupla:v:3:y:2011:i:1:p:29-64 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Delhey, Jan & Newton, Kenneth, 2004. "Social trust: Global pattern or nordic exceptionalism?," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Inequality and Social Integration SP I 2004-202, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    4. Valentino Larcinese, 2007. "Voting over Redistribution and the Size of the Welfare State: The Role of Turnout," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 55(3), pages 568-585, October.
    5. Sabatini, Fabio, 2006. "The Empirics of Social Capital and Economic Development: A Critical Perspective," Knowledge, Technology, Human Capital Working Papers 12097, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    6. Boschma, Ron, 2000. "An Empirical Analysis Of The Industrial Rise Of The Third Italy," ERSA conference papers ersa00p114, European Regional Science Association.
    7. Lauren M. McLaren & Vanessa A. Baird, 2006. "Of Time and Causality: A Simple Test of the Requirement of Social Capital in Making Democracy Work in Italy," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 54(4), pages 889-897, December.
    8. Kustov, Alexander & Pardelli, Giuliana, 2024. "Beyond Diversity: The Role of State Capacity in Fostering Social Cohesion in Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    9. Valentino Larcinese, 2007. "Does political knowledge increase turnout? Evidence from the 1997 British general election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 387-411, June.
    10. Michele Hoyman & Jamie McCall & Laurie Paarlberg & John Brennan, 2016. "Considering the Role of Social Capital for Economic Development Outcomes in U.S. Counties," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 30(4), pages 342-357, November.
    11. Sjoerd Beugelsdijk & Ton Van Schaik, 2005. "Differences in social capital between 54 Western European regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(8), pages 1053-1064.
    12. Newton, Kenneth, 2005. "Support for democracy: Social capital, civil society and political performance," Discussion Papers, Research Group Civil Society, Citizenship and Political Mobilization in Europe SP IV 2005-402, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    13. Helios Herrera & Massimo Morelli & Salvatore Nunnari, 2016. "Turnout Across Democracies," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(3), pages 607-624, July.
    14. Andrea F.M. Martinangeli & Marina Povitkina & Sverker C. Jagers & Bo Rothstein, 2020. "Institutional Quality Causes Social Trust: Experimental Evidence on Trusting Under the Shadow of Doubt," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2020-04, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    15. Stephen Hansen & Thomas Palfrey & Howard Rosenthal, 1987. "The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 15-33, January.
    16. Fabio Sabatini, 2004. "Il rapporto tra Economia e Società nella ricerca sul capitale sociale. Un tentativo di impostazione contabile e una classificazione “funzionale” della letteratura," Others 0411005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Sjoerd Beugelsdijk & Sjak Smulders, 2003. "Bridging and Bonding Social Capital: which type is good for economic growth?," ERSA conference papers ersa03p517, European Regional Science Association.
    18. Stefano Passini & Davide Morselli, 2017. "Construction and Validation of the Moral Inclusion/Exclusion of Other Groups (MIEG) Scale," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 134(3), pages 1195-1213, December.
    19. Graham Smith & William Maloney & Gerry Stoker, 2004. "Building Social Capital in City Politics: Scope and Limitations at the Inter‐organisational Level," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 52(3), pages 508-530, October.
    20. Gordon C. K. Cheung, 2004. "Chinese Diaspora as a Virtual Nation: Interactive Roles between Economic and Social Capital," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 52(4), pages 664-684, December.
    21. Peter Calcagno & Christopher Westley, 2008. "An institutional analysis of voter turnout: the role of primary type and the expressive and instrumental voting hypotheses," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 94-110, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:340. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.