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Re-examining a modern classic: does Putnam's Making Democracy Work suffer from spuriousness?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Joan Barceló
Joan Barceló*
Affiliation:
Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain and The Wilf Department of Politics, New York University, New York, USA
*
∗Email: joanbarcelosoler@wustl.edu
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Abstract

What makes democratic institutions work efficiently? Robert Putnam argued in Making Democracy Work that a mixture of political participation and immersion in associative and social networks in the community, conceptualised as ‘civic community’ or ‘social capital’, is the explanation. Ever since its publication, many questions have arisen about the validity of Putnam's theory. Among the most relevant concerns stands the influence of the Italian Communist Party on Putnam's empirical tests. This paper aims to fill the gap left in the literature by testing Putnam's hypothesis against the political party in the regional government and the PCI's electoral support. Supporting Putnam, this paper finds that variations in the quality of democratic governments in Italy's regions are a function of civic community even after adjusting for the presence of the Italian Communist Party.

Keywords

democracysocial capitalcivic communityPutnamItalian Communist Party
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 457 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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