Making Social Capital Work: A Review of Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy

Since the publication of Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work , the concept of social capital has achieved a new prominence in the social science community. This essay explores the causal linkages among the key analytical concepts presented in Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work in an effort to further the social capital research agenda that the book initiates. We show why different kinds of associations can be expected to have different social capital-building capacities and different implications for cooperation within the larger community. We suggest that the microlinkages between social capital and good government in Making Democracy Work are underspecified and we present four models of Making Social Capital Work: A Review of Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy file:///M|/WEB/cfia/cfiapubs/pdfs/boc01.html (1 of 22) [12/6/2000 10:54:21 AM] how social cooperation at the level of the community translates into good performance at the level of political institutions. We identify the absence of political conflict as a peculiar feature of Putnam's account of Italian politics and history, and we explore the implications of its absence for the theoretical conclusions Putnam reaches and the generalizability of the findings he presents. We examine the relationship between social capital and economic performance and show why Putnam's work has important contributions to make to this field. Finally, we explain why Putnam's findings may not travel well outside of the Italian regions he studies. Since its publication in 1993, Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy ,1 has generated more discussion and debate than any work of political science in recent years. For the compelling arguments it makes, the innovative methodology it employs and the exciting research agenda it initiates, it is a path breaking work which has already changed the way academics and policy-makers approach the relationship between politics and society. Aided by Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Nanetti, Putnam evaluates the institutional performance of twenty Italian regional governments using surveys, interviews and a diverse set of policy indicators. His central finding is that wide variations in the performance of these governments are closely related to the vibrancy of associational life in each region. In northern Italy, where citizens participate actively in sports clubs, literary guilds, service groups and choral societies, regional governments are "efficient in their internal operation, creative in their policy initiatives and effective in implementing those initiatives. "2 In southern Italy, by contrast, where patterns of civic engagement are far weaker, regional governments tend to be corrupt and inefficient. Putnam explains this relationship between strong networks of citizen participation and positive institutional performance in terms of "social capital" -the networks, norms of reciprocity and trust that are fostered among the members of community associations by virtue of their experience of social interaction and cooperation. He argues that social capital has a positive impact on governance because it allows community members to overcome the dilemmas of collective action which would otherwise hamper their attempts to cooperate for the purpose of bettering social life. The implications of Putnam's findings are profound. Social scientists are now obliged to add social capital to the list of key variables they consider when trying to explain political and economic phenomena. Students of political culture are forced to expand their symboland tradition-focused accounts of the impact of culture to accommodate Putnam's more structuralist perspective.3 And researchers of all stripes are challenged to follow Putnam's example by integrating quantitative and qualitative data in their analyses. The policy-making community has been particularly energized by the findings of Making Democracy Work . From the World Bank to city hall, the creation of social capital has been embraced as a solution for social problems as diverse as promoting economic development in Africa and stemming urban decay in Los Angeles. In a series of widely discussed recent publications, Putnam himself has drawn on the lessons of his research in Italy to identify declining rates of civic participation as an important cause of America's political and social ills.4 To be sure, not all reviews of Making Democracy Work have been unconditionally enthusiastic. Critics have taken issue with Putnam's interpretation of his data,5 his account of Italian history6 and his theoretical treatment of social capital.7 But even reviewers who have found faults with Making Democracy Work have emphasized the contribution that the book has made to the study of democratic Making Social Capital Work: A Review of Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy file:///M|/WEB/cfia/cfiapubs/pdfs/boc01.html (2 of 22) [12/6/2000 10:54:21 AM] political institutions and the importance of the research agenda that it has initiated. The goal of this review essay is to further this research agenda by critically examining the book's key concepts -social capital, associational life, good government -and exploring the causal linkages among them. Over the long-term, the significance of Making Democracy Work will be judged less by how it weathers its critical dissection in the pages of social science journals and more by the success of researchers in exploring and applying the social capital paradigm that it champions. Our objective is to identify some of the issues that will have to be taken up and explored along the way. The essay is organized in the following way. In section one, we examine the concept of social capital and its relationship with associational life. We argue that different kinds of associations will have different social capital-building capabilities and different implications for cooperation within the larger community. In section two, we suggest that the microlinkages between social capital and good government in Making Democracy Work are underspecified and we present four models of how social cooperation at the level of the community translates into good performance at the level of political institutions. In section three, we identify the absence of political conflict as a peculiar feature of Putnam's account of Italian politics and history, and we explore the implications of its absence for the theoretical conclusions Putnam reaches and the generalizability of the findings he presents. In section four, we examine the relationship between social capital and economic performance. Although this relationship receives only passing treatment Making Democracy Work , we suggest that Putnam's work has important contributions to make to this field. By way of conclusion, we briefly address the question of how well Putnam's findings are likely to travel outside of the Italian regions he studies. I. Associational Life And Social Capital The strong connection between social capital and institutional performance is the central empirical and theoretical finding in Making Democracy Work . The relationship between social capital and good governance rests, however, on a prior -and, we suggest, not entirely unproblematic -connection between associational participation and social capital. If we want to predict the capacity for social cooperation in a given community, Putnam's analysis suggests, we need simply to count up the number of horizontal civic associations it contains. The higher the number of such groups, the greater the capacity of community members to overcome self-defeating opportunism and to collaborate for mutual benefit. Since such social cooperation is an important ingredient in good government -or at least this is Putnam's claim -the density of associational participation in a given community is of no small consequence for the quality of its political life. Precisely because of the import of Putnam's claims about the effects of associational participation, it is crucial that we evaluate them critically. In the discussion that follows, we identify six attributes of civic associations which may determine both their capacity to generate social capital and the ability of the larger community to use that social capital to achieve broad-based social cooperation. Our analysis suggests that, contrary to Putnam's expectations, the link between participation in civic associations and positive social outcomes is not axiomatic. A first distinction, drawn directly from Making Democracy Work , is that between horizontal and vertical associations. Horizontal associations "bring together agents of equivalent status and power," while vertical associations "link unequal agents in asymmetric relations of hierarchy and dependence. "8 From the standpoint of their impact on social cooperation, the difference between horizontal and vertical associations lies in the fact that vertical relationships, such as exist between patrons and clients, are Making Social Capital Work: A Review of Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work: Civit Traditions in Modern Italy file:///M|/WEB/cfia/cfiapubs/pdfs/boc01.html (3 of 22) [12/6/2000 10:54:21 AM] characterized by dependence instead of mutuality, and are thus highly limited in their ability to generate norms of reciprocity, social trust or a shared sense of responsibility for collective endeavors. Moreover, vertical associations contain built-in hierarchies which facilitate decision-making and eliminate the collective action dilemmas which confront members of horizontally structured groups. Since the experience of arriving at mutually acceptable decisions and overcoming dilemmas of mutual cooperation is at the heart of what makes participation in civic associations so beneficial for facilitating wider social cooperation, this feature of vertically structured organizations robs them of much of their s