Disgruntled Italians – social capital and civic culture in Italy

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to analyse the geography of social capital in Italy thirty years after publication of the book Making Democracy Work – Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Putnam etal. 1993). We used a statistical method (Distance Between Strata [D.B.S.]), which had not previously been applied to the study of social capital, and data from the 2019 I.S.T.A.T. Multiscope Household Surveys ‘Aspects of daily life’. We analysed the distribution of social capital in the regions of Italy in multidimensional terms. With D.B.S. it was indeed possible to consider various dimensions of social capital instead of using an overall index. It enabled us to isolate three types of Italians, which we called civic, non-civic and ‘disgruntled’ Italians. Disgruntled Italians are citizens who participate in political and social life and tend to trust others, but have little trust in public institutions. Their geographic identification is the main contribution of this article to Italian studies on social capital for at least two reasons: (1) it questions the ‘obvious’ correlation between political participation and trust in institutions; (2) it provides an important basis for reflection on Italian civic culture.

Riassunto

L’obiettivo di questo articolo è stato quello di analizzare la Geografia del capitale sociale in Italia a trent’anni dalla pubblicazione del libro “La tradizione civica nelle regioni italiane” (Putnam et al. 1993). Abbiamo impiegato una tecnica statistica (la DBS, Distance Between Strata) che non era stata ancora applicata allo studio del capitale sociale, e dati provenienti dall’indagine I.S.T.A.T. “Multiscopo sulle famiglie: aspetti della vita quotidiana” del 2019. Abbiamo analizzato la distribuzione del capitale sociale nelle regioni italiane in termini multidimensionali. Con le D.B.S. è stato infatti possibile considerare varie dimensioni del capitale sociale invece di utilizzare un indice complessivo. L’applicazione della DBS ha permesso di isolare tre tipi di italiani, che abbiamo chiamato civici, non civici e “scontenti”. Gli italiani scontenti sono cittadini che partecipano alla vita politica e sociale, tendono ai fidarsi degli altri, ma hanno poca fiducia nelle istituzioni pubbliche. L’individuazione di questi cittadini rappresenta il principale contributo di questo articolo rispetto agli studi precedenti per almeno due motivi: da un lato mette in discussione la “scontata” correlazione tra partecipazione politica e fiducia, dall’altro fornisce un’importante base di riflessione sul tipo di disaffezione che gli Italiani nutrono nei confronti delle istituzioni e della rappresentanza democratica.

KEYWORDS:

• social capital
• D.B.S. method
• civic culture
• pandemic crisis
• critical citizens

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• capitale sociale
• metodo D.B.S.
• cultura civica
• crisi pandemica
• cittadini critici

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the authors(s).

Notes

^1. If for example we look at the trend of trust in government in Eurobarometer data for 1999-2019, we note that trust was ~33 per cent in 1999 and ~29 per cent. Apart from the dip of ~15 percentage points between 2010 and 2013 (in Italy, the economic crisis of 2008–2014 only began to manifest from 2011), after 2014, trust in the national government resumed an upward trend and then became stable. See Arrighi et al. (2022), 12 for a more articulated analysis of this trend in 2007–2020.

^2. More specifically, analysing the average trust in certain political institutions between 2012 and 2019 (European Social Survey and Eurobarometer data sets), it is evident that in Italy, only 24 per cent of respondents trust the national parliament (-36 percentage points compared to Sweden, -19 compared to Germany, -9 per cent compared to the UK, -3 per cent compared to France, and -1 per cent compared to Spain). Trust in the national government is around 20 per cent, significantly lower than that recorded in Sweden (-52 percentage points), Germany (-30 percentage points), the UK (-14 percentage points), and France (-9 percentage points). Regarding the judicial system, Italy shows a trust percentage of 43 per cent and negative percentage differences compared to Sweden (-24 percentage points), Germany (-16 percentage points), the UK (-13 percentage points), and France (-3 percentage points). Lastly, the percentages of satisfaction with democracy in Italy are very low. In Italy, the percentage of those who are ‘very and fairly satisfied’ does not exceed 36 per cent, while in Sweden, it reaches 83 per cent, 65 per cent in Germany, 63 per cent in the UK, and 54 per cent in France.

^3. Making Democracy Work was criticized for many reasons, including for a certain determinism, for giving little importance to regional differences in southern Italy and for paying little attention to the political dimension (among others, see Bagnasco 1994; Goldberg 1996; Pasquino 1994). However, we agree with Paul Ginsbourg that these criticisms ‘should not allow us to forget the thrust of Putnam’s inquiry – the attempt to explain how Italy’s differing regional history resulted in a variable capacity for the creation of a civic community, and eventually of a civil society’ (Ginsbourg 2003, 107).

^4. Italian National Institute of Statistics

^5. It is useful to recall that on the basis of Itanes data for 2002–2004, Biorcio (2007) identified a category of discouraged citizens with a developed sense of political efficacy, in some ways similar to our ‘disgruntled citizens’, but estimated to be 10 per cent of the national population. Here we see that these citizens reach 37 per cent of the national population.

^6. The ‘Conte I’ government was formed in Italy in June 2018 after the electoral success of Lega and M.5.S., who won more than 50 per cent of the vote in the 2018 national elections, campaigning on ‘anti-cast’ and populist platforms (Valbruzzi and Vignati 2018).

^7. According to Stein Rokkan, the speed of the transition from nation building to extension of civil, political and social rights profoundly influences the quality of a country’s democratic institutions (Flora 1999).

^8. The ‘red’ area featured a local political system dominated by the P.C.I. and its associative network. It included four regions in the centre-north of the country (Emilia Romagna, Toscana, Marche and Umbria). The ‘white’ area, dominated by the Catholic church and the D.C. involved three north-eastern regions (Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige). From an economic viewpoint, these regions were called ‘the third Italy’ (Bagnasco 1977) because of their similar localized development model based on a system of specialized industrial districts. On regional political subcultures, see among others Almagisti (2011), Baccetti and Messina (2009), Bordandini (2006) and Messina (2001).

^9. https://www.istat.it/en/archivio/129934

^10. The indices of political and social activism are dichotomic indices obtained by combining the positions of respondents on several activities investigated by the questionnaire. The index of political activism analyses the following actions: party membership, union membership, participation in rallies, participation in marches, listening to political debates, paying money to a party, volunteer activity in favour of a party, volunteer activity in favour of a union. The index of social activism is also based on the positions of respondents in relation to the following activities: donating money to associations, unpaid voluntary work, taking part in the life of voluntary, ecological and cultural associations (see Table 2).

^11. The results were obtained by Ward’s minimum variance method for hierarchical clustering (Ward 1963), using ‘proc cluster’ with SAS software. Other techniques were tested, without finding appreciable differences in the results.

^12. In all the above calculations, the microdata items were weighted with the inverse of sampling probabilities produced by I.S.T.A.T.

^13. For example the distance between Piedmont and Val d’Aosta is obtained by the formula: aaaa

^14. In almost all regions it was therefore possible to define the complete ranking of the three types. The results would be even more clear-cut if we grouped the regions into two geographical areas. In the north, the ‘disgruntled’ category would be significantly more numerous and the ‘non-civics’ would be the least numerous type of citizen. In the south, the ranking would be ‘non-civics’ at the top followed by the ‘disgruntled’ and ‘civics’.

^15. In synthesis, the data shows that 70 per cent of the disgruntled take care not to waste electricity (against 72 per cent of civics and 67 per cent of non-civics), 67 per cent try not to waste water (against 71 per cent of civics and 64 per cent of non-civics), 52 per cent use transport different from the private car (against 54 per cent of civics and 46 per cent of non-civics), only 31 per cent do not differentiate batteries from other household waste (against 28 per cent of civics and 37 per cent of non-civics) and only 29 per cent do not differentiate pharmaceuticals for waste collection (against 25 per cent of civics and 34 per cent of non-civics).

^16. Civics are the only citizens to give public transport a positive score (1-10, always well over 6.5): train 6.7 (against 5.9 of disgruntled and non-civics), extra-urban buses 6.8 (against 6 of disgruntled and 5.8 of non-civics) and town buses 6.7 (against 5.6 of disgruntled and 5.4 of non-civics).

^17. The correlation between disgruntled Italians and civics has some interesting outliers, e.g. Val d’Aosta: the correlation coefficient increases from +0.6 to +0.7 if this region is excluded. Among the citizens of this region, the percentage of disgruntled Italians is as high as 46 per cent, while those of civics and non-civics are both 27 per cent. This is therefore a region where levels of distrust in the public institutions is very high, probably related to cases of corruption that emerged in the months of data collection. In any case, the results of this region should be taken with caution, since the region is very small (only 753 respondents; see Table 1).

^18. Here again, the exception of Sardinia, another special statute region, is noteworthy. Its pattern is closer to those of the centre-north than the centre-south regions (see Cartocci 2007 on this point).

^19. Unfortunately the available data set does not allow us to analyse electoral participation or the political orientation of the disgruntled. One can only suppose that they abstain from voting in protest or vote for populist parties.

^20. It is useful to recall that in 2008, the Partito democratico (P.D.) obtained 45.7 per cent of the vote in Emilia Romagna, 46.8 per cent in Toscana, 44.4 per cent in Umbria and 41.3 per cent in the Marches. In the national elections of 2013 it lost 8.6 per cent of the vote: 9.3 per cent, 12.3 per cent and 13.7 per cent, respectively. In the national elections of 2018, the P.D. lost further votes, recording 26.4 per cent in Emilia Romagna (-10.7 per cent with respect to 2013), 29.6 per cent in Toscana (-7.9 per cent), 24.8 per cent in Umbria (-7.3 per cent) and 21.3 per cent in the Marches (-6.4 per cent).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paola Bordandini

Paola Bordandini is an associate professor in Political Science at the University of Bologna, where she teaches Methodology of Political and Social Sciences and Italian Political System. She has published several articles and books on the topic of social capital, political culture, trust, and political parties. Her recent publications include Cooperazione e cooperatori nell’Italia del risentimento (Il Mulino 2020, co-authored with Roberto Cartocci) and I muscoli del partito. Il ruolo dei quadri intermedi nella politica atrofizzata (Il Mulino 2018, co-authored with Piero Ignazi).

Mauro Maltagliati

Mauro Maltagliati is an associate professor of Economic Statistics at the University of Florence. His primary research interests encompass the technical analysis of efficiency, examination of the geographical distribution of the gender gap, and studies on well-being. He also delves into topics such as equivalence scales and comparisons of the standard of living among homogeneous groups of individuals.

Nicolò Bellanca

Nicolò Bellanca is an associate professor in Applied Economics at the University of Florence. He has authored several books and has published widely through contributed chapters and journal articles. His recent publications include Isocracy. The institutions of equality (Macmillan 2019).

Roberto Cartocci

Roberto Cartocci former full professor in Political Science at the University of Bologna. His research interests concern electoral behavior, political culture, social capital and secularization. His publications include Elettori in Italia, Il Mulino 1990; Fra Lega e Chiesa (Il Mulino 1994), Diventare grandi in tempi di cinismo (Il Mulino 2002), Mappe del tesoro. Atlante del capitale sociale in Italia (Il Mulino 2007), Cipolle a colazione (Il Mulino 2007, co-authored with Paola Bordandini), Geografia dell’Italia Cattolica (Il Mulino 2011) and Cooperazione e cooperatori nell’Italia del risentimento (Il Mulino 2020, co-authored with Paola Bordandini).