Disgruntled Italians – social capital and civic culture in Italy

Abstract

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.