A Criticism of Putnam’s Theory of Social Capital
When observing the diversity of states around the world, it becomes evident that each is unique. The social norms and values that encompass one area may be partially shared by another group, or absent altogether. The intricate web of norms, political values, and method of government are among those things that define a state’s political culture. Political cultures are quite evidently different from one another, and this presents an elementary point of interest. The reason that political cultures differ from one another and that this varied family of cultures promulgate different types of government, are concepts that gave rise, in the academic community, to a smattering of theoretical approaches. The approach that we will discuss within this article is Robert Putnam’s theory of social capital.
Robert Putnam in his book Making Democracy Work, argues that northern Italy became more democratic than southern Italy as a result of “social capital”. In Putnam’s book, the argument of the social capital approach is framed around the idea that civic structures ‘create’ social capital that lead a culture on a path towards democracy. According to Putnam, “vast improvements in economics life as well as in governmental performance, were made possible by the norms of networks and civic engagement, revolutionary changes in the fundamental institutions of politics and economics arose out of this unique social context, with its horizontal ties of collaboration and civic solidarity”(Putnam 129). In other words, Putnam makes the claim that “horizontal ties of collaboration and civic solidarity” create a “unique social context” which then engenders a state towards democratic culture. This is the definition of “social capital” as it will be referred to throughout. According to this concept, democratic states should show evidence of social capital while states that are not should show a lack of it.
Putnam argues that cultures which have garnered social capital are more likely to develop into democracies than kin cultures that did not. In the case of Northern Italy, Putnam concluded that “in the communal republics of northern medieval Italy, vast improvements in economic life as well as in governmental performance were made possible by the norms and networks of civic engagement.”(Putnam 129). There are two types of civic structures introduced by Putnam that will be discussed in regards to their usefulness as social capital, they are “horizontal civic organizations” and “vertical civic organizations”. In the paragraphs to follow I will introduce three case studies, the first will examine the differences between the development of Northern and Southern Italy, the second will examine the German Interwar period, and the third will take a look at Eastern European political culture under communist rule and afterwards.
The social capital approach as defined by Putnam does not appear to hold true when evaluated alongside examples of states where social capital existed and did not lead to the birth or growth of democracy. To demonstrate this, I will show that in several different non democratic states that there existed strong networks of civil engagement which according to Putnam should have created enough social capital to influence later cultural development. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that social capital can have the effect of giving rise to distinctly non democratic political cultures.
Northern Italy developed a distinctly democratic culture as opposed to the south due to its unique form of social capital, but not due to its lack of it. An argument made by Putnam in an effort to explain the differences between Northern and Southern Italy is that Northern Italy experienced a period of sociopolitical “enlightenment” whereas the South did not. According to Putnam the north “practiced religious toleration” and was hailed as “a republic of scholars” (Putnam 122). The south on the other hand is then presented in contrast to the north when Putnam mentions that the south had remained under a strict largely feudal “autocratic” government (Putnam 123). As time passed, Putnam wrote that in the south, “the steep social hierarchy came to be ever more dominated by a landed aristocracy endowed with feudal powers…peasants straggled wretchedly close to the limits of physical survival” (Putnam 124). This description of the South serves as a foil to Putnam’s North, which he describes by saying that there, “an unprecedented form of self-government was emerging” (Putnam 124), which would of course later develop into a full blown democratic state. The reason why the North became more sociopolitically advanced in comparison to the South was, according to Putnam, due to the rise of civic organizations such as guilds, parish organizations, and vicinanze (neighborhood associations)(Putnam 126). Sticking with this line of reasoning it would seem that the south has no civic organizations that would endow its culture with social capital, however this view would be most incorrect.
The south of Italy had organizations that qualify as social capital, and despite this did not develop like the north. According to Fillipo Sabetti in his book Village Politics and the Mafia in Sicily, there were many social organizations present in the south. A prominent and infamous example of such a social organization was the Mafia, which Sabetti writes, “arose from a self-help tradition which in the course of time became corrupted, and ultimately, an additional burden on villagers” (Sabetti 233). Another social organization of note was the Catholic Church, which was an important and central aspect of village life. (Rossi). Though both the North and the South had social organizations, only the north developed a democratic culture which would seem to contradict Putnam’s theory of Social Capital that assumes that where there are strong networks of “civil engagement”, democracy will duly follow.
In the north of Italy, friendly egalitarian groups like guilds or “vicinanze”s were plentiful whereas in the south the most prominent social organizations were the mafia and the Catholic Church. The differences between the Northern and Southern groups are significant to how each culture developed and speaks about the type of social capital in each region. According to Sabetti, “successive generations of Camporano villagers have shown themselves to possess the skills and knowledge necessary to organize collective enterprises and yet, for the most part they have been lawfully prevented from putting those self-organizing capabilities to use”(Sabetti 231). That Southern villagers had been prevented from “lawfully” developing civic groups like their northern counterparts is telling. The observation that Southern villagers did not have the same rights as their northern counterparts in respect to “Private Property rights in rural land together with a free labour market” ( Sabetti 229) suggests the notion that in areas with different types of government, the civic groups that are around will too, be different.
Even if civic groups exist in a given area, if there also exists a government in place which has counter democratic values, then it might preclude or impede the development of a democratic culture. When Sabetti writes that the Camporano villagers had the collective resources to “organize collective enterprises and yet” they had been “lawfully prevented”, it speaks to the reasons why social groups like the mafia and church were so important in Southern civic life. A possible argument that can be made to explain the prominence of the mafia is that it served the people in ways that the government did not (Rossi). The South had a culture distinct from the North because Southern Italy had a different flavor of social capital than did the north. The different social and political environments of each area contributed towards the differentiation of their respective social groups. There are fundamental discrepancies between a local guild or vicinanze, and the church, or mafia.
While different civic groups can be categorized using a plethora of criteria, the criteria most important to understanding which groups create democracy-prone social capital are those that relate to the underlying values of democracy. Putnam describes two categories of social groups when he writes that, “In the North the crucial social, political, and even religious allegiances and alignments were horizontal, those in the south were vertical.”(Putnam 130). Horizontal civic groups are characterized by a sort of member equality while vertical civic groups are characterized by hierarchical membership. Most groups are not as black and white as Putnam describes. Though the Catholic Church has a very rigid system of hierarchy, at the local level it was a very horizontally structured organization (Rossi). The same principle of course could be applied to the mafia, though there is too an unequal balance of power, it is an organization that caters to the diverse needs of a large group and values the individual and his ability to contribute (Rossi). This trend of civil groups that do not result in democratic culture is echoed in the example of Wiemar Germany.
In Weimar Germany there were an abundance of civic groups yet the culture that ensued led to fascism. In Sheri Berman’s essay the “Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic” she describes how the German public in the interwar period “threw themselves into their clubs, voluntary associations and professional organizations out of frustration with the failures of the national government and political parties, thereby helping to undermine the Weimar republic and facilitate Hitler’s rise to power.”(Berman 402). It seems odd if one agrees with Putnam’s social capital approach that Germany’s abundance of civic groups helped facilitate the antithesis of Democracy while Northern Italy’s helped facilitate the rise of Democracy. Berman makes the point that in Germany civic associations extended the individual’s sense of self, moving from a self-centered perspective to a group perspective. Berman contrasts this with the idea of “networks of civil engagement” which she argued formed “norms of generalized reciprocity and encourage the emergence of social trust”(Berman 405). Using Weimar Germany as a perfect case study with which to observe the effects of social capital, it becomes evident as to why some civil associations lead to the growth of democratic culture while others lead to non-democratic culture.
The way that civic groups are organized affect group mentality which in turn affects a group’s political culture. The most prominent difference between the groups present in northern Italy and the organizations in Weimar Germany are the distinct types of culture that they engendered. The civic groups in Germany created a political culture that formed a “we” mentality as opposed to an “I” mentality (Berman 405). The fact that different associations form different sorts of mentalities impacts the way in which a group’s political culture develops. Within Berman’s essay she makes the argument that the individual voice is more important in a culture that values the idea of individuality wherein an opposite culture that values the group voice, individual voice is less important that the latter. Weimar Germany and its development into the third Reich illustrate this concept. During the interwar period the Weimar republic controlled the German political sphere, and as Berman pointed out, the culture was extremely civil association oriented. The forms that these civil associations took is relevant to understanding why the culture did not develop into a democracy as Putnam’s social capital theory might have suggested. Berman wrote in context to German civil associations that, “Their primary goal was not to participate in the Wilhelmine political system, and indeed, they often defined themselves in direct repudiation of existing political institutions and structures, arguing that they were Volksvereine (people’s associations) devoted to cross-class solidarity and national unity. Another distinctive characteristic of these groups was that, in contrast to old-style Honoratioren organizations and parties, they placed the idea of popular legitimacy front and center”(Berman 412). Berman’s observation that the civic groups in Weimar Germany stressed political activism and “cross class solidarity” creates a new dilemma not previously encountered with the case of southern Italy. In southern Italy the civic groups that existed, did so as a repudiation of the lack of government in the area (Rossi), this of course might aid in understanding why southern Italy did not develop a democratic political culture. However in the case of Germany, the citizens were engaged in government with the potential to mold it into any model that they saw fit. In light of this information the reason that German civic culture gave rise to National Socialism instead of democracy lends credence to the claim that not all types of “social capital” lead to democracy.
The groups that rose up in Weimar Germany were groups that stressed “solidarity”, and “national unity”, in other words they fostered a sense of community over the importance of the individual. Berman wrote that, “Civil society institutions often catered to members of a particular group: socialists, Catholics, and bourgeois Protestants each joined their own choral societies and bird-watching clubs”(Berman 412). Groups that were seemingly apolitical or irreligious were connected to a larger “we” identity, or as Berman put it, “However horizontally organized and civic minded these associations may have been, they tended to hive their memberships off from the rest of society and contribute to the formation of what one observer has called ‘ferociously jealous small republics.’”(Berman 426). It should be noted that even though the groups displayed some vertical tendencies they did “conform to the type of civil society institutions neo-Tocquevillean scholars (e.g. Putnam) hold up as exemplary: ‘horizontally’ organized, stressing equality and community, devoted to overcoming narrow particularistic interests.”(Berman 412). The most important observation to be garnered from Berman’s case study of civic groups in Weimar Germany was that the groups, despite being horizontally organized (with the exception of political or religious association), fostered a different sort of mentality that impacted the type of political culture that ensued.
Another case study which illustrates the idea that social capital has a proactive effect in creating non democratic governments is the case of Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. In his book Crafting Democracy, Nicolai Petro discusses how previously communist controlled eastern European countries grappled with sociopolitical change after the fall of the Soviet Union. Initially it might be assumed that, in line with Putnam’s model, these countries did not have histories of civic groups and that under communist control, they surely did not. Petro paints a very different picture. He writes that, “Studies of the social networks in Eastern Europe reveal that even the most repressive socialist regimes left some space for private social interaction. These networks promoted economic efficiency, built trust among independent actors, and provided a modest form of socialization outside of official channels.”(Petro 101). These groups that Petro describes once again meet Putnam’s criteria for social capital, and as did earlier examples, they did not result in the growth of a democratic political culture.
As with the case of Weimar Germany, the thriving civic groups that Petro described were usually oriented around specific political views. Petro writes that, “Some scholars have suggested that where the private sphere of friends and family overlapped with the sphere of state mandated social intercourse, it led to a distinct socialist brand of social capital.”(Petro 101). This concept of there being differentiated forms of social capital is again reminiscent of what was observed in the case of northern Italy and in Weimar Germany. In all the case studies presented the theme that stands most prominently is that civic groups that are organized around a political ideology, whether that ideology be that the government is too inept to carry out justice (as in the case of the mafia), or that there is a need for sociopolitical cohesiveness and “solidarity”(as in the case of Germany), or as in the case of eastern Europe, that for all things to go as smoothly as possible it is beneficial to form networks of civic engagement that would create “economic efficiency” and build “trust among independent actors”. The biggest take away from Petro’s analysis of Eastern European civic groups during communism is that social capital need not always lead to a democratic culture, and could instead be a “distinct socialist brand of social capital.” Social capital can engender a variety of political cultures based on the unique social context that a civic group exists within.
As Berman, Sabetti, and Petro demonstrated in their respective works, the networks of civil engagement that existed in northern Italy, Weimar Germany, and Eastern Europe were groups characterized by either non democratic mentalities or strong vertical tendencies present in some aspect of the organization (e.g. political ties). For example, Berman writes that in Weimar Germany “a wide variety of organizations, many of which (such as patriotic societies, sports and reading clubs, and neighborhood associations) were designed to foster certain values and lifestyles, rather than directly engage the political process.”(Berman 408). In Northern Italy, even though the Mafia “arose from a self-help tradition” (Sabetti 223) and was an organization that existed initially to benefit those left without the proper social resources, its existence and membership within the mafia became characterized by a disapproval of the ‘official government’, and the notion that those services traditionally sought from government were made available by the mafia (Rossi). In Novgorod under socialism, civic groups were present that made social decisions that aided in government efficiency. In spite of the latter, southern Italian, Weimar, and Eastern European civic groups were still largely horizontal. Because of Putnam’s oversight of the effect that group dynamic has on the type social capital that a given group contributes, his approach is flawed in its assumption that social capital exists only within either democratic cultures or pre-democratic cultures.
Works Cited:
Berman, Shari. “Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic” World Politics 49.3. 1997
Petro, Nicolai. Crafting Democracy. NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Print
Putnam, Robert. Making Democracy Work. Cambridge: Princeton University Press, 1994. Print
Sabetti, Fillipo. Village Politics and the Mafia in Siciliy. Mcgill: Queens University Press. 2003. Print.
Rossi, Michael. Lecture. “Politics & Culture: The Social Capital Approach”. Rutgers University. New Brunswick, NJ. Oct. 2013
