Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-2hk6m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-21T17:16:06.748Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Sidney Tarrow
Sidney Tarrow*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Political scientists are becoming more self-conscious about how they connect quantitative and qualitative data in social science and about the role of systematic country studies in comparative research. As the most striking example of both practices in recent years, Robert Putnam and his collaborators' Making Democracy Work deserves more serious criticism than it has received. While Putnam's original project aimed at a precise goal—studying how a new administrative reform is institutionalized—his ultimate project aimed at nothing less than examining how differently democracy works in different sociopolitical contexts, operationalized cross-sectionally in southern and northern Italy. The sources of these differences he found in the two regions' histories, which led him to employ the quantitative interregional data he had collected for one purpose to support a model of historical development of North and South. This historical reconstruction rests largely on qualitative data; but it also rests on a set of comparative inferences about individual values and community cohesiveness in the two regions that is of questionable historical validity and innocent of structural grounding. This article applauds Putnam's joining qualitative and quantitative data but attacks his reconstruction of Italian history to fit his model of social capital.

Type
Forum
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 90 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 389 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Agulhon, Maurice. 1982. The Republic in the Village: The People of the Var from the French Revolution to the Second Republic. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bagnasco, Arnaldo. 1994. “Regioni, tradizione civica, modernizzazione italiana: un commento alla ricerca di Putnam.” Stato e mercato 40(April):93–104.Google Scholar
Bagnasco, Arnaldo. 1995. “Regions, Civic Tradition and Italian Modernization.” APSA-CP (Newsletter of the APSA Organized Section in Comparative Politics) 6(Summer):4–5.Google Scholar
Banfield, Edward C. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Chicago: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Bizzocchi, R. 1987. Chiesa e potere nella Toscana del Quattrocento. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Cohn, Samuel K. Jr. 1994. “La storia secondo Robert Putnam.” Polis 8(August):315–24.Google Scholar
della Porta, Donatella. 1992. Lo scambio occulto. Casi di corruzione politica in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Feltrin, Paolo. 1994. Review of La tradizione civica nelle regioni italiane. Rivista italiana di scienza politica 24(April):169–72.Google Scholar
Fried, Robert. 1963. The Italian Prefects: A Study in Administrative Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Ellis. 1996. “Thinking About How Democracy Works,” Politics and Society 24(March):7–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary, Keohane, Robert, and Verba, Sidney. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inquiry in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Laitin, David D. 1995. “The Civic Culture at Thirty.” American Political Science Review 89(March):168–73.Google Scholar
LaPalombara, Joseph. 1965. “Italy: Fragmentation, Isolation, Alienation.” In Political Culture and Political Development ed. Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
LaPalombara, Joseph. 1993. Review of Making Democracy Work, Political Science Quarterly 108(3):549–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonardi, Robert, and Nanetti, Raffaella Y., eds. 1990. The Regions and European Integration: The Case of Emilia-Romagna. New York: Pinter.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret. 1996. “Social and Unsocial Capital.” Politics and Society 24(March):45–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1995. “Malaise and Resiliency in America,” Journal of Democracy 6(3):2–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowi, Theodore J. 1985. “The State in Politics: The Relation Between Policy and Administration.” In Regulatory Policy and the Social Sciences, ed. Noll, Roger G.. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Molho, Anthony. 1994. Marriage Alliances in Late Medieval Florence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mutti, Antonio. 1995. “Paths of Development.” APSA-CP (Newsletter of the APSA Organized Section in Comparative Politics) 6(Summer):6–8.Google Scholar
Nanetti, Raffaella Y. 1988. Growth and Territorial Policies: The Italian Model of Social Capitalism. New York: Pinter.Google Scholar
Pasquino, Gianfranco. 1994. “La politica eclissata dalla tradizione civica.” Polis 8(August):307–13.Google Scholar
Pasquino, Gianfranco. 1995. “The Politics of Civic Tradition Eclipsed.” APSA-CP (Newsletter of the APSA Organized Section in Comparative Politics) 6(Summer):8–9.Google Scholar
Pizzorno, Alessandro. 1971. “Amoral Familism and Historical Marginality.” In European Politics: A Reader, ed. Dogan, Mattei and Rose, Richard. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D., with Leonardi, Robert and Nanetti, Raffaella Y.. 1993a. Making Democracy Work. Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. 1993b. “The Prosperous Community.” American Prospect. 13(Spring):35–42.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. 1994. “Lo storico e l'attivista.” Polis 8(August):325–28.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. 1995. “Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital.” Journal of Democracy 6(1):65–78.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D., Leonardi, Robert, and Nanetti, Raffaella Y.. 1981. “Devolution as a Political Process: The Case of Italy.” Publius 11(1):95–117.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D., Leonardi, Robert, Nanetti, Raffaella Y., and Pavoncello, Franco. 1983. “Explaining Institutional Success: The Case of Italian Regional Government,” American Political Science Review 77(March):55–74.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D., Leonardi, Robert, and Nanetti, Raffaella Y.. 1985. La Pianta e le radici: Il Radicamento dell'istituto regionale nel sistema politico italiano. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Ramella, Francesco. 1995. “Mezzogiorno e società civile: Ancora l'epoca del familismo?” Il Mulino 44(May–June):471–80.Google Scholar
“Review Symposium, The Qualitative-Quantitative Disputation: Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba's Designing Social Inquiry. American Political Science Review 89(July):45–81.Google Scholar
Sabetti, Filippo 1996. “Path Dependency and Civic Culture: Some Lessons from Italy About Interpreting Social Experiments.” Politics and Society 24(March):19–44.Google Scholar
Salvemini, Gaetano. 1955. Scritti sulla questione meridionale, 1896–1955. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney. 1967a. Peasant Communism in Southern Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney. 1967b. “Political Dualism and Italian Communism.” American Political Science Review 61(March):39–53.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney. 1995. “Bridging the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide in Political Science,” American Political Science Review 89(June):471–74.Google Scholar
Trigilia, Carlo. 1986. Grandi partiti e piccole imprese. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Trigilia, Carlo. 1992. Sviluppo senza autonomia. Effetti perversi delle politiche nel Mezzogiorno. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Trigilia, Carlo. 1994. “Dai comuni medievali alle nostre regioni.” L'indice, No. 3(March):36.Google Scholar
Trigilia, Carlo, ed. 1995. Cultura e sviluppo. L'associazionismo nel mezzogiorno. Rome: Donzelli.Google Scholar
Ventura, A. 1964. Nobiltà e popolo nella società veneta del ′400 e ′500. Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.