In the early 1970s, political power was decentralized in Italy. The power once held by the central government in Rome was reallocated to the newly created regional governments. Constitutionally, the regions possessed similar political institutions. However, the regions varied socially, economically and in political context. Putnam, seeing a ready laboratory for social science, chose to study the role of environmental factors on institutional performance in the new regional governments. Institutions serve as Putnam’s independent variable, while a number of environmental factors act as the dependent variables. As such three main research questions emerged; 1) how does institutional change affect identity, power, and strategy of the regional political actors, 2) how is institutional performance a function of history, and lastly 3) which features of social context most powerfully affect institutional performance (8).
In examining the institutional impacts on identity, power, and strategy of regional politicos, Putnam builds upon the “new institutionalism” proposed by March and Olsen. According to the new institutional paradigm: intuitions reshape the identities of political actors, redistribute political power, and instill new norms for political behavior. Putnam argues that the identity of regional political actors has evolved to create a system in which actors experience an “ideological depolarization.” Party identity has become less extreme and regional politicians have taken a more centrist stance than their counterparts in the central government. This has lead regional politicos to develop a more accepting attitude of rival parties and a system of consensus in which inter-party conflict has been replaced by cooperation. The author argues that such changes in political identity occurred due to the institutional structure of the regional governments. As regional institutions became more developed, regional actors saw loyalty to regional constituent
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