Political Participation and Social Capital

This chapter examines political participation as a key component of social capital in democratic societies. Following the tradition of Putnam’s Making Democracy Work, political participation reflects not only the pursuit of interests but also a civic sense that sustains institutional efficiency and social cohesion. In Italy, the crises of political parties and ideologies have transformed both the forms and meanings of participation: the decline of traditional engagement, such as voting or party membership, has been accompanied by the rise of new, hybrid modes, including social movements and civic activism. These changes challenge researchers to reconsider the contemporary relevance of social capital indicators measuring political participation, such as electoral turnout and newspaper readership, vis-à-vis their capacity to represent today’s civic culture. In this chapter, we take up this challenge by empirically analysing their evolution across Italian provinces between 2008 and 2024. We find that, although their salience has diminished due to social and technological changes (e.g., growing abstentionism, digital information flows), electoral turnout and newspaper readership continue to delineate a consistent geography of regional disparities in Italy’s social capital, while enriching a diachronic perspective grounded in previous studies.