Making Democracy Work in the Heart of Emilia: An Empirical Investigation of Social Capital

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to take the temperature of social capital in four cities – Bologna, Modena, Reggio nell’Emilia, and Parma – in the historical region Emilia in Italy. Social capital, which has been described as ‘the key to making democracy work’ is conceptualized and decomposed into two key variables: trust and participation. Furthermore, the study consists of new empirical statistical data compiled by myself. With this theoretical framework, context, and empirical material I pose the question: what is each city’s level of social capital and what variations can be exposed? The results, which are limited to the questions in the survey, indicate that the cities have a relatively low score of social capital, especially in the dimension that highlights trust. The results also expose a pattern where Bologna and Parma are performing relatively better than Reggio and Modena, in almost all variables measured. Citizens from all cities tend to participate in public affairs through channels, such as the media, Internet and demonstrations, instead of through political parties, and they all indicate a moderately low confidence in political institutions. In its concluding chapter, this thesis moreover gives three suggestions for further studies: (1) to further examine the methodological complexity and how to enable more precise studies of social capital; (2) to continue the study of urban social capital but in a wider comparative context with rural social capital, and; (3) to further examine the socio-spatiality of social capital, to simply study the creation and appearance of social capital in place and space.