Italians Who Grumble – Social Capital and Civic Culture in Italy at the Threshold of the Pandemic

The aim of this study was to reconstruct the geography of social capital in Italy more than 25 years after Putnam's map of 1992. We used a statistical method (DBS, Distance Between Strata), which had not previously been applied to the study of social capital, and data from the 2019 ISTAT Multiscope Household Surveys “Aspects of daily life”. We analysed the distribution of social capital in the regions of Italy in multidimensional terms. With DBS it was indeed possible to consider various dimensions of social capital instead of using an overall index. It enabled us to isolate three types of Italians, which we called civic, non-civic and "grumbling" Italians. Grumbling Italians are citizens who take part in political and social life but have little trust in others and in public institutions. Their geographic identification is the main contribution of this article to Italian studies on social capital for at least two reasons: 1) it questions the “obvious” correlation between political participation and trust in institutions; 2) it provides an important basis for reflection on Italian civic culture.