A RENAISSANCE OF POLITICAL-CULTURE

Theory: Cultural differences drive significant elements of political a nd economic life. Hypotheses: (1) effective governance hinges critical ly on traditions of civic engagement; (2) political culture fundamenta lly drives economic performance and democratic stability. Method: Rean alysis of two data sets: (1) the first includes information collected by Putnam (1993) on a variety of political, economic and social indica tors for the 20 Italian regions; (2) the second includes comparable in formation collected by Inglehart (1990) for the industrial democracies . Results: We find little evidence to indicate a systematic relationsh ip between political culture and political and economic performance.