Structural and cultural theories fail to explain Italy’s persistent southern underdevelopment.

Evidence

The explanations offered for this, whether structural or cultural, appeared inadequate from both a theoretical and a political perspective; and the need for a more effective understanding was directly proportional to the growing pessimism. It is paradoxical that in a country where Vico was among the first of philosophers to demolish forcibly a metaphysical view of history and place the latter firmly in human hands, the inhabitants seem to wander in darkness and blame, for Except for two essays - Anthony Pagden’s on eighteenth-century Naples and mine on the mafia - this volume diverges from that point of departure, and in a mixture of theoretical and historical contributions tries to address the underlying problems, shared by many other political and economic areas where cooperation fails to emerge irrespective of the collective interest. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 45

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Putnam’s ‘Making Democracy Work’ and the entire social-capital literature on Italian regional divergence — a core comparative case for the reader’s trust-without-observability framework.