Social capital, public expenditure and the quality of provision. The Sicilian experience

In the past two decades Italian regions have gained autonomy in managingpublic expenditure, while their political system was reformed. In order to explainthe persistence of the gap between North and South in relation to the quality ofpublic services, literature has returned to focus on social capital, debating on themechanisms through which social capital influences the quality of public services.The article compares two sectors (public health and vocational training) in a context(the Sicilian region)characterized by lack of social capital and weak performanceof public institutions. Focusing on the nature of the existing causal relations, theirvariation over time and sectors, the article traces the processes through which socialcapital influences institutional performance.It is shown that neither the public expenditure expansion cycles nor changes in theanalyzed policies can be explained directly by a diffuse civic culture or by electoralbehavior, as it would be expected by a culturalist approach to social capital. Onthe contrary, they can be related to the political context in which political decisionswere taken, and they support the hypothesis of an autonomous role of politics inexplaining institutional performance.