Robert Putnam: Trust as a Fundamental Element of Civil Society and Democratic Governance

This paper deals with Robert Putnam as a political thinker from a view-point of the conception of social trust as a fundamental element of civic community and democratic governance, which is based on his study: Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy from 1993. The focus is on one of the key elements of his reasoning, namely the concept of confidence and an argumentative statement of his evolutionary view of building social trust in the civic communities of northern Italy and the reasons for its absence in the southern regions of Italy. Attention is also paid to Putnam's normative concept of spreading and building social trust. The final part summarizes Putnam's work and its possible use to analyse the prospects of democracy and democratic political culture in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.