Valeria Sodano and Fabio Verneau 201
occur either because of the impoverishment and fragmentation of weaker parties in the
networks (with less physical and psychological resources left to invest in common activities
and associability) or because of deregulation in labor security and environment protection
fostered by leading actors (with a generalized loss of confidence in all form of institutions able
to supply public goods).
2. Social capital and the processed tomato industry
2.1. Current structure and strategies
Italy accounts for about 35% of the whole world supply of processed tomato. The industry
exhibits a district-type form of organization, with two districts localized in narrow territories
around a central and a southern region, namely Emilia and Campania. These two regions are
often mentioned in the literature on social capital, as an example of territories following
different development patterns due to just that very different endowment of social capital. In
his seminal work on social capital Putnam (1993) argues that the higher economic performance
of Emilia, with respect to Campania, during the eighties and the nineties, was due to the greater
effectiveness of regional government (introduced in the 1970s), this latter associated with the
higher stock of social capital as measured by Putnam’s civic community index. Mackie (2001)
notices that already Macchiavelli held Emilia up as an example of a high trust society (and
hence a perfect candidate for a republican government), in contrast to the case of Campania, a
typical example of low-trust society that could be ruled only by a prince. Campania’s lack of
social capital has also been denounced in wider literature on institutional motivations
underlying the chronic underdevelopment of Southern Italy (Mutti, 1998).
As a result of these very different socio-cultural environments, the two processed tomato agro-
industrial districts look very different. Considering the three “integrating” factors generally
suggested by the literature on industrial districts, -1) economies of scope and localization, 2)
network externalities, and 3) local social capital (in terms of trust and associability)
endowment-, it can be said that the first factor accounts for the organizational strength of the
southern district, while factors 2) and 3) mainly pertain to the northern district.
Such differences are evident looking at the different structural and strategic traits of the
industry in the two regions, as summarised in tab. 1.