Measuring the durability of civic traditions
There is a contrast descriptions of civic engagement in the North and the South of Italy, which shows important and enduring differences within these two broad sections of the country, these differences are visible from region to region and also from province to province.

The statistics in this text confirms these differences from region to region in associations and collective solidarity exist since a century ago already.

All the modern manifestations of social solidarity and political mobilization between 1860-1920 were closely linked, and also associated with other manifestations of civic involvement and sociability, including electoral participation and cultural and recreational associations.

There is an astonishing constancy of regional traditions of civic involvement through more than a century of vast social change. Even with the massive migration and eco-social changes contemporary civic norms and practices still reflect the regional traditions that were established centuries ago.

How important are these deep traditions of civic life for institutional performance today ? According to the statistics in the text , it could have predicted the success or failure of regional government in Italy in the 1980’s with extraordinary accuracy from models of civic engagement nearly a century earlier.

Economic development and Civic traditions

Now a days civic community is closely associated with levels of social and economic development, we could easily think that only economic well-being can sustain a culture of civic involvement. But we can see in a first place that the prosperity of the communal republics is both the consequence and the cause of the norms and networks of civic engagement. In a second place civic differences between the north and the South of Italy over this millennium appear to have been more stable than the economic differences.

The civic regions weren’t always wealthy, but they