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Abstract : |
There is a number of places around the world where three unfortunate sets of circumstances coexist: where people do not cooperate when it would be mutually beneficial to do so; where they compete in harmful ways; and, finally, where they refrain from competing in those instances when they could all gain considerably from competition. There are probably not many, though, where such a powerful combination has lasted for centuries. Southern Italy-especially the Tyrrhenian regions of Campania, Calabria, and Sicily- is conspicuous among them, in spite of the fact that Italy as a whole is now one of the most successful of industrial countries. 1 It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that people in the south are either stubbornly irrational or entertain masochistic preferences. While the possibility cannot be excluded that they may have evolved such preferences as a means of reducing the cognitive dissonance caused by prolonged exposure to such an environment, the overall aim of this paper is to reconcile individual rationality with protracted collective disaster. If anything, in this case, the latter results from an excess of individual rationality. This paper is an account of the remarkable responses to a generalized absence of trust and of the mechanisms by which such responses, while reinforcing, |
