WHAT REMAINS:

Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital (Robert D. Putnam, January 1995, Journal of Democracy)

Many students of the new democracies that have emerged over the past decade and a half have emphasized the importance of a strong and active civil society to the consolidation of democracy. Especially with regard to the postcommunist countries, scholars and democratic activists alike have lamented the absence or obliteration of traditions of independent civic engagement and a widespread tendency toward passive reliance on the state. To those concerned with the weakness of civil societies in the developing or postcommunist world, the advanced Western democracies and above all the United States have typically been taken as models to be emulated. There is striking evidence, however, that the vibrancy of American civil society has notably declined over the past several decades.

Ever since the publication of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, the United States has played a central role in systematic studies of the links between democracy and civil society. Although this is in part because trends in American life are often regarded as harbingers of social modernization, it is also because America has traditionally been considered unusually "civic" (a reputation that, as we shall later see, has not been entirely unjustified).

When Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, it was the Americans' propensity for civic association that most impressed him as the key to their unprecedented ability to make democracy work. "Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition," he observed, "are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types--religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. . . . Nothing, in my view, deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America."

Recently, American social scientists of a neo-Tocquevillean bent have unearthed a wide range of empirical evidence that the quality of public life and the performance of social institutions (and not only in America) are indeed powerfully influenced by norms and networks of civic engagement. Researchers in such fields as education, urban poverty, unemployment, the control of crime and drug abuse, and even health have discovered that successful outcomes are more likely in civically engaged communities. Similarly, research on the varying economic attainments of different ethnic groups in the United States has demonstrated the importance of social bonds within each group. These results are consistent with research in a wide range of settings that demonstrates the vital importance of social networks for job placement and many other economic outcomes.

Meanwhile, a seemingly unrelated body of research on the sociology of economic development has also focused attention on the role of social networks. Some of this work is situated in the developing countries, and some of it elucidates the peculiarly successful "network capitalism" of East Asia. Even in less exotic Western economies, however, researchers have discovered highly efficient, highly flexible "industrial districts" based on networks of collaboration among workers and small entrepreneurs. Far from being paleoindustrial anachronisms, these dense interpersonal and interorganizational networks undergird ultramodern industries, from the high tech of Silicon Valley to the high fashion of Benetton.

The norms and networks of civic engagement also powerfully affect the performance of representative government. That, at least, was the central conclusion of my own 20-year, quasi-experimental study of subnational governments in different regions of Italy. Although all these regional governments seemed identical on paper, their levels of effectiveness varied dramatically. Systematic inquiry showed that the quality of governance was determined by longstanding traditions of civic engagement (or its absence). Voter turnout, newspaper readership, membership in choral societies and football clubs--these were the hallmarks of a successful region. In fact, historical analysis suggested that these networks of organized reciprocity and civic solidarity, far from being an epiphenomenon of socioeconomic modernization, were a precondition for it.

No doubt the mechanisms through which civic engagement and social connectedness produce such results--better schools, faster economic development, lower crime, and more effective government--are multiple and complex. While these briefly recounted findings require further confirmation and perhaps qualification, the parallels across hundreds of empirical studies in a dozen disparate disciplines and subfields are striking. Social scientists in several fields have recently suggested a common framework for understanding these phenomena, a framework that rests on the concept of social capital. By analogy with notions of physical capital and human capital--tools and training that enhance individual productivity--"social capital" refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.

The idea of "social capital" has lurked in the background of our recent discussion of National Service. I was suggesting--obviously innefectively--that social capital is being so diminished in the West that eventually an involuntary military might be the only place where any was cultivated. It comes as no surprise that it was, again, Alexis de Tocqueville who identified many of the ways in which the Welfare State would destroy social capital, in his Memoir on Pauperism.

Likewise, the great Albert Jay Nock made clear the dangers in his bookOur Enemy, the State:

If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between society and the State. This is the fact that interests the student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like price-fixing, wage-fixing, inflation, political banking, "agricultural adjustment," and similar items of State policy that fill the pages of newspapers and the mouths of publicists and politicians. All these can be run up under one head. They have an immediate and temporary importance, and for this reason they monopolize public attention, but they all come to the same thing; which is, an increase of State power and a corresponding decrease of social power.

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power. There is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

Moreover, it follows that with any exercise of State power, not only the exercise of social power in the same direction, but the disposition to exercise it in that direction, tends to dwindle. Mayor Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent who had been complaining about the inefficiency of the police, that any citizen has the right to arrest a malefactor and bring him before a magistrate. "The law of England and of this country," he wrote, "has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen." State exercise of that right through a police force had gone on so steadily that not only were citizens indisposed to exercise it, but probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it.

Heretofore in this country sudden crises of misfortune have been met by a mobilization of social power. In fact (except for certain institutional enterprises like the home for the aged, the lunatic-asylum, city-hospital and county-poorhouse) destitution, unemployment, "depression"and similar ills, have been no concern of the State, but have been relieved by the application of social power. Under Mr. Roosevelt, however, the State assumed this function, publicly announcing the doctrine, brand-new in our history, that the State owes its citizens a living. Students of politics, of course, saw in this merely an astute proposal for a prodigious enhancement of State power; merely what, as long ago as 1794, James Madison called "the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government"; and the passage of time has proved that they were right. The effect of this upon the balance between State power and social power is clear, and also its effect of a general indoctrination with the idea that an exercise of social power upon such matters is no longer called for.

It is largely in this way that the progressive conversion of social power into State power becomes acceptable and gets itself accepted. When the Johnstown flood occurred, social power was immediately mobilized and applied with intelligence and vigour. Its abundance, measured by money alone, was so great that when everything was finally put in order, something like a million dollars remained. If such a catastrophe happened now, not only is social power perhaps too depleted for the like exercise, but the general instinct would be to let the State see to it. Not only has social power atrophied to that extent, but the disposition to exercise it in that particular direction has atrophied with it. If the State has made such matters its business, and has confiscated the social power necessary to deal with them, why, let it deal with them. We can get some kind of rough measure of this general atrophy by our own disposition when approached by a beggar. Two years ago we might have been moved to give him something; today we are moved to refer him to the State's relief-agency. The State has said to society, You are either not exercising enough power to meet the emergency, or are exercising it in what I think is an incompetent way, so I shall confiscate your power, and exercise it to suit myself. Hence when a beggar asks us for a quarter, our instinct is to say that the State has already confiscated our quarter for his benefit, and he should go to the State about it.

Every positive intervention that the State makes upon industry and commerce has a similar effect. When the State intervenes to fix wages or prices, or to prescribe the conditions of competition, it virtually tells the enterpriser that he is not exercising social power in the right way, and therefore it proposes to confiscate his power and exercise it according to the State's own judgment of what is best. Hence the enterpriser's instinct is to let the State look after the consequences. As a simple illustration of this, a manufacturer of a highly specialized type of textiles was saying to me the other day that he had kept his mill going at a loss for five years because he did not want to turn his workpeople on the street in such hard times, but now that the State had stepped in to tell him how he must run his business, the State might jolly well take the responsibility.

The process of converting social power into State power may perhaps be seen at its simplest in cases where the State's intervention is directly competitive. The accumulation of State power in various countries has been so accelerated and diversified within the last twenty years that we now see the State functioning as telegraphist, telephonist, match-peddler, radio-operator, cannon-founder, railway-builder and owner, railway-operator, wholesale and retail tobacconist, shipbuilder and owner, chief chemist, harbour-maker and dockbuilder, housebuilder, chief educator, newspaper-proprietor, food-purveyor, dealer in insurance, and so on through a long list.

It is obvious that private forms of these enterprises must tend to dwindle in proportion as the energy of the State's encroachments on them increases, for the competition of social power with State power is always disadvantaged, since the State can arrange the terms of competition to suit itself, even to the point of outlawing any exercise of social power whatever in the premises; in other words, giving itself a monopoly. Instances of this expedient are common; the one we are probably best acquainted with is the State's monopoly of letter-carrying. Social power is estopped by sheer fiat from application to this form of enterprise, notwithstanding it could carry it on far cheaper, and, in this country at least, far better. The advantages of this monopoly in promoting the State's interests are peculiar. No other, probably, could secure so large and well-distributed a volume of patronage, under the guise of a public service in constant use by so large a number of people; it plants a lieutenant of the State at every country-crossroad. It is by no means a pure coincidence that an administration's chief almoner and whip-at-large is so regularly appointed Postmaster-general.

Thus the State "turns every contingency into a resource" for accumulating power in itself, always at the expense of social power; and with this it develops a habit of acquiescence in the people. New generations appear, each temperamentally adjusted - or as I believe our American glossary now has it, "conditioned" - to new increments of State power, and they tend to take the process of continuous accumulation as quite in order. All the State's institutional voices unite in confirming this tendency; they unite in exhibiting the progressive conversion of social power into State power as something not only quite in order, but even as wholesome and necessary for the public good.

I believe National Service to be worthwhile in and of itself, but also argued that worries over its coercive nature seem fairly silly when the State coerces so much else. Some folks took exception to this defeatism, but how not be defeatist when our greatest social critics have been sounding the alarums for 17 decades but the growth of the State and the attrition of Society continue apace?

MORE [Robert D. Putnam was born in Port Clinton, OH in 1940]:
-Robert D. Putnam (Director, The Saguaro Seminar : Civic Engagement in America)
-BIO: robert putnam (infoed.org)
-Better Together (an initiative of the Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government)
-BOOK SITE : Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam
BOOK: Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) (Robert D. Putnam)
-ESSAY : Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital (Robert D. Putnam, Journal of Democracy 6:1, Jan 1995)
-ESSAY : Bowling Together : Since September 11, Americans' trust in one another and their government has soared. To what political end? (Robert D. Putnam, The Prospect)
-ESSAY: Walking the civic talk after Sept. 11 (Thomas H. Sander and Robert D. Putnam, February 19, 2002, CS Monitor)
-ESSAY: Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America (Robert D. Putnam, APSA Net)
-EXCERPT : Chapter One of Bowling Alone
-BOOKNOTES : Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam (CSPAN)
-ESSAY : A Better Society in a Time of War (Robert D. Putnam, October 19, 2001, NY Times)
-RESPONSE : to A Better Society in a Time of War : Victory Gardens?! (Katha Pollitt, 11/19/01, The Nation)
-ESSAY : The Strange Disappearance of Civic America (Robert D. Putnam, December 1996, American Prospect)
-RESPONSES : Unsolved Mysteries: The Tocqueville Files (Michael Schudson, Theda Skocpol, Rick Valelly, Robert D. Putnam, March 1996, American Prospect)
-ESSAY : The Prosperous Community : Social Capital and Public Life (Robert D. Putnam, March 21, 1993, American Prospect)
-INTERVIEW : Lonely in America: Robert Putnam argues that the time has come "to reweave the fabric of our communities" (Atlantic Monthly, September 21, 2000)
-INTERVIEW : "BOWLING ALONE": An interview with Robert Putnam about America's collapsing civic life. (Russ Edgerton, 1995, American Association for Higher Education)
-AUDIO INTERVIEW: Bowling Alone: Robert Putnam on American Community (The Connection, July 11, 2000, NPR)
-Moving Ideas Network
-PROFILE: Robert D. Putnam: For a Meaningful Political Science (Thomas R. Rochon, APSA Net)
-ESSAY: SOCIAL CAPITAL: Bowling along (Andrew Leigh, 29-5-2002, Australian Policy Online)
-ESSAY : Kicking in Groups : Just as intriguing as Robert Putnam's theory that we are "bowling alone"-- that the bonds of civic association are dissolving-- is how readily the theory has been accepted (Nicholas Lemann, April 1996, Atlantic Monthly)
-ESSAY : Putnam's America : Critics have reflexively affirmed Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone thesis, the notion that Americans are losing their connectedness to one another. But this "social capital" is not diminishing. It's just changing. (Garry Wills, July 2000, The American Prospect)
-ESSAY : The 'bowling alone' phenomenon is bunk (Robert Samuelson, Washington Post)
-ESSAY: Are we still bowling alone? (Christopher Shea, 12/15/2002, Boston Globe)
-ESSAY: 'Bowling Alone' on Screen: Notions of the Political in End of Century American Film (Brian Neve, American Political Science Association)
-ESSAY: Diversity Causes "Bowling Alone" (Steve Sailer, V-Dare)
-ESSAY: Groupthink Goes Bowling Alone (Michael Gilson De Lemos, The Laissez Faire City Times)
-ARCHIVES : Articles by Robert D. Putnam (The American Prospect)
-ARCHIVES: "robert d. putnam" (Find Articles)
-ARCHIVES : "bowling alone" (Find Articles)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. By Robert D. Putnam (MARGARET TALBOT, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of Bowling Alone (Leslie Lenkowsky, Commentary)
-REVIEW: of Bowling Alone (Mark Chaves, Christian Century)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (Benjamin R. Barber)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (John Leonard, Salon)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (Curtis Gans, Washington Monthly)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (CHRISTOPHER FARRELL, Business Week)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (Tamara Straus, Sonoma County Independent)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (James A. Montanye, The Independent Review)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (Alan Wolfe, Harvard Magazine)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (John Atlas, Executive Director of Passaic County Legal Aid Society and President of the National Housing Institute.)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (David Tuller, Blueprint for Health)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (Jim Murphy, Voice of the Turtle)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (Dennis Altman, Gay & Lesbian Review)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (Alison Van Rooy, Isuma)
-REVIEW: of Bowling Alone (Cato Journal)
-REVIEW : of Bowling Alone (ED SCHWARTZ, Center for Consensual Democracy)
-REVIEW: of Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America. by Robert D. Putnam (Gary D. Lynn, Social Capital)

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 3, 2003 7:47 PM