bowling alone putnam essay

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• Journal of Democracy

Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital

• Robert D. Putnam
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• Volume 6, Number 1, January 1995
• 10.1353/jod.1995.0002
• View Citation

Additional Information

• Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital
• Robert D. Putnam (bio)

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,” [End Page 65] 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.” 1

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. 2 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. 3 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 [End Page 66] development, lower crime, and more effective government—are multiple and complex. While these briefly recounted findings require further confirmation and perhaps qualification, the...

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Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital

• Robert D. Putnam

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About the Author

Robert D. Putnam is Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University.

View all work by Robert D. Putnam

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• DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-62397-6_12
• Corpus ID: 154350113

Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital

• Published in The City Reader 1 January 1995
• Political Science, Sociology
• Journal of Democracy

6,909 Citations

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Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community: Robert D. Putnam; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000, 541 pages

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Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

By robert d. putnam, summary written by brett reeder, conflict research consortium, citation:  putnam, robert d., 2000,  bowling alone: the collapse and revival of american community , simon & schuster, new york, ny.

Social capital refers to "the connections among individuals' social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them." (p 19) Much like the economic concepts of physical and human capital, the social networks of social capital are thought to have value.  Bowling Alone  empirically demonstrates a drop in social capital in contemporary America, identifies the cause and consequences of this drop, and suggests ways to improve social capital in the future.

Though social capital varies across many dimensions, according to Putnam. the most important distinction is between bridging (inclusive) and bonding (exclusive) social capital. Bonding social capital networks are inward-looking and tend to reinforce exclusive identities and homogenous groups. Examples of such networks include ethnic fraternal organizations and country clubs. On the other hand, bridging social capital networks are outward looking and include people across "diverse social cleavages." Examples of bridging social capital include the civil rights movement and youth service groups.

In general, bonding networks are most useful when specific reciprocity and mobilizing solidarity is necessary for "getting by" in oppressive situations. Bridging networks are good for linking to external assets and for information diffusion for the purpose of "getting ahead" of the status quo. As Putnam put it, "bonding social capital constitutes a kind of sociological superglue, whereas bridging social capital provides a sociological WD-40" (p 23). While useful for analytical purposes, this bonding/bridging distinction is not an "either or" category, but is rather a "more or less" dimension. That is, social capital can (and usually does) exist in both a bonding and a bridging forms simultaneously. For example: a black church may bond individuals based on race and religious belief, but bridge individuals across class lines.

Having described what social capital is, Putnam turns his attention to how it has changed over time by conducting a meta-analysis of a large body of data from various sources. In doing so, he identifies a dominant theme: "For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago--silently, without warning--that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current" (p 27). Thus, social capital increased in the US until the 1970s and then suddenly decreased right up to the present. This theme is consistent across seven separate measures of social capital, including: political participation, civic participation, religious participation, workplace networks, informal networks, mutual trust, and altruism.

Though most measures indicate a significant drop in social capital over the last three decades, Putman identifies four exceptions: an increase in volunteerism among youth, the growth in telecommunications, grassroots activity among evangelical conservatives, and an increase in self-help support. However, these exceptions do not offset the overall trend, indeed, by virtually every conceivable measure, social capital has eroded steadily and sometimes dramatically over the past two generations." (p 287)

To identify why this might be, Putnam looked to see "whether the declines in civic engagement (social capital) are correlated across time and space with certain social characteristics" (p 185). Once he identified a correlation, he applied three additional tests to ensure the validity of potential causal factors. First, all correlations he identified had to lack spuriousness. Second, the proposed explanatory factor had to change in the relevant way. Finally, the direction of causation (result vs. cause) was questioned. Using these standards, Putnam rejected several common explanations for the contemporary drop in social capital, none of which were found to have had a statistically significant effect. These included educational deficiency, destruction of the nuclear family, race and racism, big government and the welfare state, and market economics.

Additionally he identified four social characteristics that passed his tests of validity: pressures of time and money, mobility and sprawl, television, and generational differences. The lion's share (up to 50%) of the change in social capital over the last three decades is thought to be attributable to generational differences. People born in the 20s and 30s are significantly more socially connected than later generations, largely as a result of social habits and values developed during the "great mid-century cataclysm" or World War II. Generational differences are also synergistic with TV, as different generations have different habits regarding TV. As a whole, TV is thought to contribute up to 25%, the pressures of time and money, about 10%, and sprawl another 10% because it takes more time to get places. Sprawl is hence associated with increasing social segregation, and it disrupts community "boundedness". This leaves at least 15% unexplained.

But does it really matter that social capital is declining? Putnam argues that, indeed, it does, as social capital "has many features that help people translate aspirations into realities." (p 288) Putnam identifies five such features. First, social capital makes collective problems easier to resolve, as there is less opposition between parties. This results in improved social environments, such as safer and more productive neighborhoods. Second, it makes business transactions easier, since when people trust each other, there is less of a need to spend time and money enforcing contracts. As a result, economic prosperity increases generally. Third, social capital widens our awareness of our mutual connectivity. This can improve the quality of our civic and democratic institutions. Fourth, it helps to increase and speed up the flow of information, which, in turn, improves education and economic production. Finally, social capital improves our health and happiness through both psychological and biological processes which require human contact.

Unfortunately the effects of social capital are not always positive. Indeed, bonding social capital, in particular, can lead to destructive divisions within and between societies as groups develop a collective identity based largely on exclusion. But the "classical liberal argument" against community (or social capital networks) is its potential to restrict freedom and tolerance. Closely-linked communities (those with high social capital) can restrict individual freedoms through social pressure, especially if tolerance and freedom are not values of the community. Putnam acknowledges that this can happen, but it is not an inherent effect of social capital. In fact, he provides evidence to the contrary which suggests that, "Far from being incompatible, liberty and fraternity (or bonding social capital) are mutually supportive, and this remains true when we control for other factors" (p 356).

Another argument against community holds that social capital can encourage inequality by concentrating wealth in closed communities. Again, Putnam acknowledges that this can happen, but is not a necessary consequence of community or social capital. Instead he argues that while "[s]ocial inequalities may sometimes be embedded in social capital ...both across space and across time, equality and fraternity (bonding social capital) are strongly positively correlated." (p 358-359). Thus, while social capital can, at times, restrict freedom, and enhance inequality, it does not inherently do so. On the contrary, empirical evidence suggests that social capital, freedom, and equality are in general, mutually reinforcing.

But what can we do to improve our social capital? According to Putnam, we should first learn from the past where "lessons can be found in a period uncannily like our own" (p 367). The period he is referring to consists of roughly 1870-1915. During this time "dramatic technological, economic, and social change rendered obsolete a significant stock of social capital" (p 368) due to industrial revolution, urbanization, and waves of new immigration. In response, the leaders of the day re-developed social capital with an "extraordinary burst of social inventiveness and political reform" (p 368), which included the founding or refurbishing of most of our contemporary civic institutions such as the Boy Scouts, the NRA and the NAACP.

While the specific reforms of this time period "are no longer appropriate for our time...the practical, enthusiastic idealism of that era--and its achievements-- should inspire us" (p 401). In this vein, Putnam makes general suggestions in seven "spheres deserving special attention" with the intention of encouraging readers to develop contemporary innovative solutions.

• First, he suggests educational reforms be undertaken, including improved civics education, well designed service learning programs, extra curricular activities and smaller schools.
• He argues for a more family-oriented workplace which allows for the formation of social capital on the job.
• He encourages further efforts at new urbanism.
• He would like to see religion become both more influential and at the same time more tolerant.
• The technologies that reinforce, rather than replace, face-to-face interaction should be encouraged.
• Art and culture should become more interactive.
• Finally, politics requires campaign reforms and a decentralization of power.

In this important book, Putnam demonstrates that social capital increased between 1900 and the late 1960s and then dramatically decreased, largely as a result of generational succession, television, urban sprawl and the increasing pressures of time and money. This has resulted in an increase in a variety of social problems ranging from ineffective education to economic strain, to social conflict between individuals as well as groups. The solution to these problems likely rests with re-developing social capital, much like was done in the Progressive Era (but with solutions designed for contemporary America).

Though not inherent to community development, such a project must take into account the potential of social capital to limit liberty and equality. This is particularly true when developing bonding social capital which is unfortunately much easier to develop than bridging social capital as, "Social capital is often most easily created in opposition to something or someone else." (p 361) While bonding social capital can help oppressed people to "get by" through solidarity, bridging social capital is required to "get ahead" through increased generalized norms of reciprocity. The development of innovative forms of such social capital is Putnam's ultimate challenge to the reader.

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Bowling Alone

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Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

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Summary and Study Guide

In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community , Robert D. Putnam chronicles the decline of civic engagement and social connectedness in the late 20th-century United States and highlights the importance of renewing these forms of social capital for the sake of individual, societal, and democratic health. Putnam, a political science professor and former dean, has the expertise to contribute this work to the academic literature in social science. Originally published in 2000, the book became a national bestseller. In the academic world, the book became a seminal one, widely cited, and Putnam was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science in 2006, largely for this work and his efforts to increase civic engagement. All quotations and references in this guide are from the 2001 paperback edition.

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Drawing upon organizational records, survey reports, time diaries, and consumer spending, Putnam details a comprehensive decline in American communal life in the last third of the 20th century. Because of this decline, the US has a dwindling stock of social capital, which is essential to the health of American society and politics.

He begins with the decline in political participation, noting that not only voting but all forms of political participation have decreased. As a result, political institutions are hollowed out, and public discourse is less civil. Active involvement in face-to-face civic organizations, such as the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), has substantially slipped in this period as well. New civic organizations, such as many environmental groups, are professionally and centrally run and therefore do not enrich social capital. Religious institutions, previously a critical source of social capital in the US, have experienced a 25% decline in attendance and participation in this period. Evangelicals are an exception to this trend but historically have not been as involved with the broader community as other denominations. Workplace connections have deteriorated in this period too, with union membership down and the percentage of professionals joining organizations decreased. What is more, Americans are connecting with one another less informally, too. They entertain one another almost 50% less, vacation together less frequently, and dine together less. Putnam highlights the trend in bowling: Americans still bowl a lot in the 1990s, but they are much less likely to join bowling leagues with the social commitment that entails.

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As a percentage of income, charitable contributions are down in the 1990s. However, volunteering has increased. Similarly, Putnam argues that the nature of volunteering has changed, and people are less likely to engage in collective projects. They volunteer individually or to work one-on-one, and such commitments are more fragile.

Collective forms of participation in politics, religion, and other spheres have sharply decreased while individual actions, such as writing a letter, have not seen the same levels of decline. People are going it alone, forsaking the community for individualism. As a result, the reciprocity upon which civil society depends is in jeopardy. Reciprocity, or the willingness to do something for someone with no expectation of immediate reward but the understanding someone else will return the favor down the road, depends on social trust. That too decreased substantially in this period.

Putnam emphasizes that social capital has waxed and waned in American history: Prior to this dip, the US had experienced an increase in social capital. He repeatedly emphasizes the pattern of rising social capital after World War II followed by a plateau and then decline in the last third of the 20th century.

After chronicling the decline in this period, he uses statistical analysis to search for explanations. The most significant explanation is generational succession or replacement. The long civic generation , born between 1910 and 1940, is gradually being replaced by Baby Boomers , born between 1950 and 1964, and Generation X , born between 1965 and 1980. The latter generations are not as civically and socially engaged as the long civic generation. That latter generation experienced World War II, which required communal sacrifice. In contrast, the two younger generations are more individualistic. Putnam attributes about half of the decline in social capital to this factor, but it is not the only explanation since the decline in social capital is evident in all age categories. Electronic entertainment, specifically television, bears considerable blame, approximately 25%, as well. Importantly, the long civic generation is the last one to grow up without television. Television keeps people at home and provides an individual form of entertainment. Its rise coincides precisely with the decline in social capital. Putnam assigns limited responsibility to other factors, such as suburban sprawl and the commuting time it spawns, financial and time pressures, and other unknown factors.

Next, Putnam considers the potential impact of such a sharp decline in social capital. Drawing upon secondary sources, he relays the benefits of social capital in several areas, such as education, safety, and the economy. Children are more likely to thrive in communities with high amounts of social capital, and educational outcomes are better in such states. Safety and lower crime rates are associated with high amounts of social capital as well. While social connections clearly advantage individuals economically, Putnam argues that social capital results in more economic prosperity for the community, too. Lower crime rates and good educational systems, for example, add up to higher housing values.

Social capital provides health benefits, both physically and psychologically. Arguing that the benefits of social connectedness are akin to those from quitting smoking, Putnam cites multiple studies that associate good health at the community level with social capital. Additionally, people are happier in societies with high amounts of social capital. Indicative of this fact, Putnam observes the high suicide rates of young people, who are the least socially connected in the 1990s. In the 1950s, older people were more likely to commit suicide.

Most importantly, social capital is critical to the functioning of a democracy. Active participation in the community provides individuals with cooperative attitudes and cultivates trust and reciprocity. An actively engaged citizenry demands better government. Without the ability to combine voices with others, individuals are left politically powerless, and democracy withers. In short, it is imperative that Americans refurbish their stock of social capital.

Comparing the end of the 20th century to the end of the 19th century, Putnam finds a model for such refurbishment with the Progressives. In the late 19th century, social capital ebbed, and resultingly, there were high crime rates, poor levels of education, urban poverty and decay, and political corruption. The Progressives did not seek to restore earlier forms of social capital as they would no longer accommodate an increasingly urban society. Instead, they created new organizations, such as the PTA and Boy Scouts, to fit the times. Putnam wants to emulate that example. The early 21st century calls for new types of institutions. He encourages a multi-faceted approach to rebuilding social capital and sets ambitious goals for its renewal by 2010.

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Bowling Alone at Twenty

Alexandra hudson.

Two decades ago, Robert Putnam published a book that provoked a small cottage industry's worth of responses from pundits and scholars alike. Bowling Alone , based on an essay of the same title Putnam had written for the Journal of Democracy five years earlier, made a claim that cut to the quick of American identity: Americans just aren't doing things together anymore. By choosing to engage in activities individually rather than communally, he asserted, we were putting at risk America's capacity to build social capital and undermining our national character.

It is difficult to overstate the influence of Putnam's thesis. His argument and evidence understandably caused much concern. A subgenre of books followed in Putnam's footsteps, decrying America's civic decline as well as its social fragmentation. Charles Murray's Coming Apart , J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy , Ben Sasse's Them , and Tim Carney's Alienated America are among the most recent and best known of this genre, but they represent just a few of the many civil society "declinists" that are so vocal today.

During the two decades following Bowling Alone 's publication, America has witnessed major changes that have fundamentally altered our social and communal lives. This makes revisiting Putnam's original investigation into American civic health a worthy exercise.

Today, the evidence on the health of civil society is in many ways just as distressing as it was 20 years ago. Not everything has gone as Putnam expected, however; some trends that have emerged since 2000 suggest forms of trouble he did not anticipate. And even in Bowling Alone , Putnam recognized a few trends that ran counter to his declinist thesis — some of which are still gravitating that way today.

Two decades on, the condition of American civil society is more complex than a modern reader of Bowling Alone might imagine. Yet the book's core insights remain essential for understanding our society's prospects. American civic life — as measured by a variety of metrics at earlier points in American history, at the time of Putnam's writing, and today — has endured ebbs and flows, dissipation and re-invention, offering reason to have faith in the resilience of America's civic tradition. In short, we have always been, and in our own way still are, the "nation of joiners" that historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., and Alexis de Tocqueville before him, praised. For all its troubles, our civic life is still full of the potential for renewal.

POLITICAL AND CIVIC LIFE

The first touchstone of civic health that Putnam took up in Bowling Alone was political participation — particularly voting rates. For Putnam, voter participation was important because it demonstrated the political interest and knowledge that served as a necessary precondition for other forms of civic involvement. The data he assessed showed voting to be in decline, and Putnam assumed that decline would continue. Surprisingly, though, it hasn't.

Putnam relayed that while 62.8% of the voting-age population turned out to vote in the 1960 presidential election, only 48.9% had done so in 1996. But the trend Putnam identified had begun to reverse even before Bowling Alone went to press. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, turnout in the 1996 election had sunk to a three-decade low and has since recovered about half the ground lost over those years. In 2000, turnout reached 54.7%. In 2004, the voting rate rose to 58.3%. And in 2008, it was 58.2%. Turnout has declined a bit since then, though it is still above 1996 levels: In 2012, 56.5% of the voting-age population cast votes, and in 2016, turnout was 56.0%.

The unexpected increase in voter participation in the 21st century is at least in part a function of increasing political polarization and a growing sense that a great deal hangs on each election. These are not necessarily indicators of civic health. But if voter engagement is a mark of civic energy, then turnout trends suggest that not all indicators continue to point in one direction.

Of course, though political participation is an important indicator of the civic health of any citizen-oriented political arrangement, it does not represent the totality of it. In the 1830s, Tocqueville noted that American involvement in politics is far from America's most distinctive feature:

In the United States, political associations are only one small part of the immense number of different types of associations found there. Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition 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, more deserves attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America.

In line with this observation, Putnam examined a second touchstone of civic health: American associational life. This, he lamented, was rapidly collapsing.

In drawing this conclusion, Putnam looked at data on non-profits, which he viewed as essential building blocks of associational life. At first glance, the situation did not appear so dire. According to data from the Encyclopedia of Associations , between 1968 and 1997, the number of national non-profits in America roughly doubled — from 10,299 to 22,901. That rapid growth has only accelerated: From 2005 to 2015, the number of non-profits registered with the Internal Revenue Service increased by 10.4%, from 1.41 million to 1.56 million. If anything, these numbers actually understate the size and growth of the non-profit sector, since not all civic organizations are required to register with the government.

Yet Putnam, drawing on the work of sociologist David Horton Smith, observed that over half of those non-profits did not have any individual members. In Putnam's words, "[t]he organizational eruption between the 1960s and the 1990s represented a proliferation of letterheads, not a boom of grassroots participation."

As in the case of voting, however, there is some evidence of an increase in civic engagement since Putnam wrote. According to the American Time Use Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the amount of time Americans spent volunteering has remained remarkably steady over the past 17 years. Princeton social scientist Robert Wuthnow argues that new, more innovative forms of civic engagement are replacing more formal ones. Rather than declining, then, American associational life may simply be transforming as people experiment with looser, more sporadic forms of volunteering.

When it comes to both political and civic engagement, it appears some of the trends that Putnam expected to continue declining have at least slowed, if not reversed, their fall.

CHURCH AND WORK

Along with concerns about the trajectory of civil society, Putnam lamented the decline in church membership and attendance. Religious institutions of all faith backgrounds, he argued, are crucial to the health of civil society: They serve as incubators for civic skills, promote community norms and interests, and offer a means of civic recruitment. Indeed, high religiosity rivals high educational attainment as a powerful correlate to civic engagement. Church attendance and membership are key predictors of both volunteering and giving. Religious communities are also particularly central to the social capital and civic engagement of many African Americans; as one leading analyst cited in Bowling Alone noted, "[t]he Black church functioned as the institutional center of the modern civil rights movement."

Putnam was rightfully concerned by trends indicating a decline in church attendance and religiosity in general. And those trends have largely persisted. When Putnam wrote Bowling Alone , American religious engagement had been declining for decades. The portion of Americans who said they ascribed to "no religion" in 1967 was just 2%. By 1990, that number had jumped to 11%. Today, there are so many religiously unaffiliated people that social scientists have coined a name for them: religious "nones." Contemporary survey data indicate that the percentage of Americans who identify as nones is about the same as that of Americans who identify as evangelical or Catholic — about 23% of Americans in 2019, according to Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University.

Putnam wrote at the time that the decline in church participation and affiliation was largely explained by generational differences: Younger generations are generally less observant than their parents and grandparents are. This explanation still applies, as today's older generations report religious affiliation at much higher rates than younger ones.

But those generational differences mask an underlying downward trend. It's not simply the case that Americans are less religious in their youth and then become more religious as they grow older. Consider the Baby Boomer generation: In 1980, 13% of 16-34-year-old Boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — expressed no religious preference. When members of Generation X — those born between 1965 and 1980 — were the same age, they were markedly less religious: In 1998, 20% of 18-33-year-old Gen-Xers expressed no religious preference. In 2018, between 34% and 36% of 18-34-year-old Millennials — those born between 1981 and 1996 — said the same.

As Putnam wrote, "When they were in their twenties (in the 1960s and 1970s), boomers were more disaffected from religious institutions than their predecessors had been in their twenties....Even now, in their forties and fifties...boomers remain less religiously involved than middle-aged people were a generation ago." In short, Boomers disaffected by religion found church later and in fewer numbers than previous generations had, thus failing to close the gap as they aged. This suggests that members of today's rising generations, who are even less attached to traditional religious institutions, will persist in that disaffiliation. As a result, the portion of the American public that identifies with traditional religion will continue to dwindle.

The rise of the religious nones does not necessarily mean that Americans are growing more secular. It does mean, however, that we are becoming less attached to religious communities . Americans, it seems, are praying alone. And while this may be better than not praying at all, it does bode poorly for our society.

A similar trend can be perceived in the world of work. In Bowling Alone , Putnam observed that work associations and unions — which were an important venue for developing sustained social ties — peaked in the 1950s, when 32.5% of American workers were union members. This percentage plateaued and then endured a sharp, sustained decline during the last third of the century, ultimately cratering at 14.1%. The downward trend in membership was evident not just in traditional labor unions, but in all professional associations, from the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and more. From 1977 to 1998, the number of registered nurses doubled (from 1 million to 2 million), yet the American Nurses Association membership fell so steeply that its "market share" of nurses fell by half, from 18% to just 9%.

Putnam suggested several reasons for the sharp decline in work-association membership. One possible explanation was the excessive dues and stale programs of traditional work associations, coupled with competing local and more specialized associations entering the mix. The more general rise of the "cult of the individual," with its diminished interest in solidarity and the collective good, may have also played a role.

Still another account of what caused these trends involves the rise of work insecurity. Even during economic booms, the business cycles of the 1980s and 1990s led to mass layoffs; one study found that nearly half of firms in America laid off workers — on average up to 10% of each company's workforce — between 1993 and 1994. What's more, technological advances made virtually all jobs contingent and susceptible to automation and displacement — a pattern we are all too familiar with today. Putnam surmised that these developments had led to a shift in how people viewed work and damaged workplace social ties. In short, people stopped expecting to make a lifelong commitment to a vocation.

Work associations have not recovered from the declines Putnam identified two decades ago, and additional changes in workplace dynamics that have occurred in the intervening years have only made matters worse. The rise of the "gig" economy, along with significant growth in the number of non-standard jobs — part-time employees, temp workers, independent contractors, and more — during the first two decades of the 21st century have only doubled down on the trends Putnam observed. In fact, 94% of net jobs created from 2005 to 2015 were these sorts of impermanent jobs. When focusing on both primary and secondary employment using a separate Federal Reserve survey conducted in 2015 and 2016, economists Anat Bracha and Mary Burke found much higher rates of informal work — estimating that a third of adults are engaged in some form of non-standard work today. Similarly, a 2018 Federal Reserve study found that roughly 30% of Americans perform gig work outside of their traditional job, and a recent examination of income-tax data found that "approximately 11 percent of the working adult population in the U.S. are working primarily as full-time independent contractors in the gig economy."

What do modern trends in the workplace reveal about connectedness and social capital in America today? Perhaps the most obvious is the fact that, as in other areas of modern life, Americans have become further atomized in the workplace. For many, this has led to a decline in social ties and increased economic anxiety.

But the news here may not be all bad. Some observers suggest that Americans are simply finding professional satisfaction in different ways now than they did when Putnam wrote Bowling Alone . As such, it is worth noting the upsides to the evolution of workplace dynamics in recent decades — among them greater independence, flatter hierarchies, and more reward for merit and productivity.

Though the primary reason Americans give for taking on a non-standard job is to supplement income, a recent report from the Harvard Business Review explored the motivations of a growing number of what the authors call "harmonic careerists." These are typically younger people who have opted out of taking on a single, monolithic career because they find it draining or unfulfilling. Instead, they construct their working lives by combining multiple non-standard jobs. While they may earn less money and have less stability than their peers who adopt a traditional career path, they gain greater flexibility and meaning. As one Gallup study concluded, "for this generation, a job is about more than a paycheck — it's about a purpose."

In this sense, then, straightforward social trends don't tell a simple story. Putnam's method, which might be summarized as assessing how America had changed since the early 1960s, tells a story of decline only if the American workplace of the 1960s was the ideal. But social changes involve tradeoffs, and in the world of work in particular, it is easy to overlook the advantages of newer arrangements.

VOLUNTEERING AND SOCIALIZING

Charitable and social activities are crucial to building a strong civic backbone in any society. In Bowling Alone , Putnam noted:

When philosophers speak in exalted tones of "civic engagement" and "democratic deliberation," we are inclined to think of community associations and public life as the higher form of social involvement, but in everyday life, friendship and other informal types of sociability provide crucial social support.

In keeping with this observation, Putnam divided builders of social capital into two categories using the Yiddish terms machers and schmoozers . Machers are those involved in formal, institutional civic engagement: They follow current events, attend church and club gatherings, donate blood, give speeches, and frequent local meetings. By contrast, schmoozers are less structured in their social activity. The domain of the schmoozer lies in socializing and communicating — attending or hosting social events, visiting with friends or relatives, and sending greeting cards. The presence of both machers and schmoozers is key to a well-functioning society. Unfortunately, Putnam noted that both were on the decline in America by the end of the 20th century.

In terms of macher activities, Putnam pointed to data on a key civic-health proxy measure: philanthropy. As with voting rates and the proliferation of non-profits, the evidence regarding rates of charitable activity among Americans appeared promising on paper. In 1977, Americans gave $142.4 billion to charity. That number reached $326.9 billion in 2000. By 2017, total private giving from individuals, foundations, and businesses totaled over $410 billion. Even in these inflation-adjusted terms, Americans appear to be more generous than ever.

Yet in Bowling Alone , Putnam drew an important distinction between two forms of charity: the "doing for" form and the "doing with" form. "Doing for" involves giving money or otherwise providing assistance at a distance, while "doing with" involves interpersonal engagement on behalf of people in need. Putnam noted a strong decline in rates of "doing with" in favor of "doing for" — a trend that has only intensified since 2000. In the late 1990s, nearly half of Americans undertook some volunteering behavior. Today, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, only an estimated 25.1% of American adults volunteer on a regular basis. Breaking this down along age cohorts, we find that Generation X had a volunteer rate of 28.9%, followed by Baby Boomers at 25.7%. Only 21.9% of Millennials regularly volunteer.

Even if Americans are giving more in terms of dollars, then, a decline in engagement with others has coincided with a decline in voluntary commitments of time for charitable causes. We may not be becoming a less generous nation, but we are becoming less social when engaging in charitable efforts.

And we have become less trusting of one another as well. Putnam relayed that from 1952 to 1998, the number of Americans who thought their fellow citizens led good and honest lives fell from 50% to less than 30%. Similarly, the number of people who agreed with the statement "most people can be trusted" declined from 55% in 1960 to around 35% in the 1980s and '90s, with high-school students being the group with the lowest reported generalized trust at 25%.

More recent data on the measures Putnam used to support his conclusion of a decline in trust — survey data about public perception of general trustworthiness, rates of return for U.S. Census forms, civility as measured by driving habits, and crime rates — are relatively mixed; some metrics have continued declining, while others have not. None, however, have indicated a dramatic reversal of the trends Putnam identified two decades ago. In fact, according to 2017 Gallup data, the decline in generalized trust has only grown more intense. Fully 81% of those polled say the state of moral values in America today is "only fair" or "poor." Meanwhile, 77% say the state of moral values is getting worse.

The evidence Putnam compiled on macher activities told a troubling story of fragmentation and decline — a story that has persisted in the past two decades. However, the recent evidence on some schmoozing trends — including socializing and sending greeting cards — may signal reason for hope.

To be sure, more formal forms of schmoozing may be on the decline. According to the DDB Needham Life Style archive cited by Putnam, in the 1970s, the average American entertained friends at home 15 times a year. By the late 1990s, that number had fallen to eight times annually. More recent data suggest this trend has persisted: A 2017 study found that only "half of Americans entertain guests in their homes at least once a month."

Meanwhile, results from the BLS American Time Use Survey show that the average American aged 15 years and older socialized for 0.72 hours per day in 2013. The 2019 survey found that Americans did so for 0.64 hours. Though these numbers represent a decline, the drop is not dramatic, especially when considering the margin of error. Moreover, these data do not capture all forms of entertaining in the home. The 2019 American Time Use Survey, for instance, indicates that informal, face-to-face socializing and communicating was the second-most common leisure activity for Americans. This suggests that while more formal forms of socializing have declined, looser schmoozing activity has remained at relatively constant levels since the time Putnam wrote.

Rates of communal drinking and dining — the bread and butter of good schmoozers  — were also falling when Bowling Alone was published. Putnam cited three independent studies showing that, from the mid-1970s to the 1990s, the frequency with which Americans, both married and single, went out to such venues as bars and taverns declined between 40% and 50%. This trend, too, has persisted: Americans are going out to eat and drink less often, and those who do are more likely to do so alone. In fact, Americans in general eat more than half of their meals by themselves.

Part of this trend can be explained by a cultural shift from a society that eats designated meals at designated times to one that eats on demand. Meal-delivery services like Uber Eats, Grubhub, and Seamless have made it easier for people to eat at their desks during the workday instead of going out to eat with co-workers. Similar services enable people to spend less time on home-cooked meals — in 2017, a quarter of American adults purchased meal-delivery kits like Blue Apron, Purple Carrot, and HelloFresh, which deliver apportioned ingredients with recipes and cooking instructions right to people's homes. Theoretically, having to spend less time shopping for and preparing food could allow more time for togetherness. But for many people, these innovations appear to be enabling them to continue eating meals by themselves.

The coronavirus pandemic, however, may be starting to reverse that trend. Recent survey data suggest that, during the months of lockdowns and physical distancing, Americans have been eating at home — and families have been dining together — more often than they had before the virus. While it's too early to tell whether these changes will be permanent, such evidence offers some reason for hope.

Putnam also looked at another key schmoozer activity — the practice of sending greeting cards — and found that card-writing among all generations was in decline by the turn of the century. The rise of social media in the years following Bowling Alone might lead one to assume this trend has become more pronounced. Yet surprisingly, the decline Putnam observed has slowed in recent years. Americans may be sending far less mail than they used to (according to the U.S. Postal Service, the volume of mail in the United States has dropped 43% since 2001), but revenue for greeting cards is slightly on the rise.

Experts say that the relative success of online greeting-card companies like Minted, Etsy, and Shutterfly suggests that Millennials are driving much of this growth. Data from Hallmark support this theory: Millennials' spending on greeting cards is growing faster than that of any other generation. According to focus groups convened by the company, 72% of Millennials enjoy giving greeting cards, and a similar percentage save the cards they receive. Many cited social-media fatigue, the ephemeral nature of online communication, and the desire for interactions that had a personal touch as motivators for sending cards.

In some sense, then, Americans are becoming less social. Yet Americans' social lives, like their vocational lives, have undergone dramatic transformations in recent decades. The results of these transformations may suggest that, rather than withdrawing from society, Americans are simply exchanging more structured social activities for less structured ones. In other words, the balance may have simply tilted away from maching and in favor of schmoozing . Studies on one of the primary drivers of this trend — technological innovation — suggest that this may not be a wholly negative development.

SOCIAL CAPITAL IN THE INFORMATION AGE

In addition to the evidence supporting his thesis of American civic decline, in Bowling Alone , Putnam looked at trends that ran counter to his argument, including advances in telecommunications that have led to the rise of social movements.

He claimed, for instance, that while the telephone reduced face-to-face socializing, it also reduced loneliness. The same can be said more recently of the internet. Both the telephone and the internet have liberated us from the constraints of physical space, thereby helping us foster a sense of psychological neighborliness. Indeed, Putnam found the telephone tended to reinforce, rather than replace, existing personal networks; after all, one cannot meet new friends via the telephone alone.

Today, and increasingly in the years since Putnam's writing, people do meet new friends on the internet — through social media, chat rooms, online dating, and many other means. In fact the internet, far more than the telephone, has the potential to act as a substitute, and not just a supplement, for traditional socialization.

This new way of communicating does have its costs, as some aspects of online communication create barriers to building relationships. Molly Crockett, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University who studies altruism and human decision-making, hypothesizes that social-media interactions depersonalize interlocutors, rendering us less likely to feel empathy for others and making it easier for us to shame opponents. She has also written about the relatively low transaction costs of expressing moral outrage online. As our very idea of what social engagement means comes to be shaped by a medium that emphasizes expression over time spent together in person, it is important to be wary of these drawbacks and to mitigate them where possible.

But internet-enabled communication does have its advantages, too. Some forms of organizing, activism, socializing, and mutual aid are greatly enabled by online interaction. In fact, there are examples of digital communication building social capital and promoting democratic ideals in unprecedented ways.

Take the story of Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi woman whose life changed dramatically after she posted a video of herself driving — in defiance of a de facto ban on female drivers in Saudi Arabia — on YouTube. Her video went viral immediately, but it wasn't until she was released from jail as a result of her video that she realized its full impact. The free world lauded al-Sharif as the "Saudi Rosa Parks"; she was overwhelmed at the outpouring of support from strangers on Twitter and Facebook. Her act inspired other women to do the same, and drew attention to other human-rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. Al-Sharif is even credited with the ultimate end of the ban, which occurred six years after she posted her video.

As Putnam rightly noted in Bowling Alone , the most important question left to answer is not what the internet will do to us, but what we will do with it. How can we use the potential of computer-mediated communication to make our investments in social capital more productive? How can we harness this promising technology to thicken our community ties and relationships? How can we develop the technology to enhance social presence, social feedback, and social cues? These questions and others are among the most relevant in our hyper-connected digital era, and they remain unanswered; after all, we are still in the early years of the digital age.

OPEN QUESTIONS

Bowling Alone has made its way into the pantheon of modern social science for good reason: It sheds light on some crucial truths about modern American society. Its arguments have so thoroughly penetrated our self-understanding that we naturally assume they have grown more true over time.

But the reality of American social life is not quite so simple or so dark. The data reveal a much more nuanced picture of traditional means of building and deploying social capital today. If we avoid treating the America of the mid-20th century as the norm and instead look at both the condition of long-standing social and civic institutions and the emergence of new ones, we would find that American society never stops innovating and experimenting with new forms of common action.

This "civic churn" — a term that describes the creative destruction of American civic institutions and activity — is nothing new. When Tocqueville traversed America examining our norms, institutions, and culture, the national benevolent associations and temperance societies he encountered were relatively new developments. Responding to social and demographic changes related to the increasing integration of the country as a single nation, these groups replaced older civic assemblies like craft guilds and town meetings. Labor unions also began to emerge over the course of the following hundred years as the American economy became more industrialized. Urban missions and settlement houses, which began in England in the 1880s and gradually moved into America, were relatively unknown until the expansion of cities, and it was only at the end of the 19th century that they were seen as an obvious form of civic involvement.

Many areas of associational life remain under-studied or could use the kind of book-length treatment that Putnam devoted to the associations of the mid- to late-20th century. Book clubs are not new, but they appear to be playing a community-building role — perhaps particularly in the upper-middle class — that has yet to be studied. The role of coffee shops in urban areas may be taking on the role that bars and pubs once did, yet there is little formal data on such communal watering holes. Community libraries offer a similar story, as there is limited data on their role as a point of civic and social engagement. The role of youth sports is also an important and under-studied area. Unfortunately, as they have become politicized in the era of Title IX, social scientists have tended to avoid them, leaving crucial questions unanswered.

There is also far too little data on civic and social life among minority communities. Jack and Jill organizations, groups affiliated with churches, and black sororities and fraternity groups that engage in service activities all call for greater attention from scholars. Another under-studied area is the rise and endurance of "giving circles" among minorities and women that serve as a democratizing influence on philanthropy and provide a source of social capital and trust.

Some ebb and flow in American social and civic life is both inevitable and natural. As in Putnam's time, the evidence of American civic health is often mixed. Social, demographic, and technological changes have all put stress on older forms of socializing, but they may also drive the evolution of new ones that are better suited to modern times.

Whatever challenges our social institutions may confront, mankind's underlying hunger for engagement and community can never be eradicated. The fact that such hunger exists does not mean we will succeed in addressing it, but it does mean we are likely to keep trying. In fact, it may be that the alarmism following Putnam's original proclamation of civic atrophy deserves some credit for subsequent bursts of civic renewal. Americans in recent decades may have taken it upon themselves to create new ways of being there for one another. All who are engaged in that effort today owe Putnam a debt of gratitude.

Alexandra Hudson is a former policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education and a current Novak Fellow writing a book on civility and American civic renewal for St. Martin’s Press.

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The “Bowling Alone” Article by Putnam Essay

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The existence and proper functioning of democracy are particularly dependent on the ability of the society to connect and interact within its communities to resolve tentative issues. The author of the article “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” discusses and analyzes the manifestations of the civic society of the United States of America by assessing its change. Civic society as an expression of democracy has its social capital, which is characterized by the formation of social networks between people. The quality of such connections allows for timely and effective resolution of problematic issues due to the continuous awareness and interaction of the involved individuals within the community. Indeed, Putnam states that “such networks facilitate coordination and communication, amplify reputations, and thus allow dilemmas of collective action to be resolved” (66). Thus, in general, civic societies that form networks are capable of facilitating the functioning of a democratic society.

However, the ongoing trends in American society indicate a negative change in the readiness of people to engage in social networks and interact with others for social problem resolution. Within the past decades, the number of clubs, organizational associations, unities, religious networks, and other forms of civic engagement has significantly reduced. One of the reasons for such a deterioration in social capital is the development in people’s mobility and homeownership, which implies moving frequently and the lack of necessity to form strong social bonds. According to Putnam, “mobility, like frequent re-potting of plants, tends to disrupt root systems, and it takes time for an uprooted individual to put down new roots” (72). Therefore, changes in Americans’ lifestyles have led to diminished social capital and network involvement, which might ultimately negatively impact advancing democracy in the USA.

Putnam, Robert D. “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy , 1995, pp. 65-78.

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Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Paperback)

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Bowling Alone: Collapse of American Community

Mr. Putnam talked about his book [Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community], published by Simon and Schuster. The bo… read more

Mr. Putnam talked about his book [Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American

Community], published by Simon and Schuster. The book is based on an essay published in

the Journal of Democracy that drew parallels between the decline in social membership

organizations such as bowling leagues and fraternal lodges, and the decline in voter

participation and civic engagement. A panel discussion followed Mr. Putnam’s speech.

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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 hasbeen accepted

Notes & Comment --

IN 1958 Edward Banfield published The Moral Basis of a Backward Society , a study of underdevelopment in a village at the southern tip of Italy--"the extreme poverty and backwardness of which," he wrote, "is to be explained largely (but not entirely) by the inability of the villagers to act together for their common good." Banfield called the prevailing ethos of the village "amoral familism": "Maximize the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear family; assume that all others will do likewise." The best way to improve the village's economic condition, he said, would be for "the southern peasant to acquire the ways of the north."

Robert Putnam, a professor of government at Harvard , has to decide whether to confront just this issue. In 1993 Putnam published a book called Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy . Though its main text is only 185 pages long, Making Democracy Work is the fruit of immense labor. In 1970 Italy created local governments in its twenty regions and turned over many of the functions of the central government to them. Putnam and a team of colleagues almost immediately embarked on a study of the new governments' performance, covering the entire nation and focusing particularly on a few localities, including a town quite near the one where Banfield researched his book.

The finding that leaped out at Putnam was that the governments in the prosperous north of Italy outperformed the ones in the benighted south. Through a variety of statistical exercises he tried to demonstrate that their success was not simply a case of the rich getting richer. For example, he showed that regional government officials are less well educated in the north than in the south, and that in the northern provinces economic-development levels are not especially predictive of government performance. He found the north's secret to be a quality that Machiavelli called virtu civile ("civic virtue")--an ingrained tendency to form small-scale associations that create a fertile ground for political and economic development, even if (especially if, Putnam would probably say) the associations are not themselves political or economic. "Good government in Italy is a by-product of singing groups and soccer clubs," he wrote. Civic virtue both expresses and builds trust and cooperation in the citizenry, and it is these qualities--which Putnam called "social capital," borrowing a phrase from Jane Jacobs--that make everything else go well.

Putnam was arguing against the conventional wisdom in the social sciences, which holds that civic virtue is an appurtenance of a traditional society--"an atavism destined to disappear" with modernization, which replaces small organizations that operate by custom with big ones that operate by rules. Instead, he said, even the biggest and most modern societies can't function well if the local civic dimension is weak. He hinted here and there that it was actually the large bureaucratic overlay that was going to wind up being obsolete.

What causes some societies to become more civic-minded than others? In Italy, Putnam said, the north-south difference dates from the 1100s, when the Normans established a centralized, autocratic regime in the south, and a series of autonomous republics arose in the north. The southern system stressed what Putnam called "vertical bonds": it was rigidly hierarchical, with those at the bottom dependent on the patronage of landowners and officials rather than on one another. In the north small organizations such as guilds and credit associations generated "horizontal bonds," fostering a sense of mutual trust that doesn't exist in the south. Putnam continually stressed the "astonishing constancy" of the north-south difference: it survived the demise of the independent northern republics in the seventeenth century and the Risorgimento in the nineteenth. "The southern territories once ruled by the Norman kings," he wrote, "constitute exactly the seven least civic regions in the 1970s." We shouldn't expect the situation to change anytime soon, because "where institution building . . . is concerned, time is measured in decades."

Social science has become a statistical art, overwhelmingly concerned with using correlation coefficients to express the effect of one thing on another--or, to use the jargon, to discover and isolate the independent variable that has the greatest influence on the dependent variable. Civic virtue can be understood as Putnam's contribution to an ongoing quest for the magic independent variable that will explain economic development; he belongs to an intellectual tradition that tries to locate it in intrinsic cultural tendencies. In this sense civic virtue is a descendant of Max Weber's Protestant ethic, and is the opposite of Oscar Lewis's culture of poverty and Banfield's amoral familism. The venerability of the tradition and its powerful commonsense appeal shouldn't obscure the fact that all such independent variables are, necessarily, artificial constructs. Civic virtue is measured (to three decimal places!) by cobbling together such indices as newspaper-readership figures, voter turnout, and the abundance of sports clubs, and is not, as Putnam admitted, all-powerful as a predictor. Even in parts of northern Italy "the actual administrative performance of most of the new governments"--the subject under study, after all--"has been problematical."

Nonetheless, when Putnam tentatively brought his theory home to the United States, it created a sensation--of exactly the opposite kind from the one Banfield created a quarter century ago with The Unheavenly City . An article called "Bowling Alone," which Putnam published in the January, 1995, issue of the Journal of Democracy , had an impact far, far beyond the usual for academic writing. In the wake of "Bowling Alone," Putnam has been invited to Camp David to consult with President Bill Clinton. His terminology has heavily influenced the past two State of the Union addresses; Making Democracy Work , initially ignored by the general-interest press, was reviewed on the front page of The New York Times Book Review ; Putnam was prominently mentioned in the musings of Senator Bill Bradley about his disillusionment with politics; and, unlikeliest of all, he was the subject of a profile in People magazine.

Putnam is scrupulously careful in "Bowling Alone" not to push his theory too hard. Earlier this year, though, he stated the thesis more firmly, in an article in The American Prospect called "The Strange Disappearance of Civic America," and offered an explanation for it: Americans who were born after the Second World War are far less civic-minded than their elders, and the main reason is that they grew up after the introduction of television, which "privatizes our leisure time." Putnam is now working up a book on the subject.

"Bowling Alone" struck a nerve in part because it provided a coherent theory to explain the dominant emotion in American politics: a feeling that the quality of our society at the everyday level has deteriorated severely. An economic statistic like the "misery index" doesn't match the political mood; Putnam's theory does. It is especially appealing to liberal politicians, who see in it the possibility of a rhetoric they can use to address an issue that has been owned by conservatives. Also, if Putnam is right that as local associations go, so goes the nation, his work suggests the possibility of solving our problems through relatively low-cost association-strengthening local initiatives that don't require higher taxes. This makes a wonderful message for Democrats, who want to offer a positive program that is not vulnerable to anti-tax rhetoric. Foundation executives, who want to believe that the limited grants they make can reap large social benefits, also tend to be Putnam fans. Even people whose interests aren't directly affected have eagerly subscribed to the theory of "Bowling Alone," partly because of its apparent validity and partly for reasons I'll discuss later.

It must be said, however, that the talk about "Bowling Alone," and to a lesser extent the article itself, directly contradict the logic of Making Democracy Work . In Putnam's Italian model the kind of overnight deterioration of civic virtue that he proposes regarding America would be inconceivable--once civic virtue is in place it is incredibly durable over the centuries. Putnam heartily endorses a theory from economic history called "path dependence," which he has summarized this way: "Where you can get to depends on where you're coming from, and some destinations you simply cannot get to from here." In "Bowling Alone" he quotes Tocqueville 's view that "nothing . . . deserves more attention" than Americans' amazing associational predilections; by the standards of Making Democracy Work , these ought to have held us in good stead well into the next century. Putnam plainly believes that we were in pretty good associational shape as recently as 1960. How can a tendency toward civic engagement vanish in a single generation?

Not only was Putnam in Making Democracy Work insistent upon the lasting good effects of civic virtue, but he was elaborately pessimistic about the possibility of establishing civic virtue where it doesn't already exist. He predicted disaster in the former Communist dictatorships of Europe, because of their weakness in the local-associational area: "Palermo may represent the future of Moscow." Putnam drew this lesson from a comprehensive survey of Third World development efforts:

Unhappily from the point of view of social engineering . . . local organizations 'implanted' from the outside have a high failure rate. The most successful local organizations represent indigenous, participatory initiatives in relatively cohesive local communities.

If Putnam was right the first time, and civic virtue is deeply rooted, then it's worth wondering whether the United States might actually still have as much of it as ever, or nearly. If that is the case, the dire statistics in "Bowling Alone" reflect merely a mutation rather than a disappearance of civic virtue, because civic virtue has found new expressions in response to economic and social changes. From bowling leagues on up, many of the declining associations Putnam mentions are like episodes of The Honeymooners seen today--out of date.

Another intriguing statistic is the number of restaurants in the United States, which has risen dramatically, from 203,000 in 1972 to 368,000 in 1993. True, this probably means that fewer people are eating a family dinner at home. But from Putnam's perspective, that might be good news, because it means that people who are eating out are expanding their civic associations rather than pursuing amoral familism. (If you've ever visited northern Italy, the connection between restaurants and virtu civile seems obvious.) The growth in restaurants is not confined to fast-food restaurants, by the way, although it is true that the number of bars and taverns--institutions singled out for praise in "Bowling Alone"--has declined over the past two decades.

The number of small businesses--what the Internal Revenue Service calls "non-farm proprietorships"--has about doubled since 1970. These can be seen as both generators and results of civic virtue, since they involve so much personal contact and mutual trust. A small subset, Community Development Corporations (organizations that are often explicitly Putnamlike schemes to promote association locally in the hope of a later economic payoff), have grown in number from 500 to 2,200 over the past twenty years. Individual contributions to charity, which are still made by more than three quarters of Americans, grew from $16.2 billion in 1970 to $101.8 billion in 1990. Although church attendance is, as Putnam says, down, the Pentecostal denominations are booming: their domestic membership has burgeoned over the past quarter century. Little League membership has increased every year. Membership in the PTA has risen over the past decade or so, though it's still far below its peak, which occurred in 1962­1963. Homeownership is high and steady, and, as Putnam admits in "Bowling Alone," Americans move less frequently now than they did in the 1950s and 1960s.

Weighed against all this, the statistics in "Bowling Alone" are still impressive, and no doubt Putnam will nail down his case in his book. Let's say, however, for the sake of argument, that Putnam's thesis that civic virtue is rapidly collapsing in America isn't true. What would account for its being so widely and instantly accepted as gospel?

Bowling leagues, Elks and Lions, and the League of Women Voters are indisputably not what they used to be. Large internal population shifts have taken place since the 1960s: to the Sunbelt and, within metropolitan areas, to the suburbs. Birth rates dropped substantially and then rose again. Most mothers now work. All these changes could have resulted in atrophied forms of association that are culturally connected to older cities and to old-fashioned gender roles (bowling leagues are a good example), while other forms more oriented to open space and to weekends (like youth soccer) have grown.

I have lived in five American cities: New Orleans, Cambridge, Washington, Austin, and Pelham, New York. The two that stand out in my memory as most deficient in the Putnam virtues--the places where people I know tend not to have elaborate hobbies and not to devote their evenings and weekends to neighborhood meetings and activities--are Cambridge and Washington . The reason is that these places are the big time. Work absorbs all the energy. It is what people talk about at social events. Community is defined functionally, not spatially: it's a professional peer group rather than a neighborhood. Hired hands, from nannies to headmasters to therapists, bear more of the civic-virtue load than is typical.

To people living this kind of life, many of whom grew up in a bourgeois provincial environment and migrated to one of the capitals, the "Bowling Alone" theory makes sense, because it seems to describe their own situation so well. It is natural for people to assume that if their own life trajectories have been in the direction of reduced civic virtue, this is the result not of choices they have made but of a vast national trend. I wonder if the pre-presidential Bill Clinton--the man who spent the morning after Election Day in 1992 wandering around Little Rock engaging in front-porch visits with lifelong friends--would have found "Bowling Alone" so strongly resonant.

A second reason for the appeal of "Bowling Alone" is that it avoids the Banfield problem. A true application of the line of thinking in Making Democracy Work would require searching the United States for internal differences in civic virtue and then trying to explain those differences. One inevitable result would be the shining of a harsh spotlight on the ghettos, with their high rates of crime, welfare dependency, and family breakup. In an article that appeared in The American Prospect in 1993 Putnam made a point of saying, "It would be a dreadful mistake, of course, to overlook the repositories of social capital within America's minority communities." This doesn't mean that the spotlight wouldn't still fall on the ghettos, because Putnam was clearly referring to minority communities most of whose members are not poor. But with this caveat he demonstrates at least that he is aware of the sensitive areas into which his Italian inquiry could lead in the United States. So far he has resolutely kept his examples of the decline of civic virtue in America in the realm of middle- or even upper-middle-class culture.

In the 1993 American Prospect article Putnam wrote,

Classic liberal social policy is designed to enhance the opportunities of individuals , but if social capital is important, this emphasis is partially misplaced. Instead we must focus on community development, allowing space for religious organizations and choral societies and Little Leagues that may seem to have little to do with politics or economics.

With respect to the United States, the opposite of Putnam's theory would be this: There has been relatively little general decline in civic virtue. To the extent that the overall civic health of the nation did deteriorate, the dip was confined mainly to the decade 1965 to 1975--when, for example, crime and divorce rates rose rapidly--and things have been pretty stable since then. The overwhelming social and moral problem in American life is instead the disastrous condition of poor neighborhoods, almost all of which are in cities.

The model of a healthy country and needy ghettos would suggest a program much closer to the "liberal social policy" from which Putnam wants us to depart. Rather than assume, with Putnam, that such essential public goods as safety, decent housing, and good education can be generated only from within a community, we could assume that they might be provided from without--by government. If quite near the ghettos are working-class neighborhoods (and not insuperably distant are suburbs) of varying ethnic character and strong civic virtue, then the individual-opportunity model might be precisely the answer for ghetto residents--opportunity, that is, to move to a place that is part of the healthy American mainstream.

The difficulty with such a program is that it is politically inconvenient. It would involve, by contemporary standards, far too much action on the part of the government, with the benefits far too skewed toward blacks. The model of an entire United States severely distressed in a way that is beyond the power of government to correct is more comforting.

The Atlantic Monthly; April 1996; Kicking in Groups; Volume 277, No. 4; pages 22-26.

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Essay; Bailing Out Moscow

By William Safire

• Feb. 25, 1988

We have just been told by a well-placed informant inside the Kremlin that the Soviet Union is not the economic power our intelligence analysts have long thought it was.

Throughout the Reagan years, our experts have assumed that Soviet growth averaged slightly over 3 percent yearly. That is a vital statistic: we then put a price each year on what we know the Soviet military machine cost, and get what we hope is a clear idea of what percentage of its economy Moscow is devoting to armament.

That's just about the most important intelligence number of all. In the 70's, a ''Team B'' of outsiders was brought in by the C.I.A. to challenge the conventional wisdom, and doubled the previous estimate to 13 percent in the Soviet Union. That laid the basis for our own increased defense spending, which now amounts to 6 percent of our gross national product.

In a little-noted passage of his long speech last week to his Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev made a stunning revelation that kicks our estimates into a cocked hat.

He pointed out that during the Brezhnev years, economic growth had been artificially hiked by the sale of oil at high prices (the U.S.S.R. is the world's largest producer) and the accelerated sale of vodka (Soviet spending on alcohol may have reached 10 percent of total output, compared with less than 2 percent of ours).

''If we purge economic growth indicators of the influence of these factors,'' said Mr. Gorbachev, ''it turns out that, basically, for four five-year periods there was no increase in the absolute growth of the national income and, at the beginning of the 80's, it had even begun to fall. That is the real picture, comrades!''

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