Author: Theda Skocpol
Review 1: BNET
In Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life, Theda Skocpol makes her most comprehensive contribution to current debates about civic engagement in the US. Her accessible analysis treats all of the significant issues raised in these debates, especially whether civic engagement has recently declined among Americans; if so, why; and, if so again, with what consequences for democratic governance. She argues most importantly that the nature of American civic life has changed dramatically since the 1960s as federated membership organizations have given way to professionally managed advocacy groups and non-profits more interested in recruiting donors than members. The change has, according to Skocpol, diminished democracy most obviously by restricting public power more than ever to a professional/business elite and producing policies that increasingly favor the privileged.
Skocpol's conclusions rest on a history of American voluntary organizations rather than on the more recent survey data favored by many other participants in the conversation about civic life. This strategy permits her to see not only whether the number of meetings among Americans has declined recently but also how associational forms have changed. Her history shows that between the late nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth, federated membership organizations dominated civic life in the US. These organizations included fraternal societies like the Masons, religious organizations like the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and veterans' groups like the American Legion as well as labor organizations, business groups, and the PTA.
These associations greased the wheels of democratic governance in many ways. First, they convened members from a wide range of occupations, providing a site for cross-class acquaintance and exchange. This was particularly true of the fraternal societies and veterans groups. Second, the structure and practices of these groups mimicked that of government in the US: local groups elected their leaders (and lots of them) for short terms; those groups sent delegates to regional or state associations; and the intermediate groups elected delegates to a national body. These organizations thus trained members in democratic practices that ranged from expressing and mediating conflicting opinions through conducting elections to serving in office. Moreover, almost all of these groups at some point aimed explicitly to affect public policy, and, being general interest groups that provided regular opportunities for members to convene, they opened spaces where ordinary people might actually define issues of shared concern or articulate positions on such issues and then have channels through which to introduce them to wider publics, ultimately influencing general public opinion and policy. Through these federated, membership organizations, ordinary people exercised public power.
Since the 1960s, however, these kinds of groups have declined, and they have been replaced especially by non-profits and advocacy groups. The newer groups are not run democratically; they often have no members. They are operated by paid staffs of professionals. Issues are identified and decisions made by these experts, who then solicit donations to support their lobbying efforts or delivery of services. Ordinary citizens might well pay dues or fill out surveys for these organizations, but they do not join together to formulate issues or hammer out policy positions themselves. Democracy has understandably weakened with the diminution of federated groups that provided practice in democratic skills; opportunities for cross-class discussion; and connections through which ordinary people might influence public opinion and policy.
According to Skocpol, many trends have converged to produce this change. Social movements of the 1960s participated by producing new organizations that focused on lobbying and service provision. These groups displaced older kinds of civic organization in part because of changing opportunities for influencing policy: proliferating administrative agencies, congressional committees, and kinds of court cases provided new points of influence that did not require mobilizing mass memberships. New career paths played a role as well. Since WW II, the professional elite ballooned from 1% of the labor force to 12%. This expanding professional stratum, now including women who once led federated organizations, allied increasingly with business groups rather than with a receding clerical or working class. And, technological changes, especially expansion of the mass media, made it possible for the elite to wield influence without consulting people outside their group as earlier elites needed to do. Thus, a civil society skewed to upper-class activity and a severely diminished democracy.
Skocpol does not leave readers hopeless. She identifies pockets of current civic vitality that range from the Industrial Areas Foundation to the Christian Coalition and goes on to suggest that we might re-ignite civic life by, for instance, declaring election day a national holiday; urging politicians and media to consult federated organizations in addition to polls in order to learn constituents' opinions; and re-opening the door between religious groups and partisan politics. Though controversial, the latter warrants consideration because religious congregations are among the only cross-class groups left and represent a potential well-spring of democratic energy.
Whatever we make of Skocpol's recommendations, she has powerfully questioned many popular prescriptions for healing our ailing democracy. She argues persuasively against the suggestion that getting Americans simply to hang out together more often will automatically create more vital democracy. Instead, she maintains, when it comes to promoting a broader democracy, not all forms of association are equal: if professionals schmooze more often with their professional neighbors, an elite may be strengthened, but democracy will not be. Moreover, she demonstrates that both activist government and national foci are consistent with vital democratic activism at the local level. Those who would renew civil society by shrinking government and confining associations to local issues have no history to stand on.
But Skocpol could go farther here. She does not make as much of the increasing economic gap between the privileged and working classes as she might. The devastation of the working class is surely as important to her story as the bloating of the professional class. Policy changes may need to focus less on election day and more on closing the economic divide; for, cross-class federations can hardly thrive when the divide to be crossed grows wider with each presidential administration.
Review2
In 1874, women from around the country and from different economic and social positions met in Cleveland, Ohio, to launch the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and fight drunkenness among men. By the early 1900s, membership in the WCTU ballooned to over one percent of all women in America, and their activities had become organized into a well-articulated federated structure of national, state, and local units that were geared toward influencing government policy. That a small meeting of volunteers might lead within a few decades to a large, hierarchically structured organization might seem to be an extraordinary anomaly. But it is not. Since the eighteenth century, fifty-eight voluntary associations with active memberships of over one percent of men, women, or adults in the United States have formed and drawn into their ranks a wide spectrum of Americans: farmers, craft and industrial workers, white-collar workers like doctors and lawyers, and business owners. 1
Theda Skocpol uncovers the history of large membership voluntary associations in an important and readable book that is equally aimed at historians, social scientists, policy makers, and the broad public. Skocpol—today's preeminent macrohistorian actively working within the social sciences—deftly combines extensive and original primary historical research, original synthesis of existing research in history and the social sciences, and thoughtful engagement with the larger public. Her book, which grew out of a distinguished lecture series at the University of Oklahoma, makes three powerful contributions. First, Skocpol offers a cogent institutional and political model of "social capital." Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Renewal of American Community (2001) contributed to the renewed interest in the decline of citizen engagement and connectedness within communities. For Putnam, Americans had become couch potatoes glued to their televisions; they were no longer joining bowling leagues, parent-teacher asociations, and a host of other associations as had their parents and grandparents. Instead, as Putnam's title would have it, they bowled alone. 2
Putnam focuses on citizens and asks, what's wrong with them? Skocpol largely accepts Putnam's prognosis (with some notable differences) that Americans today join voluntary associations less often than in the past but pinpoints as the cause the strategies of political and civic leaders to advance the power and positions of themselves and their members. The engine of vibrant civic life, according to Skocpol, is "raucous conflict," attempts to grab power and leverage, and the interchange of government (at multiple levels) and federated voluntary associations. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large voluntary organizations like the Grand Army of the Republic, the Grange, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and others formed to promote government programs and were in turn encouraged and sustained by these programs. Today, Americans are less engaged in their communities and in the country's political life because the "Rights Revolution" of the 1960s punctured old social barriers. In addition, political and organizational elites shifted their strategies: instead of directly mobilizing and indirectly encouraging large-scale citizen involvement, professionally managed advocacy groups focus on communicating through the mass media and fund raising among the middle and upper classes.
