Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life [Hardcover]

Theda Skocpol (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2003 | Series: Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series (Book 8)

Tells the story of civic voluntarism and democratic politics in the United States, and explains how, after the 1960's membership-based voluntary associations were abruptly pushed aside by professionally manages agencies, leaving regular Americans with fewer opportunities to get actively involved in community and public affairs.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Theda Skocpol is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, and Director of the Center for American Political Studies, at Harvard University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806135328
• ISBN-13: 978-0806135328
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #406,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and past president of the American Political Science Association.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Urge to Belong, August 10, 2003

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Hardcover)

A very nicely written book that raises several speculations. The author points out that in the 19th century, many of the local groups that people joined were chapters of national or transnational organisations. This was part of their attractiveness. Joining a local group gave comradely ties with others across the nation, that you had never met, and probably would never meet. How peculiar was this to the US, as compared with the European countries from which many of these people recently left? Is there any way to quantify this? A little unfair to ask, perhaps, because of the sheer amount of research needed to flesh it out. But the above questions arise naturally out of the research summarised in the book.

Historians have asked if the US was qualitatively different from other countries. ("Vineyard of liberty" etc.) The issues raised by the book give us another way to address the question. Perhaps Americans were more inclined to join such nation spanning groups because as an immigrant, footloose people, if they did not have centuries of binding to the same soil and neighbours, they wanted some other and multiple means of belonging? Was the striking success of the groups in some part due to such inchoate urgings?

Another way to test would be to look into the history of similar groups in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Skocpol also points out that from the 1960s onwards, the membership of such groups in the US fell significantly. She advanced several reasons. But there is one possible reason for some of the decline that she did not mention. From the mid 1950s, TV became pervasive. Remember that joining a volunteer group is done in your recreational time. TV is a notorious competitor for that time, due to its convenience and cheapness. Plus, and more specifically, if one of your reasons (possibly unconscious) for joining a national group is to be part of a larger world, then TV assuages that to some extent. Granted, some of this may be illusory, but so what?

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Deadly dull, January 20, 2012

By 

R. Weiss (Lorain, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series) (Paperback)

Received book in good order. No problem there. However, the book is boring and overlong, with no conclusion. Readers on this subject can safely skip it.

32 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reviving civic associations that are not trivial, obsessed, June 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Hardcover)

...

Many years ago, I fell into the habit of joining imaginary organizations. From time to time, depending on the pomposity level of the cocktail party I was attending, I have been:
President, STABB, Society for the Total Annihilation of Beanie Babies.
Executive Director, AAAAPM, "QuadrupleA/PM," the American Association for the Advancement of Applied PeripheroMetrics (Our motto: "If It's Far Enough Out, We'll Measure It").
Senior Logothete, Anarchic Chaotic Licentious Utopians, (ACLU).
And most recently, Associate Visiting Carnivore, Protesters Enjoying Talking Angry (PETA).
But now comes a new endeavor. APPROACH. Articulate Perceptive Persons Resolutely Opposed to American Civic Hypochondria.
Thanks, Theda. I couldn't have done it without you.
The Theda just acknowledged is the prolific and engaging Theda Skocpol, Harvard political scientist/sociologist and well-known commentator on American society, social policy, and all matters there unto pertaining. "Diminished Democracy" is not her best effort, if only because it started out in life as a University of Oklahoma lecture series, and lectures don't always transition well into books. Still, there is absolutely nothing wrong with "Diminished Democracy." It's clear, straightforward, solid, logical.
The problem is the (expletive deleted) genre.
It all seems to have started 50 years ago, with David Riesman's "The Lonely Crowd." Ever since, academics, pundits, and politicians have bemoaned the increasing isolation of Americans from each other, especially their ever-diminishing propensity to join the "voluntary civic associations" which, according to Tocqueville - Would congress please pass a 10-year moratorium on quoting Tocqueville? - provide the essential foundation of American democracy.
By the 1980s, bewailing the isolation had become a veritable fixture of American intellectual life. "Habits of the Heart," a multi-author sociological study that drew heavily on Tocqueville, provided the template. More recently, there's been another template, Robert Putnam's insanely over-statistical "Bowling Alone."
Meanwhile, any number of studies purport to prove that, not only are Americans no longer a nation of joiners, but when they do join (which they do avidly), it's the wrong kinds of groups - either self-interested, undemocratic advocacy organizations or trivial, self-obsessed "small groups" such as fundamentalist Bible study or ASAP, Adult Survivors of Adequate Parents, for people who can't blame it all on Mom & Dad.
Could we please stop all the kvetching and just take a look at what is?
Ms. Skocpol doesn't kvetch. At least, not much. And "Diminished Expectations" does indeed offer some worthwhile insights and prescriptions.
The writer starts with a bit of historical revisionism. Contrary to Tocquevillian myth, the American penchant for voluntary association was never exclusively, or even primarily, local. From the early national period on, most of the important local organizations were actually part of national and transnational federations: churches, lodges and fraternal organizations, unions, mutual-aid, charity, and reform groups. Many modeled themselves after the federal government; many arose and thrived in response to national crises, especially war; many even served as governmental adjuncts. Further, although these groups were officially nonpartisan and/or apolitical, they often took a lively interest in political affairs.
Then people stopped joining. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the size and power of these groups waned rapidly. To some extent, this may have been due to the fact that the Greatest Generation was "abnormally civically involved." But many other factors were involved, most notably the tandem of an ever-expanding federal government and the rise of a professional managerial/expert class.
To simplify: Mass membership institutions became less effective at getting things done than professionally-run, government and foundation-funded, mass mediated, hyper-marketed advocacy and lobbying groups. Memberships were reduced to mailing lists, and to less than mailing lists. When anybody could set up claiming to "represent" some group or some cause or other, real human beings often became more of a hindrance than an asset.
Ms. Skocpol deplores this devolution, but also finds the standard communitarian and political reform responses lacking. Her solution is not to return to some mythical past that never existed - local, apolitical involvement - nor to erect ever greater barriers to citizen participation in politics, but to reinvigorate the past that did exist. Three proposals seem especially striking. First, "memberless" organizations should consider becoming federated membership organizations with local chapters. Second, barriers between political and apolitical activity need to be lowered, not raised. And third, we need, somehow, to generate sufficient leaders who want to generate sufficient followers.
An intriguing idea, but not immediately practicable. I suggest therefore that Ms. Skocpol join my new outfit, APPROACH, the American Public Project to Restore, Orchestrate, and Achieve Civic Harmony.
It'll be a start.