Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not much insight into democratic disaffection, November 25, 2000
Many tables are presented that demonstrate that confidence in public institutions, especially in the executive and legislative branches of government, has declined in varying amounts in the trilateral countries, the US, Japan, and Europe, over the last 25 years. The conclusions seem to be that this trend is based on the public's perception that the performance of these institutions has deteriorated. But little insight is offered behind the numbers. The following are minimally addressed if at all.In the first place, little mention is made of exactly what performance is lacking. Presumably the authors are after something greater than disaffection over episodes of scandal or corruption. There are some vague references to globalization but no evidence is presented that the public is disaffected over that matter. Little is made of the impact of the extreme right-wing rhetoric that denounces government as an impediment to the free-market. Does that not pander to and reinforce the historical wariness that one author mentions of Americans towards government? If government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, why does government not correspond to what is wanted by the majority? One author does raise the issue of the general competency of the citizenry to understand governmental workings and to choose a sensible course of action. The authors do not address the massive consolidation over the last two decades of the entertainment and news media and the ramifications for a democracy. Any number of books demonstrate that delivering audience levels for advertisers supercedes wide-ranging or controversial political information. Personalities and day-by-day polling numbers are safe ways of covering politics. Is the minimalist "information" that the public gets adequate for an active, informed role in government? One author, interestingly enough, contends that the effects of the media are benign. One author acknowledges that the business community is generally hostile towards government. What is not discussed is the infiltration and control of government by business. The massive funding of candidates' political campaigns by business PACs is not mentioned. Despite their hostility, businesses have the leverage to ensure that governments make decisions on such matters as deregulation or free trade that benefit the business community far more than the general public. But would government or business shoulder the blame for any adverse consequences for those policies on the public? Does the corporate media accurately report on the inner workings of government? The book is unsatisfactory because it does not really attempt to discover what is behind the public's growing disaffection with government. The points listed above would undoubtedly be relevant in trying to grasp the public's views concerning government, but they are essentially ignored by the authors in this book. I would like to see this book reviewed by others to see if I have missed the basis of the public's disaffection with democracy as presented by the authors.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
 
|
|
|
|
|
|
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Are The Trilateral Nations Really In Decline?, November 25, 2000
Are the trilateral democratic nations threatened by a steady disintegration of their social capital? Are individual citizens less trusting of their political institutions and even of each other? These are the central themes probed by the contributors of this collection of essays. This book represents a reassessment of an earlier study "The Crisis of Democracy" completed twenty five years ago by the Trilateral Commission. I found the central premise of the current study, though, to be highly suspect. After all, these same countries now experience vastly improved economic conditions, and perhaps more importantly---are less likely to declare war on each other. Could it be that some of the contributors fail to see the proverbial forest because the trees are in the way? It is admittedly an unhealthy state of affairs when people are hostile towards their government. Nevertheless, isn't a more pessimistic and realistic understanding of what is to be expected from the political sector to be applauded? Prudence is not cynicism. Governments are innately limited in responding to the total needs of the individual. Why be shy in conceding this fact?Is there such a thing as too much social capital? The Japanese kamikaze pilots, regardless of how perverted it may seem to us, were splendid example of intense social bonding. Also, the trust and fellowship of ethnic Germans during that time period were at a very high level. A decreased interest in preserving social capital might indeed discourage bigotry. Might a society be overly worried about sustaining the social bonds of its dominant group? Couldn't this concern hinder the practical decisions required in the everyday business world? In the not too distant past, employers often indulged in the self defeating practice of hiring lesser talented members of their own immediate social group instead of more qualified outsiders. Those once perceived as alien and repugnant are now at least tolerated, if not eagerly recruited. Lifetime guaranteed employment and other projectionist measures underpinning an earlier interpretation of social cohesiveness resulted in weaker economic conditions. Contributor, Russell Hardin, perspicuously points out that the economic theories of F.A. Hayek and others of the Austrian school were not able to be empirically studied in the past, but now appear "to be acquitting themselves very well." Hardin's essay "The Public Trust" alone justifies seeking out this book. Why remain in a bad marriage or job if we don't have to? New disruptive technological advances like the Internet are diminishing the importance of relationships premised primarily upon physical proximity. We often barely say hello to our next door neighbors. Increasingly, many of us form viable relationships with people on the other side of the globe. I seriously doubt , for instance, that I will ever personally meet most of the individuals who communicate with me on a regular basis. Relatively inexpensive means of transportation and communications make it easier to form and dissolve relationships. Nonetheless, my chosen role as something of a devil's advocate should not be interpreted as a lack of respect towards these scholars. Robert Putnam, Susan Pharr, and their fellow cohorts are onto something. Discussing these issues is not a luxury, but a mandatory necessity. We should not hesitate to join the conversation. Putnam even actively encourages the participation of non specialists. He believes the matter is too urgent for the hoi polloi to remain on the sidelines. A companion study "Bowling Alone" by the same Professor Putnam should also be added to your reading list.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
In retrospect, a case of great data leading to commonsense inferences, May 17, 2008
Why look back at a study done eight years ago? Because it is a pretty classic case of self-proclaimed public intellectuals from academe (in this case Robert Putnam) managing to impose strictures on their debates, and thereby hamstring their own efforts to contribute to the health of democratic discourse.
Post-World War II decolonization (especially in Vietnam) was an era of bloody injustices that fed civic outrage and political backlash, and was especially intense in Europe in 1968. In America, the same peace movements produced a counterattack (Nixonian politics) and a counterbacklash (Nixon's impeachment). That period of whipsaw politics was the backdrop for the Trilateral Commission's gloomy, hypertechnocratic Crisis of Democracy report in 1975. (In its opening paragraph, CoD put democratic citizens in the back seat: "They [trilateral governments] have brought the comforts -- and the anxieties -- of middle-class status to a growing majority of their peoples.")
In 2000, it was entirely appropriate that Pharr, Putnam, and other survey contributors to this volume would contrast their new trilateral survey with the speculative ruminations Huntington, Crozier and Watanuki in 1975's Crisis of Democracy. But in 2008, this study seems even more tepid than it already sounded on first publication.
It may in part be the subject matter: Street protests, violent or non, became passe after Nixon and Vietnam, and were rendered increasingly unremarkable by our media-glutted era. Today, they are now effectively replaced by political factionalism gone online and viral. In 2000 there was little attention directed at this in academia. It would take another year for any scholar of government to speak directly to the major shift that the internet had already induced, namely, the polarized politics made possible by the self-reinforcing political subcultures the net built. (Pippa Norris' 2001 Digital Divide and Cass Sunstein's 2002 Republic dot com were the first cuts in academia at this theme.) The data-driven "rigor" espoused by these authors helped them to miss the trend almost entirely, and was possibly the proverbial case of the drunk who searched for his missing keys under the light. Retrospectively, we see that the DD contributors were still responding primarily to the couch-potatodom (i.e. declinine in participation) wrought for a decade by unidirectional cable TV punditry. In any event, even with as big a name as Bob Putnam behind it, this study has amounted to much less of a "landmark" piece of social commentary than Crisis of Democracy was eventually proclaimed to be.
Still, the larger structural points the authors make are solid, important and still highly relevant, but not particularly deep. How often have scholar-pollsters in the States really thought hard about how Americans' attitudes are permanently adapting to the diminished role of their government on the world stage? For the European pollsters, marching headlong toward some soon-to-be scuttled EU constitution, it was of the utmost importance. The study corroborated the Zeitgeist of frustration among democratic citizens that has taken hold as the maneuver room waned for their statesmen and women to conduct policy abroad. That is to say, our bodies politic are deeply disgruntled about the coalition-driven foreign policies that are the natural adaptations of overburdened governments. 1975's Crisis fo Democracy was written after the oil shock of 1973 first triggered a civic awakening on this theme, and back then it was termed "interdependence." Today, we call it "globalization." (In the late imperial era before World War II, it was termed "resource-dependency." From 1989 to 1996, the heyday of cable, there was, for a brief time, the in-between moniker, "the global village.") All of this amped up levels of distrust in government in the post-Cold War period, as citizens recognized that many international decisions they could have cared less about before (like import penetration and tax breaks for multinational corporations) had suddenly been banished from their parties' agendas. Ralf Dahrendorf ably condensed these findings in the 2000 study into a single statement in its afterword: "Inactivity at the bottom represents the flip side of creeping authoritarianism at the top, and it strengthens that trend."
Eight years after this 2000 study, what do we find? First, citizens are for now reempowered and resurgent, more active in politics, and making able use of the leverage the internet to understand trends and shape them. Second, though, discontent with office-holders is still intensifying -- the internet threw open the curtains on democratic leadership. Yes, one way of reading the trend is that the net is a good enforcer of political transparency in government. One can also reach a very different conclusion. As the net enlarges the scope of what is under scrutiny in political offices, for the first time, it is allowing real-time monitoring of officials who are exercising all-important oversight powers within government. (Double oversight.) Until today, there had been an abiding public deference and ignorance about how oversight happens, and a frequent assumption that these offices would generally exercise neutrality in their deliberations. Oversight offices are, after all, the chief means of ensuring accountability (and a minority voice) in government decision-making between elections, the chief means of "checking" irreversible rot. The net's exposure means some of those positions are now perceived as mere paper tigers. And in the truly worst cases, roles of this sort can be devoid of independence, made subject to loyalty tests and politicized, and populated with gatekeepers for the parties in power. Similarly, the net has permitted the public to have more intense exposure of the workings of public law. Today, investigative stories on the net have imparted wider-spread awareness that constitutional powers of government are an eroding form of received "traditions" about democracy. They are less central to policy decisions in a democracy than have been a variety of other undocumented and unofficial powers and prods of political office.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
by Robert D. Putnam
by David Held
See all 100 books this book cites
