BOWLING ALONE
Page 64
–7%
National Election Study
1964–1998
–55%
–40%
–8%
DDB Needham Life Style
1975–1999
–42%
–25%
–16%
Monitoring the Future
1976–1996
–46%
–24%
–23%
(high school students)
Sources for figure 38 are described in appendix I. In all cases except the DDB Needham Life Style surveys, the same question was used in all these surveys: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?” DDB Needham surveys offered six levels of agreement or disagreement with the view that “Most people are honest.” Because this version lacks an explicit distrustful alternative, it gains roughly 20 percent more agreement, but in other respects, this question behaves like the double-barreled version. To make this question more nearly comparable to the others, I have used the percentage of respondents who “definitely” or “generally” agree, but this cutting point does not affect the conclusions in any way.
27. On youthful social distrust, see Rahn and Transue, “Social Trust and Value Change.” Professor Rahn deserves credit for first spotting the generational basis for long-term trends in social capital in America.
28. The evidence in this paragraph is drawn from the author’s analysis of the DDB Needham Life Style and General Social Survey archives. Following the method explicated by Firebaugh, “Methods for Estimating Cohort Replacement Effects,” most if not all of the aggregate decline in social trust is attributable to cohort replacement. This is entirely consistent with the sharp declines in social trust across successive high school classes, as found in the Monitoring the Future surveys between 1976 and 1996. For independent confirmation of cohort-related declines in social trust, see Smith, “Factors Relating to Misanthropy.” This conclusion is unaffected by the exact cutting points between successive generations.
29. Robert M. Groves and Mick P. Couper, Nonresponse in Household Interview Surveys (New York: Wiley, 1998), 155–187. See also John Goyder, The Silent Minority: Nonrespondents on Sample Surveys (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1987), esp. 64; John Brehm, The Phantom Respondents: Opinion Surveys and Political Representation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), and Joop J. Hox and Edith D. de Leeuw, “A Comparison of Nonresponse in Mail, Telephone, and Face-to-Face Surveys,” Quality & Quantity 28 (November 1994): 329–344. For a contrary view, see Tom W. Smith, “Trends in Survey Non-Response,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 7 (1995): 157–171.
30. According to Louis Harris & Associates polls, available in the University of North Carolina Institute for Research in Social Science Data Archive, 15 percent of respondents reported unlisted phone numbers in 1974–76, as compared with 25 percent in 1997. Independently, Survey Sampling Inc. found that the fraction of unlisted households rose from 22 percent in 1984 to 30 percent in 1997: “Sacramento Is Most Unlisted,” The Frame: A Quarterly Newsletter for Survey Researchers (March 1997), at www.worldopinion.com/newsstand.taf?f=a&id=1248. On call screening, see William G. Mayer, “The Rise of the New Media,” Public Opinion Quarterly 58 (spring 1994): 124–146, table at 146, based on Roper polls; Robert W. Oldendick and Michael W. Link, “The Answering Machine Generation: Who are They and What Problem Do They Pose for Survey Research?” Public Opinion Quarterly 58 (summer 1994): 264–273, at 268; and Michael W. Link and Robert W. Oldendick, “Call Screening: Is It Really a Problem for Survey Research?” Public Opinion Quarterly 63 (1999): 577–589.
31. On mail census returns, see Mick P. Couper, Eleanor Singer, Richard A. Kulka, “Participation in the 1990 Decennial Census: Politics, Privacy, Pressures,” American Politics Quarterly 26 (January 1998): 59–80, as well as Census Bureau data provided by Kristin Goss and Stephen Knack, to whom I am grateful. In dress rehearsals for the 2000 census, the Census Bureau found that civic participation was a very strong predictor of census participation, much stronger than exposure to advertising designed to encourage census participation. See Nancy Bates and Sara Buckley, “Reported Exposure to Paid Advertising and Likelihood of Returning a Census Form,” (paper presented to fifty-fourth annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, St. Petersburg, Fla., May 1999).
32. On road rage, see Matthew L. Wald, “Temper Cited as Cause of 28,000 Road Deaths a Year,” New York Times, July 18, 1997. For a skeptical view, see Michael Fumento, “‘Road Rage’ Versus Reality,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1998. Fumento, however, reports that crashes at stoplights increased by 14 percent in the period 1992–1996, with the number of fatal crashes at stoplights increasing by 19 percent. Tolerance of speeding in towns rose steadily from 20 percent in 1990 to 46 percent in 1997, while tolerance of speeding on the open highway remained stable at about 50 percent, according to the Public Attitude Monitor 5 (Wheaton, III.: Insurance Research Council, 1997), 8. On Gallup poll results, see George Gallup Jr. and Frank Newport, “Americans Take Their Automobiles Seriously,” Gallup Poll Monthly, no. 308 (May 1991): 46–61, esp. 58–59 and Gallup Poll Monthly (August 1997): 60. For additional confirmation, see The Public Perspective 8 (December/January 1997): 64.
33. See appendix II for the sources for figure 40. Thanks to Stephen Knack for this citation.
34. Figure 41 draws on data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports both for the aggregate of all crime (violent and nonviolent) and for murder. Measures of the murder rate are more reliable but are closely tied to family discord and to the ups and downs of drug wars and are thus less than ideal as a generic indicator of national law-abidingness. National Crime Survey victimization rates are not available before the 1970s.
35. See, for example, Fox Butterfield, “Decline of Violent Crimes Is Linked to Crack Market,” New York Times, December 28, 1998.
36. I want to thank Sam Bowles for initially suggesting this approach.
37. This is true whether measured in terms of total U.S. population or in terms of total employment. See also Richard L. Abel, American Lawyers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
38. Richard H. Sander and E. Douglass Williams, “Why Are There So Many Lawyers? Perspectives on a Turbulent Market,” Law and Social Inquiry Journal 14 (1989), 433.
39. Statistics in this and the previous paragraphs are drawn from Historical Statistics of the United States: Series D589–D592; Statistical Abstract of the United States (various years), series no. 637; and data provided directly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
40. Robert Clark, “Why So Many Lawyers,” Fordham Law Review 61 (1993): 275.
41. See Marc Galanter, “The Day After the Litigation Explosion,” Maryland Law Review 46 (fall 1986): 3–39; Marc Galanter, “Beyond the Litigation Panic,” New Directions in Liability Law, ed. Walter Olson (New York: The Academy of Political Science, 1988), 18–30; Marc Galanter, “Real World Torts: An Antidote to Anecdote,” Maryland Law Review 46 (1996): 1093–1160; Marc Galanter and Thomas Palay, Tournament of Lawyers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
42. Marc Galanter, “The Faces of Mistrust: The Image of Lawyers in Public Opinion, Jokes, and Political Discourse,” University of Cincinnati Law Review 66 (spring 1998): 805–845, quotation at 806–807.
43. R. J. Gilson and R. H. Mnookin, “Disputing Through Agents: Cooperation and Conflict Between Lawyers in Litigation,”Columbia Law Review 94 (1994): 509–66, as cited in Tom R. Tyler, “Trust and Democratic Governance,” in Trust and Governance, Valerie Braithwaite and Margaret Levi, eds. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), 269–294, at 288.
CHAPTER 9: AGAINST THE TIDE? SMALL GROUPS, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, AND THE NET
1. Robert Wuthnow, Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community (New York: Free Press, 1994), especially 45–46, 59–76, 170, 320.
2. Theodora Penny Martin, The Sound of
Our Own Voices: Women’s Study Clubs 1860–1910 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), quotations at 172; and Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1992).
3. Ellen Slezak, The Book Group Book (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1993), 14.
4. James A. Davis, Great Books and Small Groups (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1961), as well as author’s analysis of 1996 National Election Study, correlating membership in literary, study, and discussion groups with other forms of community involvement, controlling for other demographic factors.
5. Robert Oliphant, “My Say,” Publishers Weekly, January 4, 1985, 72; Mary Mackay, “Booking a Group Adventure,” Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women 8 (summer 1993): 26. The Study Circle Resource Center and the Kettering Foundation sponsor study and reading groups around the country.
6. Surveys carried out in 1967 (Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality [New York: Harper & Row, 1972]) and 1996 (National Election Study) found essentially identical rates of participation (4 percent) in literary, artistic, study, or discussion groups. The author’s analysis of the General Social Survey found no significant net change in membership in such groups between 1974 and 1994 and a significant decline if we control for educational and marital changes. According to the staff of the Great Books program, a national program for reading groups established in 1947, they have half as many participants now as in the 1960s.
7. Alfred H. Katz, Self-Help in America: A Social Movement Perspective (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993); Irving Peter Gellman, The Sober Alcoholic: An Organizational Analysis of Alcoholics Anonymous (New Haven, Conn.: College and University Press, 1964); Nan Robertson, Getting Better: Inside Alcoholics Anonymous (New York: William Morrow, 1988), 88, 155–56.
8. Author’s analysis of National Election Study of 1996; Morton A. Lieberman and Lonnie R. Snowden, “Problems in Assessing Prevalence and Membership Characteristics of Self-Help Group Participants,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 29 (June 1993): 166–180.
9. Wuthnow, Sharing the Journey, 158.
10. Lieberman and Snowden, “Problems in Assessing Prevalence and Membership Characteristics of Self-Help Group Participants,” 176–178. For contrasting views about self-help groups, see Frank Riessman and David Carroll, Redefining Self-Help: Policy and Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995); Katz, Self-Help in America (1993); and Wendy Kaminer, I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992).
11. Alfred H. Katz and Eugene I. Bender, eds., The Strength In Us: Self-Help Groups in the Modern World (New York: Franklin Watts, 1976), 6.
12. Riessman and Carroll, Redefining Self-Help; Katz, Self-Help in America.
13. Author’s analysis of 1996 National Election Study. Lieberman and Snowden, “Problems in Assessing Prevalence and Membership Characteristics of Self-Help Group Participants,” 170.
14. Wuthnow, Sharing the Journey, 3–6. Wuthnow reports (322) that larger “small” groups (with more than twenty members) do encourage participants to become focused on wider issues, but smaller “small” groups (with ten or fewer members) do not. See also Wuthnow’s Loose Connections: Joining Together in America’s Fragmented Communities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
15. Jack L. Walker, Mobilizing Interest Groups in America, esp. 35–40; W. Douglas Costain and Anne N. Costain, “The Political Strategies of Social Movements: A Comparison of the Women’s and Environmental Movements,” Congress and the Presidency 19 (spring 1992): 1–27.
16. Rochon, Culture Moves.
17. McAdam, Freedom Summer, 63–64, and 217 ff.; Doug McAdam and Ronnelle Paulsen, “Specifying the Relationship between Social Ties and Activism,” American Journal of Sociology 99 (November 1993): 640–667; Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement; Edward J. Walsh and Rex H. Warland, “Social Movement Involvement in the Wake of a Nuclear Accident: Activists and Free Riders in the TMI [Three Mile Island] Area,” American Sociological Review 48 (December 1983): 764–780; Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford Press, 1995); John D. McCarthy, “Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Mobilization: Infrastructure Deficits and New Technologies,” in Social Movements in an Organizational Society: Collected Essays, ed. Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987), 49–66, esp. 55–56; Rochon, Culture Moves, ch. 4.
18. Mario Diani, “Social Movements and Social Capital: A Network Perspective on Movement Outcomes,” Mobilization: An International Journal 2 (September 1997): 129–147; Carmen Sirianni and Lewis Friedland, “Social Capital and Civic Innovation: Learning and Capacity Building from the 1960s to the 1990s” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, D.C., 1995); and www.cpn.org/sections/new_citizenship/theory/socialcapital_civicinnov.html.
19. McAdam, Freedom Summer, 132, 190; Kenneth T. Andrews, “The Impacts of Social Movements on the Political Process: The Civil Rights Movement and Black Electoral Politics in Mississippi,” American Sociological Review 62 (1997): 800–819.
20. Debra C. Minkoff, “Producing Social Capital,” American Behavioral Scientist 40 (March/April 1997): 606–619.
21. Margit Mayer, “Social Movement Research and Social Movement Practice: The U.S. Pattern,” in Research on Social Movements: The State of the Art in Western Europe and the USA, ed. Dieter Rucht (Boulder, Colo.: West-view Press, 1991): 47–120, quotation at 64.
22. John D. McCarthy, “Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Mobilization,” 58.
23. McCarthy, “Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Mobilization”; Suzanne Staggenborg, The Pro-Choice Movement: Organization and Activism in the Abortion Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 5–6, 146.
24. Interviews with NARAL state officials.
25. Minkoff, “Producing Social Capital,” 613.
26. Sidney Tarrow has argued both sides of this debate. For his theory of “cycles of protest,” which end in exhausted quiescence, see Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. 141–160. On the other hand, for his speculations about a new, permanently active “movement society,” see David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow, “A Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century,” in The Social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century, ed. David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 1–28, esp. 4. Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), esp. 313, argues that “elite-challenging” behavior has become more common. For arguments that social movements end up as conventional interest groups or “professional movement organizations,” see Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), and John D. McCarthy and Mayer Zald, The Trend of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization (Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press, 1973).
27. Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 182–185, 191; McAdam, Freedom Summer; Anne N. Costain, Inviting Women’s Rebellion: A Political Process Interpretation of the Women’s Movement (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), esp. 79–121; Debra Minkoff, “The Sequencing of Social Movements,” American Sociological Review 62 (October 1997): 779–799, esp. 789; and Anne Costain, Richard Braunstein, and Heidi Berggren, “Framing the Women’s Movement,” in Women, Media, and Politics, ed. Pippa Norris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 205–220.
28. Riley E. Dunlap and Angela G. Mertig, eds., American Environmentalism: The U.S. Environmental Movement, 1970–1990 (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1992); Costain and Costain, “The Political Strategies of Social Movemen
ts”; and Donald Snow, Inside the Environmental Movement: Meeting the Leadership Challenge (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1992), 9.
29. All post-1970 membership data for environmental groups in this chapter are drawn from Christopher J. Bosso, “The Color of Money: Environmental Groups and the Pathologies of Fund Raising,” in Cigler and Loomis, Interest Group Politics, 4th ed., 101–130; and Christopher J. Bosso, “Facing the Future: Environmentalists and the New Political Landscape,” in Interest Group Politics, 6th ed., Allan J. Cigler and Burdett A. Loomis, eds. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1999). Thanks to Professor Bosso for help in understanding the environmental movement. For the period prior to 1970 I have drawn on Robert Cameron Mitchell, Angela G. Mertig, and Riley E. Dunlap, “Twenty Years of Environmental Mobilization: Trends Among National Environmental Organizations,” in Dunlap and Mertig, American Environmentalism, 11–26. In a few cases, I have interpolated data for missing years.
30. Robert C. Mitchell et al., “Twenty Years…,” 17; Bosso, “Color of Money,” 117.
31. Unsourced quotations and data in the following three paragraphs are from Paul E. Johnson, “Interest Group Recruiting: Finding Members and Keeping Them,” in Cigler and Loomis, Interest Group Politics, 5th ed., 35–62; and Bosso, “Color of Money,” esp. 113–115. See also Grant Jordan and William Maloney, The Protest Business? Mobilizing Campaign Groups (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1997).
32. Mitchell, Mertig, and Dunlap, “Twenty Years of Environmental Mobilization,” 13.
33. Bosso, “Color of Money,” 113–114.
34. Gregg Easterbrook, “Junk-Mail Politics,” New Republic, April 25, 1988, 21, as cited in Jeffrey M. Berry, The Interest Group Society, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1997), 77.
35. Andrew S. McFarland, Common Cause: Lobbying in the Public Interest (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House Publishers, 1984), 46.
36. E-mail from assistant director of “membership and marketing” of a major environmental organization.