37. R. Kenneth Godwin, One Billion Dollars of Influence (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1988), 55–65, and the works cited there; John D. McCarthy, “Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Mobilization,” 49–66, esp. 62–63.
38. Of the thirty-two associations represented in figure 8, only those two nineteenth-century giants whose membership had peaked in the 1920s (the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the International Order of Odd Fellows) lost as many as 85 percent of their remaining members from their post–World War II peak through the end of the twentieth century.
39. Christopher J. Bosso, review of The Protest Business? Mobilizing Campaign Groups, by Grant Jordan and William Maloney, American Political Science Review 93 (June 1999): 467.
40. Linda L. Fowler and Ronald G. Shaiko, “The Grass Roots Connection: Environmental Activists and Senate Roll Calls,” American Journal of Political Science 31 (August 1987): 484–510, quotation at 490.
41. Financial contributions to tertiary groups are fully accounted for in the data already presented in chapter 7 on trends in philanthropy, as summarized in figure 31.
42. Kelly Patterson, “The Political Firepower of the National Rifle Association,” in Cigler and Loomis, Interest Group Politics, 5th ed., 130.
43. John D. McCarthy, “Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Mobilization,” 62.
44. Tarrow, Power in Movement, 133.
45. Jordan and Maloney, The Protest Business, 191. This survey was conducted among British members of these two organizations, though there is no reason to doubt that the results apply as well to American members. Godwin, One Billion Dollars of Influence, 48, argues that “for many groups, the objective is a quiescent contributor, not an active member.”
46. Jordan and Maloney, The Protest Business, 169.
47. McCarthy and Zald, The Trend of Social Movements, 3. Ronald G. Shaiko, “More Bang for the Buck,” in Cigler and Loomis, Interest Group Politics, 3rd ed., 124.
48. Bosso, “Facing the Future.” See also Mitchell, Mertig, and Dunlap, “Twenty Years of Environmental Mobilization,” 21–23.
49. In his classic study, Political Parties (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1962 [1911]), Robert Michels argued that even the most democratically inspired organizations inevitably fell under the influence of a small elite.
50. “Yogurt-eaters for Wilderness,” Sierra (January/February 1989), 22, as cited in Philip A. Mundo, Interest Groups: Cases and Characteristics (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1992), 178. We asked representatives in two or three states for each national environmental organization with state or local chapters to estimate what fraction of their members did more than contribute financially. Estimates ranged from 1.5 percent to 15 percent, figures that are unlikely to be underestimates. In 1998 there were 27,082 Rotarians in Texas, according to Rotary International Membership Services (Evanston, Ill.). Rotary members must attend 60 percent of all weekly meetings, but most aim for 100 percent.
51. Riley E. Dunlap and Angela G. Mertig, “The Evolution of the U.S. Environmental Movement from 1970 to 1990: An Overview,” in Dunlap and Mertig, American Environmentalism, 6 (emphasis added).
52. Gallup data cited in Riley E. Dunlap, “Trends in Public Opinion Toward Environmental Issues: 1965–1990,” in Dunlap and Mertig, American Environmentalism, 113, and Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll, April 13–14, 1999.
53. Survey data in this paragraph from the General Social Survey, 1993–94. The GSS estimates seem to be greatly exaggerated. During the 1990s membership in all major environmental organizations combined averaged six to seven million a year. That figure includes much double counting, since the average member donates to several others on the list and remains a contributor for three years. However, assuming that all members contributed to only one organization and left after two years, a maximum of sixteen million Americans, or 8 percent of all adults, could have contributed over five years, as compared with the GSS-based rate of 49 percent. Plausible estimates for subnational environmental giving could not close that gap.
54. Unpublished results from Yankelovich Partners, Inc. archives. Roper Reports 97-3 (New York: Roper Starch Worldwide, 1997), 117–121, reports that between 1989 and 1997 everyday recycling by Americans rose sharply (e.g., “separating garbage from recyclable material … on a regular basis” jumped from 14 percent to 39 percent), probably because of the proliferation of local recycling programs, but that “writing letters to politicians expressing opinions on environmental issues…on a regular basis [or] from time to time” slumped from 20 percent to 17 percent. In writing this book, I contacted a dozen experts, both academics and activists, on grassroots environmentalism. Without exception they believed that grassroots environmental activity was on the rise. With one exception, however, none could cite hard evidence for this impression. The exception was a series of directories of state and local environmental groups prepared by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) annually since 1968. The raw number of such organizations listed in successive years has grown. However, over these thirty years NWF got better at finding such groups, and once we take that improvement into account, the directories tell a story of decline. For example, of groups shown in the 1999 directory with founding dates before 1968, only one-third had been listed in the 1968 directory. Even modest adjustment for this early undercounting converts apparent growth into actual decline. Thanks to Arkadi Gerney for help with this research. Other alleged evidence of growth in grassroots environmental organizations, such as that presented in Nicholas Freudenberg and Carol Steinsapir, “Not in Our Backyards: The Grassroots Environmental Movement,” in American Environmentalism: The U.S. Environmental Movement, 1970–1990, edited by Riley E. Dunlap and Angela G. Mertig (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1992), 29, is seriously flawed by the fact that most lists of grassroots groups are never purged of defunct organizations. Another bit of evidence against the supposed growth of environmental activism over the last several decades comes from the annual UCLA survey of hundreds of thousands of college freshmen. The proportion who rated “becoming involved in programs to clean up the environment” an important goal in life fell from 45 percent in 1972 to 19 percent in 1998; see Linda J. Sax et al., The American Freshman (Los Angeles: UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, 1998) and earlier volumes in this series. In the 1990s an antienviron-mental movement arose, especially in the West, under the labels of “Wise Use” and “property rights,” but I have not found any hard evidence on grassroots involvement in it.
55. On the religious Right, see Robert C. Liebman and Robert Wuthnow, eds., The New Christian Right: Mobilization and Legitimation (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine Publishing Company, 1983); Diamond, Roads to Dominion; Justin Watson, The Christian Coalition: Dreams of Restoration, Demands for Recognition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); and Smith, American Evangelicalism. In 1998 the Christian Coalition claimed 1.7 million members with over 1,425 chapters. Subsequent reports suggested that those claims were vastly inflated and that the Christian Coalition was primarily a direct-mail operation. See Laurie Goodstein, “Coalition’s Woes May Hinder Goals of Christian Right,” New York Times, August 2, 1999.
56. Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion, 173–214.
57. Robert Wuthnow, “The Political Rebirth of American Evangelicals,” in Liebman and Wuthnow, The New Christian Right, 167–185.
58. Smith, American Evangelicalism, 39.
59. James L. Guth, John C. Green, Lyman A. Kellstedt, and Corwin E. Smidt, “Onward Christian Soldiers: Religious Activist Groups in American Politics,” in Cigler and Loomis, Interest Group Politics, 4th ed., 55–76.
60. Guth, Green, Kellstedt, and Smidt, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” 63, 73.
61. The generalizations in this paragraph are drawn from James L. Guth, Lyman A. Kellstedt, Corwin E. Smidt, and John C. Green, “Thunder on the Right: Religious Interest Group Mobilization in the 1996 Election,” in Cigler and Loomis, Interest Group Politics, 5th ed., 169–192.
62. Data generously supplied by M. Dane Waters of the Initiative and Referendu
m Institute. See M. Dane Waters, “A Century Later—The Experiment with Citizen-Initiated Legislation Continues,” The Public Perspective (special issue: America at the Polls: 1998) 10 (December/January 1999): 123–144, esp. 128.
63. David D. Schmidt, Citizen Lawmakers: The Ballot Initiative Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).
64. David B. Magleby, “Direct Legislation in the American States,” in Referendums around the World, eds. David Butler and Austin Ranney (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1994): 230–233.
65. Caroline J. Tolbert, Daniel H. Lowenstein, and Todd Donovan, “Election Law and Rules for Using Initiatives,” in Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States, eds. Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. Tolbert (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998): 35 (emphasis added). See also other chapters in the Bowler, Donovan, and Tolbert volume; David B. Magleby, Direct Legislation: Voting on Ballot Propositions in the United States (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); Thomas E. Cronin, Direct Democracy: The Politics of Initiative, Referendum, and Recall (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); and M. Dane Walters, “A Century Later—The Experiment with Citizen-Initiated Legislation Continues.”
66. For evidence on the propositions in this paragraph, see Betty H. Zisk, Money, Media, and the Grass Roots: State Ballot Issues and the Electoral Process (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1987), quotation at 246; Cronin, Direct Democracy, esp. 110–116; Tolbert, Lowenstein, and Donovan, “Election Law”; Magleby, “Direct Legislation in the American States.” Thanks to Benjamin Deufel for his able help on this topic.
67. Zisk, Money, Media, and the Grass Roots, 250.
68. Kevin Djo Everett, “Professionalization and Protest: Changes in the Social Movement Sector, 1961–1983,” Social Forces 70 (June 1992): 957–975.
69. Debra E. Blum, “Men’s Group Lays Off Entire Staff,” The Chronicle of Philanthropy, March 12, 1998. Promise-Keepers subsequently resumed operations, but remained about half as large organizationally a year after Stand in the Gap as before. See “Promise Keepers at a Prayerful Crossroads; One Year After Mall Rally, Men’s Religious Group Grapples with Message, Money,” Washington Post, October 7, 1998.
70. Evidence for the generalizations in this paragraph comes from Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, Voice and Equality, 50, 60, 88–89; Dalton, Citizen Politics, 67–85; Matthew Crozat, “Are the Times A-Changin’? Assessing the Acceptance of Protest in Western Democracies,” in Meyer and Tarrow, The Social Movement Society, 59–81; and author’s analysis of General Social Survey data (1973; 1996), Political Action Studies (1974; 1981), Roper Social and Political Trends surveys (1978; 1980; 1985; 1994), and the World Values Surveys (1980; 1990; 1995). Confirming the “graying” of protest demonstrations shown in figure 45, Roper surveys found that the fraction of all self-proclaimed protesters who were forty-five and over doubled from 17 percent in 1978 to 32 percent in 1994. Dalton notes that data from the five Political Action and the World Values Surveys conducted between 1974 and 1995 show that the fraction of adults who had ever joined a boycott rose from 16 percent in 1974 to 19 percent in 1995; had ever joined a lawful demonstration rose from 12 percent to 16 percent; had ever participated in a wildcat strike rose from 2 percent to 4 percent; and had ever participated in a sit-in remained constant at 2 percent. These same surveys show, however, that the average age of all adults who had ever demonstrated rose steadily from thirty-five in 1974 to forty-six in 1995; the modal protester throughout this period was the aging veteran of the sixties.
71. Meyer and Tarrow, “A Movement Society,” 8.
72. For all phone calls: Federal Communications Commission, Statistics of Communications Common Carriers (formerly Statistics of the Communication Industry in the U.S.) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1945–1999). For all personal calls in 1982: Fischer, America Calling, 226; for trends in long-distance personal calls and letters: author’s analysis of Roper Social and Political Trends survey archive plus Roper Reports for August 1995. For 1998 usage: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Biennial News Consumption Survey, www.people-press.org/med98que.htm.
73. For predictions about the telephone’s social impact, see Ithiel de Sola Pool, Forecasting the Telephone: A Retrospective Technology Assessment of the Telephone (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing, 1983); Sidney Aronson, “Bell’s Electrical Toy: What’s the Use? The Sociology of Early Telephone Usage,” and Asa Briggs, “The Pleasure Telephone: A Chapter in the Prehistory of the Media,” both in The Social Impact of the Telephone, ed. Ithiel de Sola Pool (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977); Fischer, America Calling, quotation at 82. Thanks to David Campbell for his review of the social effects of telephony.
74. Pool, “Introduction,” in Social Impact of the Telephone, ed. Pool, 4.
75. Alan H. Wurtzel and Colin Turner, “The Latent Functions of the Telephone: What Missing the Extension Means,” in Social Impact of the Telephone, ed. Pool, 246–61.
76. Sidney H. Aronson, “The Sociology of the Telephone,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 12 (September 1971): 162; Fischer, America Calling, 195; Malcolm M. Willey and Stuart A. Rice, Communication Agencies and Social Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933); Martin Mayer, “The Telephone and the Uses of Time,” in Social Impact of the Telephone, ed. Pool, 225–45, quotations at 226 and 230.
77. Fischer, America Calling, 3, 242, 253, 265–66.
78. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 391.
79. Technological diffusion: table 2 below and the associated discussion; time usage: John Robinson, Shawn Levin, and Brian Hak, “Computer Time,”American Demographics, August 1998; Internet usage: figure 56 below and “64.2 Million American Adults Regularly Use the Internet,” Mediamark press release (May 12, 1999), at www.mediamark.com/mri/docs/pres_s99.htm.
80. Youth and Internet: Project Vote Smart/Pew Charitable Trusts 1999 Survey (Philipsburg, Mont.: Project Vote Smart, 1999), (www.votesmart.org/youthsurvey.phtml?checking=/, accessed October 5, 1999); AARP Web site: “Silver Stringers Get New Life on Line,” Boston Globe, December 25, 1998.
81. Religious services: “God Goes Online,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 1999, W1; prayer: Joshua Cooper Ramo, “Finding God on the Web,” Time, December 16, 1996, 60–65; “Praying on the Internet,” Christian Century, April 16, 1997; weddings: “The Knot: Weddings for the Real World Launches Wedding Day,” Business Wire, June 24, 1997; funerals and grief counseling: “Post-mortems Meet Modems: Online Funerals Is Mourners’ Way to Go,” Associated Press, in the Sacramento Bee, August 25, 1996, A7; Sarah Wyatt, “Comfort and Counsel in Times of Grief,” New York Times, August 18, 1997; virtual demonstrations and lobbying: “We Shall All Log-On: Digital Demonstrators Unite on the Web,” Wall Street Journal, December 3, 1998, B1; Rebecca Fairley Raney, “Flash Campaigns: Online Activism at Warp Speed,” New York Times, June 3, 1999; Internet and community: William A. Galston, “(How) Does the Internet Affect Community? Some Speculations in Search of Evidence,” in democracy.com? Governance in a Networked World, eds. Elaine Ciulla Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (Hollis, N.H.: Hollis Publishing, 1999), 45–61.
82. Philip Aspden and James E. Katz, “A Nation of Strangers?” Communications of the ACM 40 (December 1997): 81–86; “The Internet News Audience Goes Ordinary,” Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (www.people-press.org/tech98mor.htm, accessed on August 15, 1999), esp. 15; author’s analysis of DDB Needham Life Style survey archive. See also Bruce Bimber, “Information and Civic Engagement in America: Political Effects of Information Technology” (unpublished ms., University of California at Santa Barbara, 1999) for a similar finding.
83. Barry Wellman, Janet Salaff, Dimitrina Dimitrova, Laura Garton, Milena Gulia, and Caroline Haythornthwaite, “Computer Networks as Social Networks: Collaborative Work, Telework, and Virtual Community,” Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1996): 213–238, quotation at 213, and Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia, �
��Virtual Communities as Communities: Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone,” in Communities in Cyberspace, Marc A. Smith and Peter Kol-lock, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 167–194, quotation at 188.
84. Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, The Network Nation: Human Communication Via Computer (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978), as quoted in Nitin Nohria and Robert G. Eccles, “Face-to-Face: Making Network Organizations Work,” in Networks and Organizations: Structure, Form, and Action, Nitin Nohria and Robert G. Eccles, eds. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1992), 289; Michael Strangelove, “The Internet, Electric Gaia and the Rise of the Uncensored Self,” Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine 1 (September 1994), 11.
85. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1993), 1; John Perry Barlow, Sven Birkets, Kevin Kelly, and Mark Slouka, “What Are We Doing On-Line,” Harper’s (August 1995): 35–46, quotation at 40.
86. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000), quotation at 31; Laura Garton and Barry Wellman, “Social Impacts of Electronic Mail in Organizations: A Review of the Research Literature,” Communication Yearbook 18 (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995), 434–453, esp. 445–447.
87. Michael L. Dertouzos, What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives (San Francisco: HarperEdge, 1997), 157–160.
88. Rheingold, Virtual Community, 422; Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, The Network Nation, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993); Peter Steiner, “On the Internet, No One Knows You’re a Dog,” New Yorker, July 5, 1993, 61.
89. Lee Sproull and Sara B. Kiesler, Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization (Cam-bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991).
90. Peter Kollock and Marc A. Smith, “Communities in Cyberspace,” in Communities in Cyberspace, Smith and Kollock, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 3–25, quotation at 13.
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