Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society

523 Pages·2002·2.77 MB·English

by  Robert D. Putnam

Democracies in Flux:
The Evolution of Social
Capital in Contemporary
Society
ROBERT D. PUTNAM,
Editor
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Democracies in Flux
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Democracies in Flux

The Evolution of Social Capital
in Contemporary Society
EDITED BY ROBERT D. PUTNAM
1
3

Oxford New York
Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai
Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai
Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo
Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
First published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 2002

First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2004

198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016

www.oup.com

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Democracies in flux: the evolution of social capital in contemporary society/

Eva Cox ...[et al.]; edited by Robert D. Putnam.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-19-515089-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-19-517160-8 (pbk.)

1. Social capital (Sociology).

2. Civil society.

3. Democracy.

I. Cox, Eva, 1938–

II. Putnam, Robert D.

HM708.D46 2002 302—dc21 2001047552

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 3
Robert D. Putnam and Kristin A. Goss
1
GREAT BRITAIN 21
The Role of Government and the Distribution of Social Capital
Peter A. Hall
2
UNITED STATES 59
Bridging the Privileged and the Marginalized?
Robert Wuthnow
3
UNITED STATES 103
From Membership to Advocacy
Theda Skocpol
4
FRANCE 137
Old and New Civic and Social Ties in France
Jean-Pierre Worms
5
A DECLINE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL? 189
The German Case
Claus Offe and Susanne Fuchs
6
FROM CIVIL WAR TO CIVIL SOCIETY 245
Social Capital in Spain from the 1930s to the 1990s
Víctor Pérez-Díaz
7
SWEDEN 289
Social Capital in the Social Democratic State
Bo Rothstein
8
AUSTRALIA 333
Making the Lucky Country
Eva Cox
9
BROADENING THE BASIS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN JAPAN 359
Takashi Inoguchi
CONCLUSION 393
Robert D. Putnam
NOTES 417
CONTRIBUTORS 493
INDEX 497
Democracies in Flux
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INTRODUCTION
ROBERT D. PUTNAM
AND KRISTIN A. GOSS
From Aristotle to Tocqueville, political and social theorists have
stressed the importance of political culture and civil society. In recent
years interest in these themes has revived, in part because the difficult
births of market-oriented democracies in formerly Communist lands
have underscored the cultural and sociological preconditions for such
institutions. Ironically—just at the moment of liberal democracy’s
greatest triumph— there is also unhappiness about the performance of
major social institutions, including the institutions of representative
government, among the established democracies of Western Europe,
North America, and East Asia.1 At least in the United States, there is rea-
son to suspect that some fundamental social and cultural preconditions
for effective democracy may have been eroded in recent decades, the
result of a gradual but widespread process of civic disengagement.2
This volume aims to contribute fundamental theoretical and empiri-
cal knowledge to our understanding of social change in eight advanced
democracies: Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Spain,
Sweden, and the United States. How has the character of civil society
changed over the past fifty years, and why? This book is about social cap-
ital—that is, social networks and the norms of reciprocity associated
with them—and how the profile of social capital is evolving in contem-
porary postindustrial societies. Because the concept of social capital may