Robert D. Putnam

Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/assoc/bowling.html 5/28/2012 Copyright

Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games

Domestic politics and international relations are often inextricably entangled, but existing theories (particularly “state-centric” theories) do not adequately account for these linkages. When national leaders must win ratification (formal or informal) from their constituents for an international agreement, their negotiating behavior reflects the simultaneous imperatives of both a domestic political game and an international game. Using illustrations from Western economic summitry, the Panama Canal and Versailles Treaty negotiations, IMF stabilization programs, the European Community, and many other diplomatic contexts, this article offers a theory of ratification. It addresses the role of domestic preferences and coalitions, domestic political institutions and practices, the strategies and tactics of negotiators, uncertainty, the domestic reverberation of international pressures, and the interests of the chief negotiator. This theory of “two-level games” may also be applicable to many other political phenomena, such as dependency, legislative committees, and multiparty coalitions.

Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics

This original look at the dynamics of international relations untangles the vigorous interaction of domestic and international politics on subjects as diverse as nuclear disarmament, human rights, and trade. An eminent group of political scientists demonstrates how international bargaining that reflects domestic political agendas can be undone when it ignores the influence of domestic constituencies. The eleven studies in Double-Edged Diplomacy provide a major step in furthering a more complete understanding of how politics between nations affects politics within nations and vice versa. The result is a striking new paradigm for comprehending world events at a time when the global and the domestic are becoming ever more linked.

Religion, Social Networks, and Life Satisfaction:

Although the positive association between religiosity and life satisfaction is well documented, much theoretical and empirical controversy surrounds the question of how religion actually shapes life satisfaction. Using a new panel dataset, this study offers strong evidence for social and participatory mechanisms shaping religion’s impact on life satisfaction. Our findings suggest that religious people are more satisfied with their lives because they regularly attend religious services and build social networks in their congregations. The effect of within-congregation friendship is contingent, however, on the presence of a strong religious identity. We find little evidence that other private or subjective aspects of religiosity affect life satisfaction independent of attendance and congregational friendship.

Political Attitudes and the Local Community

Politicians and political scientists alike have long recognized the impact of the local political environment on the attitudes and behavior of community residents. V.O. Key demonstrated in a variety of contexts the striking persistence of distinctive community political traditions. The extensive discussion of the “suburban conversion” hypothesis has turned in part on the question of the influence of the local community on partisan attitudes. A number of studies of voting behavior have shown that majority views in a community have a disproportionate advantage in gaining and holding adherents. There is, in short, good reason to suspect that the local community has a significant influence on social attitudes and political behavior. Why is this so? How does the Republican “atmosphere” in Elmira affect the votes of individual Elmirans? How are community political traditions maintained through decades of changing community composition? Why does the minority party in a community fail to mobilize many of the voters who are predisposed toward it? What explanation of these sorts of community influence seems most adequate?—this is the question to be examined in this paper.

Increasing socioeconomic disparities in adolescent obesity.

Significance Childhood and youth obesity represent significant US public health challenges. Recent findings that the childhood obesity ‘‘epidemic’’ may have slightly abated have been met with relief from health professionals and popular media. However, we document that the overall trend in youth obesity rates masks a significant and growing class gap between youth from upper and lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Until 2002, obesity rates increased at similar rates for all adolescents, but since then, obesity has begun to decline among higher SES youth but continued to increase among lower SES youth. These results underscore the need to target public health interventions to disadvantaged youth who remain at risk, as well as to examine how health information circulates through class-biased channels. Recent reports suggest that the rapid growth in youth obesity seen in the 1980s and 1990s has plateaued. We examine changes in obesity among US adolescents aged 12–17 y by socioeconomic background using data from two nationally representative health surveys, the 1988–2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys and the 2003–2011 National Survey of Children’s Health. Although the overall obesity prevalence stabilized, this trend masks a growing socioeconomic gradient: The prevalence of obesity among high-socioeconomic status adolescents has decreased in recent years, whereas the prevalence of obesity among their low-socioeconomic status peers has continued to increase. Additional analyses suggest that socioeconomic differences in the levels of physical activity, as well as differences in calorie intake, may have contributed to the growing obesity gradient.

A Quarter-Century of Declining Confidence

A quarter-century ago, Michel J. Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki argued that the nations of Europe, North America, and Japan confronted a “crisis of democracy.” Their starting point was a vision, widespread during the 1960s and 1970s, of “a bleak future for democratic government,” an image of “the disintegration of civil order, the breakdown of social discipline, the debility of leaders, and the alienation of citizens.” The central thesis of the subtle, nuanced, and wide-ranging analysis by Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki (hereafter CH&W) was that the Trilateral democracies were becoming overloaded by increasingly insistent demands from an ever-expanding array of participants, raising fundamental issues of governability. Within that common framework, the three authors offered somewhat distinct diagnoses of the problems facing their respective regions. In Europe, Crozier emphasized the upwelling of social mobilization, the collapse of traditional institutions and values, the resulting loss of social control, and governments’ limited room for maneuver. Huntington asserted that America was swamped by a “democratic surge” that had produced political polarization, Susan J. Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics at Harvard University, is the author of Losing Face: Status Politics in Japan (1990) and Media and Politics in Japan (1996). Robert D. Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, is the author of Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993) and Bowling Alone: Decline and Renewal of the American Community (forthcoming, June 2000). Russell J. Dalton, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California at Irvine, is author of Critical Masses (1999) and The Green Rainbow (1994). This essay is adapted from the introductory chapter to Pharr and Putnam’s edited volume Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? (Princeton University Press, 2000).

Explaining Institutional Success: The Case of Italian Regional Government

Why do some new representative institutions succeed and others fail? This article tests several hypotheses about the ecology of institutional performance, drawing on a ten-year study of Italian regional governments. Institutional success is greater where socioeconomic development is more advanced, where the political culture is participant and sociable, rather than passive and parochial, and where social stability is greater; these three variables alone account for more than four-fifths of the variance in institutional performance. Of particular importance is the impact of historical patterns of social solidarity and political mobilization on contemporary institutional success.

The Political Attitudes of Senior Civil Servants in Western Europe: A Preliminary Report

Can there really be much doubt who governs our complex modern societies? Public bureaucracies, staffed largely by permanent civil servants, are responsible for the vast majority of policy initiatives taken by governments. Discretion, not merely for deciding individual cases, but for crafting the content of most legislation has passed from the legislature to the executive. Bureaucrats, monopolizing as they do much of the available information about the shortcomings of existing policies, as well as much of the technical expertise necessary to design practical alternatives, have gained a predominant influence over the evolution of the agenda for decision. Elected executives everywhere are outnumbered and outlasted by career civil servants. 1 In a literal sense, the modern political system is essentially ‘bureaucratic’ – characterized by ‘the rule of officials’.

Using Social Capital to Help Integrate Planning Theory, Research, and Practice: Preface

Abstract This symposium presents selected contributions to two panels held at recent Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) conferences to explore the potential usefulness to planning of the concept of social capital. Its purpose is to stimulate for readers of the Journal the kind of lively and fruitful discussion enjoyed by those who attended the conferences. The contributors summarize the development of the concept and consider alternative definitions of it. This lays the foundation for a broad conversation about whether and how planners can invest in social capital formation in ways that will improve the well-being of the disadvantaged. Mirroring the conference panels, the authors use the interplay of concept development and practical examples to test and illustrate the possible usefulness of different ideas about what social capital is. They discuss why it is important and how it functions in society.