Category Archives: civic theory

political science and the public

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At the Midwest Political Science Association meeting over the weekend in Chicago, the distinguished political scientists Arthur Lupia, Jeffrey Isaac, Marc Lynch, Rogers M. Smith, and Lynn Vavreck discussed “Political Science and The Public: It’s Time for More Effective Engagement.” As the program promised, the panel was “about what we are, and can be, doing right now to increase the public relevance of political science.”

Lupia began the panel with a forceful argument that the problem is not with the public. People are overwhelmed with data and opinion; the competition for their attention is fierce. The problem is with us if we fail to communicate effectively. Several panelists noted that we now have many venues for doing so, and political scientists are using them. Lynch, for example, is one of the leaders of The Monkey Cage, the Washington Post’s blog for political scientists; Vavreck is often on TV.

Everyone acknowledged pitfalls and challenges. Writing for the public may not help get tenure; it takes time; and it can seduce you into trading scholarly rigor for public attention. I think the general view was that scientific expertise adds value to public debates. As Vavreck said, there is a difference between data and anecdotes. Political scientists should contribute reliable data (as well as sensitive readings of texts) and not abuse their professional standing by merely opining or making empirical claims outside their expertise. “Stay in your lane” and “Don’t write about the Red Sox” were suggestions made from the podium.

I see important truth in all of this and tried to address similar issues in my Knight Foundation/Aspen Institute White Paper on Civic Engagement and Community Information. But I think Isaac hinted at difficult issues regarding expertise. A simplistic fact/value distinction would encourage political scientists to write about facts for public audiences and leave the public to draw their own value distinctions. That would be a neat division of labor. Unfortunately …

Research programs are always deeply imbued with values. That’s easiest to see when one objects to the values. Plenty of critics have complained that neoclassical economics makes assumptions about social welfare, choice, individualism, etc. that should be controversial. But to say that a research program makes normative assumptions is not to undermine it. Good research programs have good values. For instance, I know and admire the work of Smith and Vavreck, each of whom (in different ways) helps to expand the exercise of political power in the US. That is a good thing to do. But political science, as a science, cannot tell us whether or why it is good.

Further, research is always aimed at some kind of audience and has effects on that audience, whether anticipated or not. Neoclassical economics gives corporate lobbyists arguments to use when they influence voters and policymakers. Sociological research on community organizing should assist community organizers. Choosing an audience is a political act. Expertise cannot distinguish whether that act is good or bad.

One way in which experts affect audiences is by influencing their sense of what is known, what is knowable, and who can know what. For instance, the Monkey Cage announces, “H.L. Mencken said ‘Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.’ Here at The Monkey Cage, we talk about political science research and use it to make some sense of the circus that is politics.” That implies that a person who knows political science can make more sense of the democratic system than someone who doesn’t. I don’t disagree, but the implications are complex. Should people who don’t know political science not participate in politics? In 1914, the APSA’s Committee of Seven argued that citizens “should learn humility in the face of expertise.” Nobody would say that now, but why not? If there is expertise, and some lack it, shouldn’t they be humble in its face?

In short, as Isaac said, there is not one political science and one American public. Fairly diverse political scientists hold a range of normative positions and use a range of tools to various ends; and Americans belong to whole set of competing publics. Asserting that political scientists should communicate facts to the public overlooks complex political and normative issues: Which political scientists? (And who gets to be one in the first place?) Which publics? What kinds of facts? To what end?

Political science, as an empirical research program, can contribute to addressing these meta-questions. For example, it can help us to know which forms of communication are likely to affect which audiences by changing their minds on the issue or by raising or lowering their estimation of their own capacity. But it cannot tell us whether these results are good or bad.

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Frontiers of Democracy Conference, Boston, July 16-18, 2014

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Please join the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, the Democracy Imperative, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium for:

Frontiers of Democracy: July 16-18, 2014
At Tufts University’s Boston, MA campus

Register  |   Preliminary Agenda

Who’s on the bus, and where is it going? The state of the civic field

Civic work is proliferating: many different kinds of people, working in different contexts and issue areas, are expanding the ways in which citizens engage with government, community, and each other. It is increasingly clear that growing inequality, social and political fragmentation, and lack of democratic opportunities are undermining our efforts to address public priorities such as health, education, poverty, the environment, and government reform.

But attempts to label the responses – as “civic engagement,” “collaborative governance,” “deliberative democracy,” or “public work” – or to articulate them as one movement or policy agenda under a heading like “civic renewal” or “stronger democracy” – immediately spark debates about substance, strategy, and language.

Though it is clear we have many principles and practices in common, we differ on what we should call this work and where it is headed. In order for “overlapping civic coalitions”* to form, the potential  partners would have to work through goals, assumptions, and differences. Register now and join us July 16-18 for an invigorating, argumentative, civil discussion on the state and future of the civic field.

Visit the Frontiers of Democracy website for more information and a preliminary agenda.

* Peter Levine, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, chapter 7 (“Strategies”)

 

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introducing the Capabilities Approach

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(DeLand, Florida) In Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, Martha Nussbaum proposes that human beings have ten “Central Capabilities.” The first one is: “Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length …” The remaining nine all have a similar grammar: an abstract noun or noun phrase followed by a verb in the form “being able to …” The rest of the Capabilities are: bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one’s environment.

I have criticized Nussbaum for making the state ultimately (and sometimes solely) responsible for the Capabilities. She is explicit about this on p. 64, and throughout the book, she writes sentences in which the government is the subject and people are the object. For instance, immediately before she offers the list of Capabilities on p. 33, she writes, “government has the job of making people able to pursue a dignified and minimally flourishing life.”

She does, of course, support human freedom: the government must enable people to pursue their own Capabilities as they wish. Yet I would assign the government a very different role than she does in her overall theory. I would say that we the people have the obligation to ensure one another’s Capabilities. We may decide to use the government as a tool for that; it has strengths and limitations. In any case, we make the government—not in some imaginary moment of signing a social contract, but every day, in how we vote, advocate, pay taxes, educate future leaders, and generate information. In similar ways, we also make churches, neighborhoods, and families. The government is us: a subgroup of us chosen or tolerated to influence the rest of the population by the means of laws and law-enforcement. I would put the state clearly in a subsidiary position and ask pointed questions about how we are supposed to get good governments in the first place. Those questions vanish in Nussbaum’s account.

That said, there is much to recommend in the Capabilities approach. For my colleagues concerned about youth development and civic education, it provides an impressive normative framework.

Why propose a list? Nussbaum does not imagine that she can dictate policies or that her moral assumptions are necessarily right. But her list starts a conversation that we must have if we are to assess policies and communities. If you disagree with her list, you should be able to respond with objections to the components, or add extra items, and give reasons for those changes. Not making a list just ducks the central moral questions.

Why many Capabilities instead of one ultimate good, such as happiness or freedom? Because there are many dimensions of human life and they cannot be measured on a single scale.

Why Capabilities instead of goods, rights, processes, or outcomes? The argument is complex and multifaceted, but in short, Capabilities recognize individual freedom and diversity while also acknowledging the human need for tangible support. If you have a Capability of imagination, you are not obliged to use it in any particular way–or at all. But you will not develop that Capability just by being left alone: you need education, access to public art and nature, leisure time, and other supports that cost money. And nothing (such as cash or pleasure) will substitute for your using your own imagination. Thus imagination is a Capability rather than a right, a good, or a choice. (A strong argument against the Capabilities Approach would take the form of a defense of one of these other keywords.)

Why one list for every nation and culture? I’d answer  just as I did the question “Why a list?” Like individuals, members of whole cultures may dispute the contents of Nussbaum’s list. If they do, they should speak on behalf of alternatives. The deliberation about what Capabilities humans should have is a global one, and there will be disagreements. But they are disagreements about the human good. It makes no sense to say, “Bodily integrity is a Capability for you, but not for us.” That means it is not a human Capability.

See also: Putting Philosophy Back in Developmental Psychology.

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Dewey and the current toward democracy

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Nevertheless, the current has set steadily in one direction: toward democratic forms. That government exists to serve its community, and that this purpose cannot be achieved unless the community itself shares in selecting its governors and determining their policies, are a deposit of fact left, as far as we can see, permanently in the wake of doctrines and forms, however transitory the latter. They are not the whole of the democratic idea, but they express it in its political phase. Belief in this political aspect … marks a well-attested conclusion from historic facts.

– John Dewey, The Public and its Problems, chapter v

This passage connects at least three ideas: 1) a principle: government exists to serve its community; 2) a mechanism: public selection of office-holders; and 3) a factual generalization about history: it is moving toward democracy.

The usual way to connect these would be to say that people have discovered or created the moral principle of equal political power. To make this principle influential in the world, they have invented and advocated certain “doctrines and forms,” such as regular elections. As a result of their efforts, some communities are now governed by means of these mechanisms. We can use the democratic principle to the assess the actual governments of the world and will conclude that some regimes serve their communities, while others do not.

Dewey puts the elements together in a different way. He detects an underlying current, a tide in the affairs of humankind, that throws up both concrete procedures (such as regular elections) and ideals consistent with those procedures. The importance of the procedures and ideals is a fact that we can observe in the world around us. The deeper explanation is some kind of natural process of human development. I think it has a basically Hegelian form: We homo sapiens naturally associate. Because we have language, we can reflect on the forms that our association takes. Because we have huge potential, we strive to reform our associations so that they give us more scope for creativity and flourishing. Our striving makes the current flow steadily toward democratic forms.

Dewey does not want to separate ideals ["mystic faith"] from facts; and, above all, he does not want to attribute causal power to ideas.

[We] must protest against the assumption that the [democratic] idea itself has produced the the governmental practices which obtain in democratic states: General suffrage, elected representatives, majority rule, and so on. … The forms to which we are accustomed in democratic governments represent the cumulative effect of a multitude of events, unpremeditated as far as political effects were concerned and having unpredictable consequences.

Problems with this method:

1. The current is hardly steady. Indeed, when Dewey wrote these passages, most of the world was under colonial domination; and soon thereafter, most of the colonial powers fell under evil tyrannies. Why should we be confident that the current will generally or ultimately flow in a democratic direction?

2. Many ideals are facts, in the sense that they motivate and inspire human beings. That is true not only of democracy and freedom but also of nationalism, greed, and religious fanaticism. We could substitute nationalism for democracy in Dewey’s argument (above) and conclude: “That government exists to lift its own people over all the other peoples of the world, and that this purpose cannot be achieved unless a government builds a powerful and aggressive military, are a deposit of fact.  …” We must be able to use independent reason or judgment to conclude that democratic ideals are desirable, or else they are just some of the ideals that exist in the world.

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branding a nation

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An excellent paper by Temple University’s Diane Garbow made me think about efforts to “brand” countries. Her topic was the “Colombia es pasión” campaign. Its logo looks very corporate, and it even comes with slogans like “Colombia: the only risk is wanting to stay.”

The fact that Colombia now has a logo as well as a tricolor flag doesn’t mean that it has turned into a corporation. I think we could assess the use of a brand in two different ways.

First, the reputation of any nation is a common pool resource shared by all the people who are associated with that country, whether as legal citizens or not. Consistent with the definition of a common pool resource, a nation’s brand is rivalrous but non-excludable. That is, individuals can easily reduce the value of the brand to serve their own interests (the narcotraficantes are busy hurting Colombia’s reputation), yet individuals cannot easily be excluded from the benefits of the brand. For instance, if “Colombia es pasión” makes us feel better about the nation, then every Colombian and Colombian emigrant will profit slightly. In this sense, a national brand differs from a corporate brand, which benefits individuals in direct proportion to their financial ownership of the firm. “Colombia es pasión”  is more like the Parthenon or the Union Jack than (say) Coca-Cola’s brand, “Live Positively.” A nation’s image is the shared property of its people. That is one reason that people have contributed to enhancing their nations’ reputations since ancient times.

Nor is that goal especially capitalist or “neoliberal.” Here is Che Gevara’s iconic image serving as a kind of logo on the facade of Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior, which houses the police and security forces.

Of course, the Cuban people don’t get to decide what logo is erected on the Plaza de la Revolución, nor did the Colombian authorities put their new logo to a vote. An advertising campaign is an implicit assertion of facts: Colombia is safe, exotic, aesthetic–a source of coffee and flowers for the US market and a good place to visit. Its official brand implicitly rejects certain other claims about Colombia: for instance, that a low-intensity civil war has been going on there continuously since 1964, funded in part with $3 billion of US military aid. (Wanting to stay in Colombia is not the only risk of visiting.)

I think that enhancing common pool resources is a perfectly appropriate objective. But it’s also important to debate how things are actually going in a community or a nation. The “Colombia es pasión“ campaign could contribute to the debate, and valid points can be made in defense of the country’s policies. (For example, its Human Development Index has been rising steadily.) But insofar as an advertising campaign ignores contrary evidence and employs slick designs and sloganeering to persuade, it undermines deliberation.

The deeper point is that both making common goods and debating matters of fact and value are legitimate political acts, but they often come into conflict. The same conflict arises, for example, in “asset based community development” efforts, which contribute to the common good but also transmit a somewhat one-sided view of the community’s well-being. People should be able to assess and debate any claims made on their behalf. Yet developing one basically positive image of a community is a valuable objective. The two do not sit easily together.

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the rise of urban citizenship

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(Detroit) James Holston’s “current research examines the worldwide insurgence of democratic urban citizenships.” In this post, I’ll share what I took away from his excellent keynote talk about the recent uprisings in Sao Paolo and Istanbul. (I think he would tie the evidence together in a different way to support a somewhat different argument.)

Various cities are issuing formal identity cards to residents–regardless of national citizenship–that entitle the residents to services. Holston said that New Haven was the first US city to do this, and San Francisco now offers free preventative medical care to all its residents. I would add that Takoma Park, MD allows all residents (age 16+) to vote in municipal elections even if they are not US citizens.

Meanwhile, a whole series of great cities around the world have seen mass uprisings in which hundreds of thousands of people take over the central squares. They raise diverse issues (global, national/political, ethnic, religious), but often they talk specifically about their city. Thus the Istanbul protests started in response to a redevelopment plan for Taksim Square; and in Sao Paolo, the impetus was a bus fare increase.

The repertoire of protest acts (mechanisms and processes) used in these cities has not been particularly original. But one could imagine that a new form of politics and citizenship is arising. After all, the vast cities of the world have these features:

They are big enough that their policies really count. Their populations are larger than those of many nation-states, and they are global economic hot spots. At the same time, they are small enough that everyone can get to a central spot within a day, and you can visualize the city as a whole.

They have not traditionally had border-controls. Residents come and go at will. (I acknowledge exceptions, as in China; but even there, I think the border controls are pretty porous.) San Francisco’s citizenship is defined by the city’s residency card, but the city does not decide who has a right to it; people decide by moving in. That is a different kind of citizenship. And in the case of cities that are magnets for global migration, from Johannesburg to LA, many residents are not legal citizens of the surrounding nation-state.

Because of its density, the city’s population is interdependent. Maybe the top one percent can fly over the city’s crime and congestion in helicopters, but the middle class suffers in (loose) tandem with the poor. That is less true at the level of the nation-state.

The city is simply a locus of power that can change its policies and governing philosophy even if the nation-state is sclerotic or corrupt.

We conspicuously make the city with our labor and our bodies.  The physical evidence of our effort is all around us, taking the concrete form of buildings, cars, signs, crowds. Thus the right to citizenship can be grounded on people’s creation of the city (and workers can have pride of place as citizens). In contrast, we didn’t literally make the United States, so it’s hard to claim that our labor gives us the right to it. God made Brazil; people make Sao Paolo.

Those were the unique features of cities that occurred to me while Holston was speaking. From the floor, I asked him what made big cities special, and he added:

  • The sheer “density of opportunity” for political action.
  • The fact that poverty, isolation, and anonymity sometimes spur urbanites to act politically, whereas the same factors suppress action in rural areas and small towns. (This sounded to me like the reverse of Mao’s doctrine that the revolution would begin in the countryside.)
  • The city is a seat of power. Traditionally, the city houses the cathedral, the parliament building, the castle, the university–all the concrete locations of power over the larger polity.

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two conversations about citizenship

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(Detroit) I’m delighted to be at Wayne State University for my second visit to the Center for the Study of Citizenship’s annual national conference. I have just arrived, but the titles and abstracts reinforce my view that there are really two discussions about citizenship.

In the first discussion, citizenship basically means membership in some kind of political entity or regime. The opposite of a citizen is an alien or outsider, but there are various possible conditions between belonging and being fully alien–states that Elizabeth Cohen calls “semi-citizenship.”  Questions arise about who does or should belong to which kind of regime, what rights and obligations membership brings or should bring, and what members feel or should feel (subjectively) about themselves and their fellow members.

In the second discussion, citizenship means civic engagement, or taking action of some kind in the public sphere. One opposite of a citizen, in this sense, is a bystander or a consumer. Another opposite is a policymaker or officeholder, if we choose to divide the state from civil society. (In Harry Boyte’s view, it’s important that policymakers are citizens.) In this second discussion, the issues that arise include: who engages, what makes them engage, whether civic engagement is good, and what active people achieve.

The two conversations do relate to each other. For instance, you cannot engage as an active citizen by voting if the state deems you ineligible to vote by virtue of age, a felony conviction, or immigration status. But even then, you can act in many other ways. Overall, I would say that the two discourses of citizenship are pretty separate.

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is science republican (with a little r)?

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First, a puzzle about Sir Francis Bacon, one of the founders of science as we know it. He begins his Advancement of Learning (1605):

To the King. … Wherefore, representing your Majesty many times unto my mind, and beholding you … with the observant eye of duty and admiration, leaving aside the other parts of your virtue and fortune, I have been touched – yea, and possessed – with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties, which the philosophers call intellectual; the largeness of your capacity, the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your apprehension, the penetration of your judgment, and the facility and order of your elocution. …

Yet, just a few pages later, Bacon writes:

Neither is the modern dedication of books and writings, as to patrons, to be commended, for that books (such as are worthy the name of books) ought to have no patrons but truth and reason.  And the ancient custom was to dedicate them only to private and equal friends, or to entitle the books with their names; or if to kings and great persons, it was to some such as the argument of the book was fit and proper for; but these and the like courses may deserve rather reprehension than defence.

Dedicating to the King a book in which you denounce dedications would appear to be a contradiction. Perhaps Bacon thought that the argument of his book was “fit and proper” for James I because it was the monarch’s job to support science; perhaps Bacon thought James uniquely deserving of praise (he certainly said so at great length); perhaps the future Lord Chancellor was just being an oily politician; or–most interestingly–perhaps he was deliberately subverting his monarch’s authority.

In any case, the second quotation raises an important issue. Bacon sees that the institution of science must not acknowledge or incorporate arbitrary power. A scientist must not be told: “Believe this because I tell you to.” A scientist must be asked to believe in a purported truth for reasons that she or he can freely accept.

Freedom from arbitrary power is not democracy. Although I see the appeal of writers like John Dewey who would expand “democracy” far beyond voting and majority rule, I prefer to reserve the word for institutions in which people make binding decisions on the basis of equality. Political equality is different from freedom, and it is not applicable in science. Bacon famously opposes democracy (“The Idols of the Marketplace”) as a guide to truth. In The New Organon, XCI, he writes that scientific progress “has not even the advantage of popular applause.  For it is a greater matter than the generality of men can take in, and is apt to be overwhelmed and extinguished by the gales of popular opinions.”

Yet freedom from arbitrary power is essential to republicanism, as Phillip Pettit and others understand that tradition. A republic is a political order in which no one can simply say, “This is how it will be,” without giving reasons. Even a democratic and liberal society like Canada or Australia is not perfectly republican because the Queen, although almost completely stripped of power, holds her office and takes ceremonial actions without giving reasons–because of who she is. In a republic, no one may do that.

Bacon is republican about science in that way. It should have “no patrons but truth and reason”; relationships among scientists should be like those of “equal friends.” He is also republican in a second sense. A republic is a res publica, a “public thing,” better translated as the common good or the commonwealth. Republican virtue means devotion to the res publica. Knowledge is a public good if we give it away. This, of course, is a deeply Baconian theme, for scientists must “give a true account of their gift of reason to the benefit and use of men.”

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what is generalizable knowledge?

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In a group devoted to community-based research, we were discussing the tendency of academics to seek “generalizable” knowledge, while community-based groups want knowledge that has immediate significance to their own circumstances. That difference can generate conflicts over priorities and objectives. Scholars and community leaders may disagree about what projects should be funded, how time and effort should be spent, and even the ethics of research on human subjects. For example, NIH says, “The goal of clinical research is to develop generalizable knowledge that improves human health or increases understanding of human biology.” But a community group may want to find out whether their kids have a well-understood disease. They may see that as “research.”

What is generalizable knowledge? I think generalizability comes in many forms, each playing a different role in each discipline. That makes the tension between scholarly priorities and the needs of community groups complex. The situation will be very different depending on whether the scholar in question is an epidemiologist, an ethnographer, or a theologian.

Statistical generalization means applying a finding from a given population to other populations. If smoking increases the prevalence of emphysema in Somerville, MA, will that also be true in Boston or in Beijing? Widely applicable findings are more useful than narrower findings. However, people obstinately vary, and if a finding does not generalize, it can still be valuable for the population in which it was found. Thus community groups and academics only differ in the relative value they place on statistical generalizability.

Theoretical generalization means developing or contributing to theoretical frameworks that apply in other situations than the one being studied. A theory can be predominantly explanatory or predictive, like Keynes’ theory that excessive saving causes recessions. Or a theory can be predominantly moral/normative, like Keynes’ theory that the state ought to stimulate economies to increase employment. (This implies that the state has the right and the obligation to intervene.) In my view, almost all explanatory theories about people have normative elements, and vice-versa; but certainly the emphasis varies. In any case, theories must generalize: you can’t have a new theory for each case. You can, however, resist theorizing because it overgeneralizes. Or you can resist spending time on theory because you have a program to run. (Yet programs always have their own theories.)

Methodological generalization means developing or demonstrating a method that others can use in different contexts. Methodological innovations can range from highly practical new medical techniques to essays like Clifford Geertz’ “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” We do not read that piece because we are eager to understand cockfights in Bali; we read it to learn and debate the method of “thick description,” which we might apply in other settings. Academics value methodological innovation; practitioners rarely care.

Interpretive generalization. Interpreters of texts, images, events, rituals, and dreams describe the particular objects in ways that convey their form, context, and purpose. Sensitive interpretation resists generalization–but not completely. As Geertz notes:

The besetting sin of interpretive approaches to anything —literature, dreams, symptoms, culture—is that they tend to resist, or to be permitted to resist, conceptual articulation and thus to escape systematic modes of assessment. You either grasp an interpretation or you do not, see the point of it or you do not, accept it or you do not. [But] this just will not do. There is no reason why the conceptual structure of a cultural interpretation should be any less formulable, and thus less susceptible to explicit canons of appraisal, than that of, say, a biological observation or a physical experiment.

Indeed, ethnographers and humanists do generalize from their interpretations of particular objects, although, as Geertz concedes, theory based on interpretation should “stay rather closer to the ground than tends to be the case in sciences more able to give themselves over to imaginative abstraction.”

Political generalizability means using a case to achieve some kind of legal or administrative change that affects other people in other places. Some would say that policies should always reflect statistical and theoretical generalities. The law should treat like cases alike; hard cases make bad law. Those maxims suggest that we should first find general patterns through research, and then make policy fit the patterns. But I think sometimes good laws come straight from dramatic cases, which suffice to demonstrate valid points about justice.

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Bowling Alone after (almost) 20 years

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Robert Putnam published “Bowling Alone” in the Journal of Democracy, vol. 6, no. 1, January 1995. By September 25 of the same year, he was in People Magazine (smoking a pipe, standing alone in bowling shoes on a New Hampshire bowling alley). “We’ve become disconnected,” he said in the article, and “I think it’s at the root of all other problems.”

“Bowling Alone” has altered my own trajectory. It led to the National Commission on Civic Renewal, of which I was deputy director. The Commission called for a research center on youth engagement–noting the evidence, cited in Putnam’s original article, that the decline in social connectedness had been generational. That center is CIRCLE; I still direct it nearly 20 years later.

The original article quickly provoked a debate, with empirical and theoretical contributions. At the time, I thought one of the strongest counterarguments was in Jean Cohen’s 1999 chapter “American Civil Society Talk.” I am teaching Cohen this week, along with Putnam’s “Community-Based Social Capital and Educational Performance” (2001), which I take to be a more advanced version of the “Bowling Alone” argument.

In essence, Putnam argued that membership generated trust and reciprocity, which had  good outcomes for individuals and societies. A bowling league was a good example of voluntary membership. Shrinking bowling leagues would be a sign of decline if that exemplified a broader trend.

Drawing on Habermas, Gramsci, and various liberal thinkers, Cohen argued that laws or norms of free speech, free association, and deliberation yield certain kinds of associations that generate politically relevant discourse. That discourse produces better and more legitimate government. Bowling leagues are poor examples of civil society for Cohen because they do not involve political discourse. Unions, social movements, and advocacy groups would be better examples.

Cohen objects to the whole “decline” narrative. For Putnam, Baby Boomers were responsible for decline because their levels of associational membership fell. For Cohen, they were impressive because “they created the first environmental movement since the turn of the century, public health movements, grassroots activism and community organizing, the most important feminist movement since the pre-World War II period, the civil rights movement, and innumerable transnational nongovernmental organizations and civic movements–all of which have led to unprecedented advances in rights and social justice.” She ends: “we must drop the rhetoric of civic and moral decline.”

The debate is partly about method. Putnam finds strong empirical links between composites of membership, trust, turnout, following the news, etc. He tweaks his empirical model until it provides the best prediction of desirable social outcomes. He calls the composite measure “social capital” and offers theoretical reasons for its benefits.

Cohen, however, wants to disaggregate the various components that Putnam combines because she sees some as good and others as bad, from the perspective of left-liberal political theory. She is not interested whether social trust correlates with membership, or whether membership predicts trust in government. She sees membership in discursive associations as desirable, but trust in government as problematic. She also claims that Putnam omits important measures from his explanatory model. He should consider variation in legal rights, for example. (This part of her critique seems a bit unfair considering the methodology of Making Democracy Work.)

I think Cohen scores some valid points, but nearly 20 years later, I find myself increasingly sympathetic to Putnam. The reason is our political situation now. Cohen recognizes that the model of a liberal public sphere is far from perfect, but her argument depends on its potential. We must have reason to hope that free speech and democracy will allow people to form associations that generate reasonable public discourse and hold the government and market to account. Her positive portrayal of the Boomers rests on their success. They achieved “unprecedented advances in rights and social justice.”

But those advances have thoroughly stalled since 1999. We still have the legal framework that permits free association and free speech, but people are not using it very effectively. There are many reasons for that, but I think one is a declining capacity to associate. It now looks  as if the great social upheavals of 1955-1975 rested on a general culture of joining associations and norms of social solidarity. Those have eroded–probably not because of the social movements of the 1960s, but for other reasons, including economic change. The result is a civil society that has great difficulty generating the kinds of political movements that Cohen rightly values. Putnam looks prescient in noting the decline in the groundwork of effective political action.

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