Robert D. Putnam

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Template:Short description Template:About Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox academic Template:Communitarianism sidebar Robert David PutnamTemplate:Efn (born January 9, 1941) is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Putnam developed the influential two-level game theory that assumes international agreements will only be successfully brokered if they also result in domestic benefits. His most famous work, Bowling Alone, argues that the United States has undergone an unprecedented collapse in civic, social, associational, and political life (social capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative consequences.<ref>Marc Parry, "Can Robert Putnam Save the American Dream" Chronicle of Higher Education, March 12, 2015 Chronicle Review</ref> In March 2015, he published a book called Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis that looked at issues of inequality of opportunity in the United States.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> According to the Open Syllabus Project, Putnam is the fourth most frequently cited author on college syllabi for political science courses.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Join or Die, a 2023 documentary film about community connections and club participation that is available on Netflix, features Putnam and is based on Putnam's works.<ref name="harvard">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="tribune">Template:Cite news</ref>

Life and career

Robert David Putnam was born on January 9, 1941, in Rochester, New York,<ref name="Tervetuloa">Template:Cite web</ref> and grew up in Port Clinton, Ohio,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> where he participated in a competitive bowling league as a teenager.<ref name="NYT82212">Template:Cite news</ref> Putnam graduated from Swarthmore College in 1963 where he was a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity. He won a Fulbright Fellowship to study at Balliol College, Oxford, and went on to earn a master's degree and doctorate from Yale University in 1970. He taught at the University of Michigan until joining the faculty at Harvard in 1979, where he has held a variety of positions, including Dean of the Kennedy School, and is currently the Malkin Professor of Public Policy. Putnam was raised as a religiously observant Methodist. In 1963, Putnam married his wife Rosemary, a special education teacher and French horn player.<ref name="NYT82212" /> Around the time of his marriage, he converted to Judaism, his wife's religion.<ref>The Forward, Robert Putnam Assays Religious Tolerance From a Unique Angle, Retrieved November 26, 2010</ref>

Making Democracy Work

His first work in the area of social capital was Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. published in 1993. It is a comparative study of regional governments in Italy that drew great scholarly attention for its argument that the success of democracies depends in large part on the horizontal bonds that make up social capital.<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Page needed</ref> Putnam writes that northern Italy's history of community, guilds, clubs, and choral societies led to greater civic involvement and greater economic prosperity.<ref name="Putnam1993">Template:Cite journal</ref> Meanwhile, the agrarian society of Southern Italy is less prosperous economically and democratically because of less social capital. Social capital, which Putnam defines as "networks and norms of civic engagement", allows members of a community to trust one another.<ref name="Putnam1993" /> When community members trust one another, trade, money-lending, and democracy flourish.Template:Citation needed

Putnam's finding that social capital has pro-democracy effects has been rebutted by a sizable literature which finds that civic associations have been associated with the rise of anti-democratic movements.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Bowling Alone

File:1900- Membership in bowling leagues.svg
League participation peaked in the 1960s and 1970s.<ref name=CNN_20250824>Template:Cite web</ref> League bowling was used as a barometer of social capital in Bowling Alone (2000).

In 1995, he published "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital" in the Journal of Democracy. The article was widely read and garnered much attention for Putnam, including an invitation to meet with then-President Bill Clinton and a spot in the pages of People.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2000, he published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, a book-length expansion of the original argument, adding new evidence and answering many of his critics. Though he measured the decline of social capital with data of many varieties, his most striking point was that many traditional civic, social and fraternal organizations – typified by bowling leagues – had undergone a massive decline in membership while the number of people bowling had increased dramatically.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Putnam distinguishes two kinds of social capital: bonding capital and bridging capital. Bonding occurs among similar people (same age, same race, same religion, etc.), while bridging involves the same activities among dissimilar people. He argues that peaceful multi-ethnic societies require both types.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Putnam argues that those two kinds of social capital, bonding and bridging, do strengthen each other. Consequently, with the decline of the bonding capital mentioned above inevitably comes the decline of the bridging capital leading to greater ethnic tensions.

In 2016, Putnam explained his inspiration for the book, by saying, Template:Blockquote

Critics such as the sociologist Claude Fischer argue that Putnam (a) concentrates on certain forms of social organizations, and pays much less attention to privatized networks or emerging forms of support organizations on and off the Internet; (b) relies on contradictory data that hasn't fully been explained; and (c) underestimates the impact of women's workforce participation.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite journal</ref> Fischer calls for reconceptualizing social capital and proposing other explanations of the decline in public civic participation.<ref name=":1" />

Since the publication of Bowling Alone, Putnam has worked on efforts to revive American social capital, notably through the Saguaro Seminar, a series of meetings among academics, civil society leaders, commentators, and politicians to discuss strategies to re-connect Americans with their communities. These resulted in the publication of the book and website, Better Together, in 2003 which provides case studies of vibrant and new forms of social capital building in the United States.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Social capital

Putnam theorizes a relation in the negative trends in society. He envisions a uniting factor named social capital; originally coined (no evidence provided) by social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville as a strength within America allowing democracy to thrive due to the closeness of society, "trends in civic engagement of a wider sort".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Putnam observes a declining trend in social capital since the 1960s. The decreasing in social capital is blamed for rising rates in unhappiness as well as political apathy. Low social capital, a feeling of alienation within society is associated with additional consequences such as:

  • Lower confidence in local government, local leaders and the local news media.
  • Lower political efficacy – that is, confidence in one's own influence.
  • Lower frequency of registering to vote, but more interest and knowledge about politics and more participation in protest marches and social reform groups.
  • Higher political advocacy, but lower expectations that it will bring about a desirable result.
  • Less expectation that others will cooperate to solve dilemmas of collective action (e.g., voluntary conservation to ease a water or energy shortage).
  • Less likelihood of working on a community project.
  • Less likelihood of giving to charity or volunteering.
  • Fewer close friends and confidants.
  • Less happiness and lower perceived quality of life.
  • More time spent watching television and more agreement that "television is my most important form of entertainment".

Diversity and trust within communities

Template:See also In recent years, Putnam has been engaged in a comprehensive study of the relationship between trust within communities and their ethnic diversity. His conclusion based on over 40 cases and 30,000 people within the United States is that in the short term, other things being equal, more diversity in a community is associated with less trust both among and within ethnic groups. Putnam describes people of all races, sex, socioeconomic statuses, and ages as "hunkering down", avoiding engagement with their local community as diversity increases. Putnam found that even when controlling for income inequality and crime rates, two factors which conflict theory states should be prime causal factors in declining inter-ethnic group trust, more diversity is still associated with less communal trust. Further, he found that low communal trust is associated with the same consequences as low social capital. Putnam says, however, that "in the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits."<ref name=":0" />

Putnam published his data set from this study in 2001<ref name="Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, 2000">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and subsequently published the full paper in 2007.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Putnam has been criticized for the lag between his initial study and his publication of his article. In 2006, Putnam was quoted in the Financial Times as saying he had delayed publishing the article until he could "develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity" (quote from John Lloyd of Financial Times).<ref name="FT10806">Template:Cite news</ref> In 2007, writing in City Journal, John Leo questioned whether this suppression of publication was ethical behavior for a scholar, noting that "Academics aren't supposed to withhold negative data until they can suggest antidotes to their findings."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> On the other hand, Putnam did release the data in 2001 and publicized this fact.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Putnam denied allegations he was arguing against diversity in society and contended that his paper had been "twisted" to make a case against race-based admissions to universities. He asserted that his "extensive research and experience confirm the substantial benefits of diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity, to our society."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Recognition

Memberships and fellowships

He has been a member of Phi Beta Kappa since 1963, the International Institute of Strategic Studies since 1986, the American Philosophical Society since 2005<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the National Academy of Sciences since 2001. He has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1980 and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy from 2001 and was a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, 1989–2006 and Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1974–1975 and 1988–1989. Other fellowships included the Guggenheim 1988–1989; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 1977 and 1979; Fulbright 1964–1965 and 1977; SSRC-ACLS 1966–1968; Ford Foundation, 1970; German Marshall Fund, 1979; SSRC-Fulbright, 1982; SSRC-Foreign Policy Studies, 1988–1989 and was made a Harold Lasswell Fellow by the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Robert Putnam was a fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations 1977–1978 and a member since 1981. He was a member of the Trilateral Commission from 1990 to 1998.<ref name="slns.intranetit.net">Template:Cite web</ref>Template:RP He was the President of the American Political Science Association (2001–2002).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He had been Vice-President 1997–1998.<ref name="slns.intranetit.net" />Template:RP

Awards

In 2004 the President of the Italian Republic made him a Commander of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity. He was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science in 2006 and a Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal by the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2003, he was a Marshall Lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 1999 and was honored with the Ithiel de Sola Pool Award and Lectureship of the American Political Science Association.<ref name="slns.intranetit.net" />

He has received honorary degrees from Stockholm University (in 1993), Ohio State University (2000), University of Antwerp (also 2000), University of Edinburgh (2003), Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli (2011), University of Oxford (2018), and University College London (2019).<ref>.[1] Template:Webarchive</ref><ref name="slns.intranetit.net" />Template:RP<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2013, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama for "deepening our understanding of community in America."<ref>President Obama to Award 2012 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal Whitehouse.gov, retrieved June 30, 2013</ref>

In 2015, he was awarded the University of Bologna, ISA Medal for Science for research activities characterized by excellence and scientific value.

Works

Books

Chapters and articles

Other

Interviews

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See also

Notes

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References

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Further reading

  • Utter, Glenn H. and Charles Lockhart, eds. American Political Scientists: A Dictionary (2nd ed. 2002) pp 328–31, online.

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