Robert Putnam, the noted Harvard political scientist and the former dean of the JFK School of Government, has an answer to these questions. Putnam sums up the current state of affairs by noting that over the last half-century, participation in bowling leagues has fallen, while popular involvement in the sport has gone up. In a series of articles in The American Prospect and the Journal of Democracy , Putnam makes the case that American social capital has declined. Fewer people are involved in community organizations. Fewer citizens turn out at the polls.
Church attendance is down.
Union membership is declining. Putnam first detected the corellation between high levels of civic engagement and involvement in public affairs in his study of social capital in Italy, where he found that the clearest determinant of governmental success was civic involvement. Regions with high voter turnout, high newspaper readership, and active choral societies and other community organizations tended to flourish, while those localities bereft of community ties tended to experience governmental gridlock and political stalemate. Then Putnam brought the argument home.