by Terry L. Besser
Assistant professor and extension sociologist
Iowa State University Extension to Communities
DeToqueville writing about American democracy in the 1800s credited the involvement of ordinary citizens in a wide variety of organizations such as the PTA, bridge clubs, Jaycees and Kiwanis as one of the reasons for the success of our democracy. Today, however, America is experiencing a general erosion of organizational memberships and civic engagement. Studies using time diaries, where people record everything they do in the course of a day, indicate that people spend about one fourth less time today on informal socializing and visiting as compared to 1965. They devote roughly half as much time to clubs and organizations as they did 30 years age. Memberships in a broad range of voluntary organizations like the Red Cross, League of Women Voters, PTA and Elks has declined from 25 to 50 percent in the last 20 years.
People are less likely to be involved in political activity such as attending a rally (down 36 percent between 1973 and 1993), attending a meeting on town or school affairs (down 39 percent) and working for a political party (off 56 percent). Many communities in Iowa have trouble finding enough people to run for local office. All of these are symptoms of what Robert Putnam from Harvard University calls a decline in civic engagement in the United States.
Putnam's insight into civic engagement results from his research of the recently decentralized government of Italy. In this study, he discovered that the northern districts of Italy have the most effective governments and that people in the northern region are significantly more active and involved in a vast array of organizations than are citizens in southern Italy.
After eliminating a number of other explanations for the success of the northern governments, Putnam concluded that the alignment of organizational involvement and government effectiveness was not an accident. He explained that organizational involvement impacts effective government because organizational involvement increases acquaintanceships between people. When people know each other over a period of time, they learn to trust each other. Both acquaintanceships and trust lead to a sense of common identity and the desire to work together for the common good. His research showed that people working together for the common good generated effective government and a stronger economy in Italy.
Bringing these findings back to the U.S. situation, we see how involvement in organizations might be related to voting, running for office and working to improve the community. Putnam attempts to determine why Americans today belong to fewer organizations than we did in previous times. One frequently heard explanation is that a larger portion of people's time today is taken up with paid employment than was true in the past. Thus, people are simply too exhausted to participate in sewing circles and the Lions Club. Putnam dismisses this argument. He cites national surveys which show that longer hours on the job are accompanied with more civic engagement and organizational involvement, not less. This is not to say that working long hours causes organizational engagement, but simply that it does not hinder it.
Some contend that the increasing number of women in the workforce accounts for the decline in volunteers and organizational memberships. The logic here is that homemakers are more involved than employed women and with fewer and fewer women in the homemaking role -- fewer volunteers results. Again, the research does not support this explanation. Employed women are more likely to be members of voluntary associations than are housewives.
Age is another possible explanation. One of the most active groups in our country, especially in terms of voting and civic participation, is older adults. This is particularly the case for the group born between 1910 and 1940. Putnam calls this group the "civic generation." They vote at almost twice the rate of recent generations, belong to slightly less than twice as many organizations, are twice as likely to trust people as their grandchildren and read newspapers almost three times as often. As baby boomers age, their participation levels have not increased markedly. This causes Putnam to suspect that it is not aging per se that leads to more involvement and civic engagement, but instead something special about the civic generation.
As the title of this article suggests, Putnam concludes that the unusual quality of the older "civic generation" is that they were born and raised to adulthood before television. Television consumes about 40 percent of people's free time today. Americans average four hours a day watching television. People no longer need neighborhood cookouts, bowling leagues, card clubs, town parades, historical societies, or bird watching groups to entertain themselves. In the process, however, they interact less often with other members of their community. They know fewer people. They have less reason to trust people. They may be less likely to share a common identity and see a common future with others in their community. Putnam believes that devoting so much time to television is the single most important factor in the decline of civic engagement today.
Contacts:
Terry L. Besser, ISU
Extension Sociology, (515) 294-6508
Del Marks, ISU Extension
Communication Systems, (515) 294-9807
