The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American Democracy Author(S): Theda Skocpol Reviewed Work(S): Source: Social Science History, Vol

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The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American Democracy Author(s): Theda Skocpol Reviewed work(s): Source: Social Science History, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter, 1997), pp. 455-479 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the Social Science History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1171662 . Accessed: 09/08/2012 15:13

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http://www.jstor.org Theda Skocpol

The Tocqueville Problem

CivicEngagement in AmericanDemocracy

Over the past 15 years,my scholarshiphas been devotedto understand- ing the patterns,the possibilities,and the impossibilitiesof politicsand social policyin the United States.In thisessay, therefore, I have decided to use historicalevidence to addresscurrent public and scholarlydebates aboutcivic engagement in Americandemocracy. As I hope to remindus all, social sciencehistorians can speakclearly to contemporarypublic concerns. We maybe able to introducesome betterevidence and moresophisticated explanationsinto ongoing debates.

SocialScience History 21:4 (winter 1997). CopyrightC 1997by the Social Science History Association. 456 SocialScience History

PresidentBill Clintontalks about servingas "a bridgeto the twenty- firstcentury," yet it is strikinghow manypundits are lookingfor a bridge to the past (alongwith Bob Dole, Clinton'sRepublican opponent in 1996). Nostalgiais remarkablyrampant among public commentators today, as they searchfor some criticaljuncture in thenation's history when citizens were civicallyengaged in healthyways, when U.S. democracywas flourishing morethan it seemsto be now.Analysts hope to drawinspiration and lessons forwhat might be donetoday to reviveour apparently ailing democratic and civiclife.

When Was the Golden Age?

Of coursedifferent golden ages are beinginvoked and explored--oftende- pendingon the partisansentiments of those who are lookingbackward. Althoughfew publicly prominent Americans will admit to being"liberals" anymore,those who do ownup to thistendency usually locate the golden era of U.S. democracyin the 1930sand 1940s.Supposedly this is whenPresi- dentFranklin Delano Rooseveltprovided bold progressiveleadership - and when,as Steven Fraserrecently told the New YorkTimes, labor unions "representednot just an interestgroup, but a social movementwhose ac- tivitiespromised much to notonly its immediate members, but to thewhole society"(Greenhouse 1996). From this perspective, the trouble with Ameri- can democracytoday is thatBill Clintonis wishy-washy,while unions are at an organizationalnadir. Hope forthe future lies in thecurrent reorienta- tionof the AFL-CIO towardorganizing drives and the forgingof broader allianceswith intellectuals and religiousleaders. But nonliberalscorrectly point out thatAmerican civic engagement en- compassesmuch more than organized labor and goes back historicallylong beforethe New Deal. Unionshave been onlyone ofthe ways -and notthe majorway at that-throughwhich large numbers of Americanshave orga- nizedthemselves in civilsociety. The reluctanceof many on theLeft to look beyondthe organized working class - or itsabsence - helpsexplain why the currentdebate about civic engagementis dominatedby people of conser- vativeor center-rightpolitical proclivities. Yet as we are aboutto see, such nonliberalscan haveblind spots of their own. Characteristically,nonliberals look at America's past not through CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 457

Marxist-coloredglasses but throughthe eyesof Alexisde Tocqueville,the French aristocratwho touredthe fledglingUnited States in the 1830s, gatheringobservations and ideas that were in due coursepublished in Democ- racyin America (1969 [1835-40]).Tocqueville's opus has becomeone of the modernworld's most influential political ethnographies: It is a setof densely descriptiveobservations by a foreignerthat were written for the purpose of influencingpolitical debates in the author'sown country.Quite obvi- ously,Alexis de Tocquevillewas doingpolitical ethnography in Democracy in America.Alarmed by the simultaneousexpansion of democracyand an ever-more-centralizedbureaucratic administrative state in postrevolutionary France,Tocqueville used explorationsof early Republican America to make thecase to his own countrymenthat they should encourage voluntary asso- ciationsas a new bufferagainst state centralization. Voluntary associations, Tocquevilleargued, could serve as a democraticsubstitute for the purported sociallyprotective role of aristocrats under the Old Regime. "Americansof all ages,all stationsin life,and all typesof dispositions are foreverforming associations," Tocqueville (1969 [1835-40]: 513) reported in a famous,oft-quoted passage. This happysituation was possible,he felt, because extralocalgovernment seemed barely present. "Nothing strikes a Europeantraveler in theUnited States more," wrote Tocqueville (ibid.: 72), "thanthe absence of what we wouldcall governmentor administration.... There is nothingcentralized or hierarchicin the constitutionof American administrativepower." Above the levelof thousandsof local governments, theearly United States seemed to Alexisde Tocquevilleto be heldtogether notby any state worthy of the name but by religious sentiments, commerce, egalitariancustoms, freely associating citizens, and generallaws enforced by lawyersand courts. Given Tocqueville's antistatistpurposes for writingDemocracy in America,it is notsurprising that over a centuryand a halflater, contempo- rarycritics of theU.S. federalgovernment celebrate the greatFrenchman's stresson voluntaryassociations, understood in oppositionto bureaucratic statepower. Still, today's admirers of Tocqueville disagree about exactly when in America'spast the voluntarist wonders of old flourishedin theways most relevantto thepresent. Civic-mindedconservatives in and aroundthe post-Ronald Reagan Re- publicanParty yearn for the actualearly nineteenth century (see Joyceand 458 SocialScience History

Schambra1996). They believeAmericans are quite literally"returning to Tocqueville,"to cite the titleof a tellingcommentary by Michael Barone, formerlyof ULS.News and WorldReport and now findinghis truehome at The WeeklyStandard. As Barone (1996: 23) explains,"Today's postindus- trialAmerica in importantrespects more closely resembles the preindustrial AmericaTocqueville described in Democracyin Americathan the indus- trialAmerica in whichmost of us grewup." We "seem to be returning to a country"that is egalitarian,individualistic, religious, and property- loving,"since ordinary people expect and accumulatesignificant wealth over theirlifetimes .... A TocquevillianAmerica is naturallyinclined to policies of decentralization,devolution and markets,just as big-unitindustrial Americawas inclinedto centralization,command-and-control and bureaucracy.... IndustrialAmerica tended to favorthe Democrats and postindus- trialAmerica tends to favorthe Republicans."A revitalizedTocquevillian America,Barone concludes along with many other 1990s conservatives, must be "lightlygoverned," leaving "to voluntaryassociations of manykinds social functionsthat elsewhere and at othertimes have been performedby thestate." Contemporarypolitical centrists, including many Democrats, are not so sure thatAmericans should look all the wayback to a goldenage prior to the industrialera. Centriststend to situatean updatedcivic goldenage duringthe ProgressiveEra of the early1900s. This periodis celebratedfor its proliferationof purportedlylocal voluntaryassociations, as well as for theinnovative "experimentation" with legislative responses to industrialism throughlocal and stategovernments. Centrists want the United States to havea "newprogressive era." As theorganized voice of party conservatives, the DemocraticLeadership Council (DLC) has called fora returnto "the lost traditionof Americanliberalism" prior to the New Deal. Celebrating the"New Freedom"of Woodrow Wilson, the DLC wants1990s Democrats to eschewtax-and-spend, New Deal-style"welfare state paternalism" and insteadpromote "a muchlarger role forvoluntary and communitygroups in tacklingdifficult social problems... thatsimply can't be solvedby gov- ernmentbureaucracies." Revitalized forms of governance, we are told,must "transfermore decisions and controlover public resources from Washington to citizensand local institutions"(Siegel and Marshall1995). Despite theirdifferences over industrialism and theneed for regulation CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 459 of marketforces, therefore, today's Republican and Democraticconserva- tiveshave converged on a visionof minimal national governance and vibrant local voluntaryassociations. Republicans and conservativeDemocrats agree thatthe domestic activities of the federalgovernment must be fullyor par- tiallydismantled if we Americansare to recapitulatea civicgolden age. For manymedia pundits, this near-consensus stretching from right to centeris enoughto settlethe issue. But beforeAmericans plunge forward on a fool'serrand, we mightwant to noticethat the best historical social science challengesthe claimsof conservativesand centristsabout when, how, and whydemocratic civic engagementhas flourishedin the UnitedStates. I can do no morethan sketch a fewarguments in supportof thisassertion, yetI hope to convinceyou thata zero-sumway of thinking that pits "state" against"society"-or the nationalstate against local voluntarism- cannot makesense of American civic engagement at all. State-versus-societythink- ing cannotlay the basis forwise reasoningabout eitherthe nation'scivic troublesnow or whatmight be doneabout them in thefuture.

Civic Engagement in Tocqueville's America

Let's startby lookingback at Tocqueville'stime, the earlyAmerican Re- publicprior to the Civil War.More thantwo decades ago, social historian RichardBrown (1974) investigatedsocietal developments in Massachusetts fromlate colonial through early national times, documenting that a remark- able arrayof local, regional,state-level, and nationalvoluntary associations had alreadyemerged by the 1820s.For thisthere were certain sociodemo- graphicpreconditions, Brown concludesin his carefulquantitative study of townsand ruralareas. Towns or at least substantialvillages first had to emerge,containing a minimum of 200 to 400 familiesand at leasta scattering oflocally resident businesspeople, artisans, and professionals. But theearly growth of American voluntary associations was notmerely a by-productof commercializationand urbanization.Before the Ameri- can Revolution,many towns attained the requisitesize withoutdeveloping manyvoluntary associations. Yet by the early1800s, associational growth outstrippedcommercial and demographicchange. Culture and politicshad independenteffects, Brown emphasizes. The AmericanRevolution, political strugglesover the Constitution and theBill ofRights, and deepeningpopu- 460 SocialScience History lar participationin electionsfor state and nationalas wellas local officesall servedto spurassociational life as Americabecame an independentnation. So did religiousand culturalideals about self-improvement,and growing awarenessof extralocalcommercial and publicaffairs through widespread newspaperreading. Tocquevillewas well awareof manyof the extralocalinfluences that Brown'sresearch underlines. It is oftennoted that Democracy in America highlightedreligious enthusiasms in the era of the Second GreatAwaken- ing.But present-dayconservatives often overlook how much it also stressed popularparticipation in politics.Tocqueville (1969 [1835-40]: 520) marveled at theUnited States as the"one countryin theworld which, day in, day out, makesuse of an unlimitedfreedom of politicalassociation." Purely social associationsmight be morecommon than overtly political ones, Tocqueville opined(ibid.: 521),but Americans'freedom and opportunitiesto associate politicallyencouraged a moregeneral "taste for association." What is more,a freeand participatorybrand of politicsencouraged people to band together acrosslocalities. "Politics not onlybrings many associations into being, it also createsextensive ones," Tocqueville wrote. In retrospect,it is obviousthat what social historian Mary P. Ryan(1981: chap. 3) has dubbedthe pre-CivilWar "era of association"from the 1820s to the1840s coincided with the spread of adult male suffrageand theemer- genceof competitive, mass-mobilizing parties (Shefter 1994: chap. 3)--first theJacksonian Democrats, then the Whigs, and finallythe Free Soilersand theRepublicans. Democracyin Americatook note of earlyAmerican newspapers, too. "Newspapers make associations,and associationsmake newspapers," Tocqueville(1969 [1835-40]:518) wrote."Thus, ofall countrieson earth,it is in Americathat one findsboth the most associations and themost newspapers."But it was preciselyat thispoint, as historianRichard John (1995: 19) has so aptlyput it, that Tocqueville's "oft-disparaged gift for observation outpacedhis celebratedpower of analysis." As John(ibid.: 1) cleverlypoints out in his splendidnew book Spreading theNews: TheAmerican Postal System from Franklin to Morse,Tocqueville traveledby stagecoachin the "hinterlandof Kentuckyand Tennessee,"re- markingon the "astonishingcirculation of lettersand newspapersamong thesesavage woods." The Frenchman'stravels might not have been possible CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 461 had notmany U.S. stagecoachcompanies been subsidizedthrough Congress so thatmail could be carriedto smallcommunities and representativescould travelhome to remotedistricts. Tocqueville (1969 [1835-40]: 385, n. 79) calculatedthat the inhabitantsof ruralMichigan in 1831were exposed to muchmore nonlocal information than average inhabitants in thecommercial heartof France in the Departmentdu Nord. Knowingthat this situation was made possibleby theU.S. postalnetwork, the great political ethnogra- phernevertheless failed to understandwhat his observationsmeant about the earlyU.S. state.Tocqueville was blindedby his experienceswith, and negativepassions about, state power in France. A well-knownquip has it thatearly modern Prussia wasn't so mucha statewith an armyas an armywith a state.Similarly, the early United States mayhave been notso mucha countrywith a postoffice as a postoffice that gave popularreality to a fledglingnation. The remarkablesize and reach of the U.S. post officegives the lie to any notionthat "government" and "administration"were "absent" in earlyAmerica. ColonialAmerica had a rudimentarypostal system comparable to that in manyEuropean countries, where larger cities and townswere loosely tied together,especially along the Atlanticcoast. But a fewyears after the foundingof thenation, Congress passed thePost OfficeAct of 1792,which "admittednewspapers into the mail on unusuallyfavorable terms, . . . pro- hibitedpublic officers from using their control over the means of communi- cationas a surveillancetechnique," and "establisheda setof procedures that facilitatedthe extraordinarilyrapid expansionof the postalnetwork from the Atlanticseaboard into the transappalachian West" (John 1995: 31). "By 1828,"Richard John (ibid.: 5) pointsout, "theAmerican postal system had almosttwice as manyoffices as the postalsystem in GreatBritain and over fivetimes as manyoffices as thepostal system in France.This translatedinto 74 postoffices for every 100,000 inhabitants in comparisonwith 17 for Great Britainand 4 forFrance." The postalsystem was the biggestenterprise of any kindin the pre- industrialUnited States,and formost citizens it "was the centralgovern- ment."In the 1830sand 1840s,the systemaccounted for more than three- quartersof U.S. federalemployees, and mostof the 8,764 postalemployees in 1831and the 14,290in 1841were "part-time postmasters in villagesand townsscattered throughout the countryside."The federalarmy employed 462 SocialScience History fewermen, and theywere mostly"located at isolatedarmy posts in the transappalachianWest" (ibid.: 3-6). Obviouslythe institutional structure of the U.S. governmenthad every- thingto do withthe spreadof the postalnetwork. The legislativesystem gave senatorsand--above all--members of theHouse of Representativesa stronginterest in subsidizingcommunication and transportationlinks into eventhe remotest areas of thegrowing nation. U.S. postalrules allowed for the freeexchange of newspapersamong editors, allowing small newspapers to pickup copyfrom bigger ones. Simultaneously, postal rates made mailing newspaperscheap but did not alloweastern seaboard papers to outmarket provincialpapers. Commercein earlyAmerica was greatlyfacilitated by the relative safety, speed, and reachof the federalmail, yet the postalsystem was even more importantfor U.S. civilsociety and democraticpolitics. Congress could use itsfrank and thepostal system to communicatefreely with citizens. In turn, citizens,even those in theremotest hamlets, could readily communicate with one another,monitoring the doings of Congress and statelegislatures as well as thoseof local governments. Voluntary associations soon learned to putout theirmessage in "newspaper"formats to takeadvantage of the mails. Emergentpolitical parties in Jacksonian America were intertwined with thefederal postal system. Party entrepreneurs were often newspaper editors and postmasters.The firstthing the Jacksonian Democrats did after1828 to help theirpatronage-oriented party was to hand out manypostmaster- shipsto Democraticloyalists, furthering a practice of partisan"rotation in office"that would be carriedthrough more circuits when the Whigsand Republicanswon the presidency. One of the firstgreat moral reform movements in America--briefly embodiedbetween 1828 and 1832 in the transregionalGeneral Union for Promotingthe Observance of the Christian Sabbath- was devotedto trying to stopthe openingof postoffices and transportationof the mailson Sun- days.Ironically, this movement depended on thevery federal postal system it challenged,for the General Union relied on themail to spreadtens of thousands of pamphletsand petitionsto its potentialfollowers. The same was trueof othergreat voluntary crusades in the pre-CivilWar era, including temperancemovements and thepopular drive against slavery that helped to sparkthe Civil War. CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 463

In short,the earlyAmerican civic vitalitythat so entrancedAlexis de Tocquevillewas closelytied up withthe representative institutions and cen- trallydirected activity of a verydistinctive national state. The U.S. national statewas notlike the hefty, multipurpose administrative bureaucracy of mo- narchicalor postrevolutionaryFrance. But in some waysthe earlyfederal governmenthad even greateradministrative efficacy than the Frenchstate. The earlyU.S. postal systemboth grewout of and furthereda congressional representativesystem that encompassed virtually all whitemen. It furtheredever-intensifying communications among citizens, pulling more and moreAmericans into passionate involvements in regionaland national moralcrusades and electoralcampaigns. The same wouldremain true for a longtime in U.S. democracy.In the late 1800sand early1900s, women's magazines circulated through the mail, helpingthe far-flungefforts of nationwidewomen's federations (Waller- Zuckerman1989). Countless other U.S. associations,as wellas congressional representativesand partyleaders, used themail as theirmethod for circulat- ing organizationallyand civicallyrelevant information. Publicly subsidized and facilitatedcommunication was thelifeblood of American democracy.

Civic Engagementin IndustrialAmerica

If 1990s conservativeshave followedAlexis de Tocquevillein overlooking theimpact of theearly U.S. federalgovernment on civicengagement, then 1990s centristssuch as thosein the DemocraticLeadership Council have similarlymisunderstood the favorableopportunity structures for popularly rootedassociations provided by U.S. governmentalarrangements during the industrialera. Table 1 presentsa list of encompassingvoluntary associations in U.S. history.This comes fromthe preliminarystages of the Civic Engagement Project,a researchproject I am doingin cooperationwith a wonderfully energeticgroup of sociologyand politicalscience students at HarvardUni- versity.Some monthsago, we setout to identifyand investigateall ofthe voluntaryassociations across U.S. nationalhistory that, at anypoint, succeeded in enrollingas members1% or moreof the adult population (it couldbe 1% ofwomen or ofmen if the group was formallyrestricted to a singlegender). Churches,businesses, and partiesare notincluded on thislist, although we 464 Social ScienceHistory

Table 1 Encompassingvoluntary associations in U.S. history Local-State-National Association Founding-Ending FederalStructure? Prenational Ancientand Accepted Free Masons 1733- No EarlyNational IndependentOrder of Odd Fellows 1819- Yes AmericanTemperance Society 1826-57 Yes GeneralUnion for Promoting the Observanceof the Christian Sabbath 1828-32 No AmericanAnti-Slavery Society 1833-70 No ImprovedOrder of Redmen 1834- Yes AncientOrder of Hibernians in America 1836- Yes WashingtonianRevival 1840-4? No Sons ofTemperance 1842-1900 Yes IndependentOrder of Good Templars 1851- Yes YoungMen's ChristianAssociation 1851- No JuniorOrder of United American Mechanics 1853- Yes NationalTeachers' Association (NationalEducation Assoc., 1870-) 1857- Yes Civil War-WorldWar I Knightsof Pythias 1864- Yes GrandArmy of the Republic 1866-1956 Yes Patronsof Husbandry (The Grange) 1867- Yes Benevolentand Protective Order of Elks 1868- Yes AncientOrder of United Workmen 1868- Yes Knightsof Labor 1869-1917 No NationalRifle Association 1871- Yes AncientArabic Order of the Nobles of theMystic Shrine 1872- No Woman'sChristian Temperance Union 1874- Yes Orderof the Eastern Star 1876- Yes FarmersAlliance 1877-1900 Yes RoyalArcanum 1877- Yes Knightsof the Maccabees 1880- Yes ChristianEndeavor 1881 Yes Knightsof Columbus 1882- Yes ModernWoodmen of America 1883- Yes ColoredFarmers' Alliance 1886 Yes LoyalOrder of Moose 1888- Yes CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 465

Table 1 Continued Local-State-National Association Founding-Ending FederalStructure?

Women'sMissionary Union (Southern Baptist) 1888- Yes GeneralFederation of Women's Clubs 1890- Yes Woodmenof the World Life Insurance Society 1890- Yes NationalAmerican Woman Suffrage Association 1890-1920 Yes AmericanBowling Congress 1895- Yes NationalCongress of Mothers (PTA from1924) 1897- Yes FraternalOrder of Eagles 1898- Yes Veteransof Foreign Wars of the United States 1899- Yes AidAssociation for Lutherans 1902- No InternationalBrotherhood of Teamsters 1903- No Boy Scoutsof America 1910- No Ku Klux Klan (second) 1915-44 Yes Women'sInternational Bowling Congress 1916- Yes AmericanFarm Bureau Federation 1919- Yes AmericanLegion 1919- Yes New Deal-World War II Old AgeRevolving Pensions (TownsendMovement) 1934-53 Yes UnitedAutomobile Workers 1935- No SteelWorkers 1936- No AmericanBaptist Women Ministries 1951- No ContemporaryEra AmericanAssociation of Retired Persons 1958- No UnitedMethodist Women 1972- No NationalRight to LifeCommittee 1973- Yes CatholicGolden Age 1974- No CitizenAction 1979- No Mothersagainst Drunk Driving 1980- No ChristianCoalition 1989- Yes

Notes: This masterlist has been developedfrom historical and contemporarydata. It includesall groups documentedso faras enrollingas members1% or moreof the U.S. adultpopulation, at anytime between 1790 and the present.If groupsare formally restricted to men or women,the standardis 1% or more 466 SocialScience History

Table 1 Continued of adults of thatgender. Business, churches, and politicalparties are not includedon thislist (although manyof the voluntarygroups on the list have ties to thoseother institutions, and the researchproject is exploringthose ties). Groups on thislist are arrayedin orderof thedates of theirfounding, even thoughmany of themmay not have exceeded the 1% benchmarkuntil much laterin theirhistory. A chiefpurpose of the research projectis to documentand explain the "life courses" of these groups in relationto largertrends in Americanculture, politics, society, and economiclife. This masterlist is preliminary(as of summer1997) and subjectto changeas moredata comes in. Othergroups are stillbeing investigated for possible inclusion on the list. Groups listed as having federal(national-state-local) structures did not invariablyhave these structuresfrom the start (or withinthe firstdecade ofassociational existence). Some (such as theElks and theNational Education Association) started with other patterns and subsequentlyevolved into the federal pattern. do closelyinvestigate how our encompassing voluntary associations relate to thoseother institutions. The purposeof our study is notto explainthe causes of bigness as such; obviouslyone has to studysmaller groups, too, to explainwhy only some becomelarge. The purposeis to mapover time the changing universe of large U.S. voluntaryassociations; to explorewhen and how theyhave emerged and developed;to comparetheir organizational structures, memberships, and activitiesacross time; and to see how theyhave related to religiousand marketarrangements, to politicalparties and elections,and to governments at local,state, and nationallevels. Groups cannot make it ontoour list unless theyhave some broad, more-than-elite membership, so we are developinga windowinto the changingbases of organizedpopular involvement in U.S. societyand politics. Ultimately,our research aims to test a seriesof hypotheses about changes overtime, hypotheses derived from resource-mobilization and institutional- ist theoriesin sociologyand politicalscience. Our data collectionis not yet complete,so we are not yetat the hypothesis-testingstage. At thispoint, we can onlypoint to patternssuggested by the preliminarymaster list of encompassingvoluntary associations. Table 1 arraysgroups according to the date of theirfounding in theUnited States. It also givesend datesfor asso- ciationsthat no longersurvive-but notice that more than four-fifths ofthe groupsever launched still exist. The sheerchronological listing of encompassing associations gives the lie to an often-taken-for-grantedimage of the early United States as an agglom- CivicEngagement in AmericanDemocracy 467 erateof mostlyinward-looking local communities.Supposedly this is how thingswere prior to the rise of "modern,"centralized, bureaucratic organizations.But as thesedata show,not onlywere most of the encompassing voluntaryassociations in U.S. historyfounded before 1900, but over a fifthof thosewe haveidentified so farwere launched before the Civil War,that oft- citeddividing point between "premodern" and "industrializing"America. Even if we leave aside politicalparties and churches,very large numbers of Americanswere clearly working together through translocal associations fromvery early in our history. A secondpattern leaps out of thechronologically arrayed data. Found- ingsof big associationsare remarkablyspread out overthe entire life of the nation,yet there is some degreeof clusteringof foundingsin the 1820sto the 1850s,from the 1850s throughthe 1890s,in the middleto late 1910s, and in the 1930sand early1940s. These juncturesare, above all, moments of intenseelectoral participation and competition--particularlyduring the nineteenthcentury, when the mobilization of eligible (white male) voters was at an all-timehigh during the most competitive phases of the second (1828- 56) and third(1876-96) U.S. partysystems. The nationalizingimpact of passionssurrounding America's greatest war, the Civil War,is also obvious in thesedata. Studiesof a fullerarray of voluntary associations (e.g., Gamm and Putnam1996) have found more general spurts of local groupfoundings in thesesame nineteenth-century periods. In the twentiethcentury, lesser high pointsof associationalfounding seem to occurat nationallyfocused moments around World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression.These were timeswhen federalgov- ernmentactivity and influencewere relatively great. Contrary to the story thatconservatives often tell (Joyceand Schambra1996), foundings of encompassingassociations seem to havebeen stimulatedin theseperiods, not squelched.The non-zero-sumnature of U.S. governmentaland associational expansionbecomes even more apparentwhen we considerthat many of thebig voluntaryassociations founded in thesecond half of the nineteenth centurysurvived and prosperedwell into the twentieth century. (Some did shrinkduring the 1930s,when manypeople could not afforddues; and of thosesome recoveredby the 1950s,while others went into permanent decline.) Our preliminaryresearch on membershiptrends shows that many large 468 SocialScience History

U.S. voluntaryassociations achieved membership peaks in the 1960s or 1970s.Very much in tandemwith the growthof stateand nationalgovern- mentalfunctions and decisionmaking, many U.S. associationslaunched in the nineteenthcentury recruited more and morenew members.Even be- forememberships swelled, moreover, encompassing voluntary associations spreadout acrossall 48-50 statesand plantedlocal unitsin mostcommuni- tiesof any import. During the late nineteenth century and mostof the twentiethcentury we see thesame phenomenonthat prevailed back at the start of the Americannation: There has been a push towardgeographic spread, emulation,and inclusion,bringing more and less urbanplaces into the same networksof organization.U.S. governancefrom the Civil Warthrough the 1950sdid not "crowdout" civil society.On the contrary,U.S. governance stimulatedand facilitatedassociationalism, and rewardedit as well. A good manytranslocal associations ended up flourishingin directre- lationshipto involvementswith extra-local government. As we learnfrom ElisabethClemens's brilliant new book, The People'sLobby (1997), wide- spreadassociations sought to influencelegislation and administrationfrom thelate nineteenth century onward. As thepatronage-oriented, highly competitive,mass-mobilizing political parties of U.S. nineteenth-centurydemoc- racyweakened after the 1890s,locally rooted yet translocally organized as- sociationssought to carveout newdirect relationships with legislatures and withnew administrative agencies. Clemens argues that such popular lobbies made greatestinitial headway in thewestern states, where patronage parties wereweaker. Yet many associations also builtnationwide networks. Associationsbecame good at simultaneouslyinfluencing and reflecting popularopinion in localitiesand at lobbyinglegislators and government administratorsat local, state,and nationallevels. Their "comparativead- vantage"lay in influencing-andreflecting--public opinion across many communitiesand states.During eras whennewspapers and magazinesand face-to-facemeetings still mattered a lot,widespread, locally rooted associa- tionscould influence legislators and administratorsbecause they could claim to communicatewith (or speak for)so manyconstituents at once. Hansen (1991)spells out a rational-choiceinstitutionalist explanation for such links betweenCongress and associations,using the instance of the American Farm BureauFederation between 1919 and the1970s. Translocalvoluntary associations were intimately implicated in theen- CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 469 actmentand expansionof modernAmerica's most generous national social programs.Far frompublic social provisionand voluntarismbeing opposed to one another,as today'sconservatives so loudlyclaim, they have actually flourishedin fullsymbiosis. Examples are easy to list.The GrandArmy of theRepublic spread in thewake of the initial expansion of state and national benefitsfor Union veteransof the Civil War.Subsequently, the GAR both helped to administerthose benefits and lobbiedfor more and betterones (McConnell1992; Skocpol 1992: chap. 2). A less-well-knownexample is the FraternalOrder of Eagles (FOE), whichchampioned the enactment of state and federalold-age pensions in the1920s and early1930s. So activewas the FOE thatthe GrandEagle himselfreceived one of the officialpens when FranklinDelano Rooseveltsigned the Social SecurityAct of 1935.Finally, the greatwomen's federations of the earlytwentieth century--especially theNational Congress of Mothersand theGeneral Federation of Women's Clubs-were the championsof local, state,and federalregulations, services,and benefitsfor mothers and children(Skocpol 1992: part 3). Most of thesepolicies would never have been enactedwithout the specialability of women'sfederations to coordinatemorally focused public campaigns across communitiesand states.The women'sfederations themselves experienced greatgrowth and geographicalexpansion at thesame time as theirlegislative crusades.They also benefitedfrom their ability to forgepartnerships with governmentadministrators, such as thosein theChildren's Bureau. Froma resource-mobilizationperspective, we can hypothesizethat en- compassingU.S. voluntaryassociations could often turn federal government initiativesand resourcesto theirbenefit--whether to get a start,to expand, or to givethemselves new leases on life.For example, New Deal lawsand ad- ministrativeinterventions were vital aids fornascent U.S. industrialunions (Finegoldand Skocpol1995: chap. 5). Once launched,moreover, unions took advantageof federalinterventions in the economyduring World War II to expandtheir memberships and theirrights to bargainwith employers. Organizedlabor was hardlyexceptional. The AmericanFarm Bureau Federationtook advantage of possibilitiesfor administering Department of Agricultureextension programs and New Deal farmsubsidies, using them to facilitateits own organizational expansion into new regions (Hansen 1991). Anothertelling case ofleveraging federal resources was the American Legion (Jones1946; Pencak 1989). After getting started as an offshootof the World 470 SocialScience History

WarI AmericanExpeditionary Force, the legionstaved off the sort of gen- erationaldecline that has been the eventualfate of otherU.S. veterans' associationsby admitting young World War II veteransin 1942.The legion simultaneouslychampioned the GI Bill of 1944on theirbehalf. Millions of newvets soon floodedinto the group, allowing the American Legion to re- viveitself as a vitallocal civicpresence in thousandsof communities across theland, even as itsnational clout with Congress and theVeterans' Admin- istration,and its influencewith dozens of statelegislatures, was similarly renewedfor the postwar decades. A finalpoint about state-society symbiosis in the UnitedStates is in- dicatedin Table 1. My researchgroup wondered how manyencompassing U.S. voluntaryassociations would turn out to haveorganizational structures thatparalleled the three-tiered structure of U.S. federalism:that is, a struc- turebuilt around local groups,state branches, and nationalcenters. We will be exploringa fullerrange of organizationalfeatures in due course.But a preliminaryanswer to the federalquestion makes it apparentthat, with onlya fewexceptions, most translocal U.S. associationsfounded prior to the mostrecent decades have had a federalstructure. (The exceptionsare usuallygroups, including unions, that are based in populationsconcentrated byeconomic function or in metropolitanareas.) Voluntarygroups have adopted federal arrangements, in part,to facilitate simultaneousinteractions with local communitiesand withstate and nationalgovernments. Networks of national,state, and local units allow associationsto mediatebetween local peopleand politicalparties and legislators.Federated associations can keepan eyeon - or lobbyabout - relevant legislation.Of course,while some U.S. voluntarygroups have been actively involvedin electoralpolitics, others have tried to createa systematicalterna- tiveto formalpolitics. Historically, both the Women's Christian Temperance Union(Bordin 1981) and theNational Congress of Mothers (National Con- gressof Parents and Teachers1947) were deliberately structured to parallel partiesand the electedgovernment, while standing apart from them. This was thoughtto allowwomen to developan influential,yet separate, style of "purified"reform politics during the decades before all U.S. femaleswon the rightto vote. In practice,too, parallel organization gave women extraordinary leveragein settinglegislative agendas across the country. Practicaladvantages apart, however, for most of American history feder- CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 471 alismhas simplyserved as a prestigiousmodel. Much as sociologicalinstitu- tionaltheorists (Powell and DiMaggio 1991)might hypothesize, federalism servedas a kindof templateof legitimateand effectiveorganizational form forany big association.The historyof U.S. fraternalssuggests this inter- pretation.The Masons werebrought to Americafrom England in colonial times,and theyhave retained local and grandlodges in an arrayof orders, structuredmuch as theywere in Europe.But thenext English fraternal to be transplantedwas the Odd Fellows,founded here after the American Revo- lutionwith a morepopular constituency than the Masons (Clawson 1989: 118-23).The Odd Fellowsquickly adopted a three-tieredstructure imitat- ingU.S. federalism(Stevens 1899: 246-62). And mostfraternal associations foundedin the United States since the Odd Fellows have also developed federalarrangements (Gist 1940). Some associations,like the Knights of Columbus, started out with a non- federalstructure and thenwent through a reorganizationin whichleaders deliberatelyadvocated change to thenational-state-local pattern (Kauffman 1992).There have been manyinstances in U.S. history--evenamong tiny groups,much too smallto makemy research group's list-where theurge to havethree levels has beenalmost ludicrously excessive. Thus theCzecho- slovakSociety of America, an earlyCzech benefitsociety, started out witha coupleof urban clubs and thenmoved at onceto set up statebranches and a nationalheadquarters, well before many more local units could be stimulated (Martinek1955). For muchof Americanhistory, in fact,extralocal "levels" ofvoluntary federations were founded prior to mostlocal groups. Foundings oflocal units fanned out "sideways,"with encouragement and supportfrom stateand nationalleaders, until the "normal"template of a completeU.S. voluntaryassociation was fullyfilled in.

Lessons forToday

Enough of the past, fascinatingthough it may be. What does all of the foregoingsay about today'sdebates about civic engagementin American democracy? One conclusionis alreadyobvious. Contemporary calls fora return to civic voluntarismcome in the contextof conservativecrusades to dis- mantlean allegedlyhuge and overweeningfederal government. Many of 472 SocialScience History thosemaking such argumentspresume that there was some goldenera in America'spast whenlocal civicvoluntarism solved the country'sproblems apartfrom--actually instead of--extralocal government and politics.They also assertthat the expansionof federalgovernment activities in the early to mid-twentiethcentury crowded out grassrootspolitical participation and civicvoluntarism in theUnited States (Joyce and Schambra1996). But as I haveshown, these are myths about the past that do nothold up toelementary empiricalscrutiny. Fromearly on in America'snational history, the structure and activities of the federalgovernment, along with translocal and competitiveforms of popularpolitical mobilization, created an "opportunitystructure" that nour- ished, encouraged,and rewardedvoluntary associations. Many voluntary groupshave been organizedlocally (or, anyway, within districts or states). Yet a significantproportion of voluntaryefforts--and probably a verysig- nificantproportion of the most persistent efforts - havealso beentrans-state or nationalin scope (Skocpoland Ganz 1996;Hoffman 1994). Local efforts havenot just bubbledupward. Translocal organizations have always helped to stimulatelots of local activities.They sendout organizersor offermodels on whichpeople can draw.Local groupsof Americanshave not just looked inwardto theirown affairs. They have repeatedly taken encouragement from theopportunity to join togetherwith like-minded others in crusades,associations,and partiesthat could makea difference--evenat thelevel of the entirenation. Maybe the problemtoday is thatmany Americans, quite rightly,no longerfeel that they can effectivelyband togetherto getthings done either throughor in relationshipto government.The problemmay not be a big, bureaucraticfederal government--after all, the U.S. nationalgovernment stillhas proportionatelyless revenue-raising capacity and administrative heft thanvirtually any other advanced national state. The issue maybe recent shiftsin societyand stylesof politics that make it lessinviting for Americans to participateefficaciously in civic life--andcertainly harder for them to formbroad alliances. Whatcould the relevant recent changes be? Some havesuggested (Put- nam 1995) thatAmericans are, first and foremost,pulling back fromlocal groupsor informalsocializing, becoming couch potatoeswho sit at home alone watchingTV. Debates continueto rage about the degreeto which CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 473 sheersocial connectedness, and localor personal civic voluntarism, really are decliningin thecontemporary United States. I am notpersuaded one wayor anotherby thedata and analysesthat have appeared so far.I sharethe skep- ticismof my sister in WestVirginia, who when I toldher on thephone about theimportant work of a certaincolleague and friendat Harvard,exclaimed: "Nobodydown hereis bowlingalone! Just visit a bowlingalley and look." Indeed,leagues may be downper capita, but perhaps family and friendsare bowlingtogether in new ways.This maybe a metaphorfor a lot ofwhat is happeningeither informally or locallyor both. Still,the master list in Table 1 suggestsa realbreak in patternsof trans- localU.S. voluntaryassociationalism in themost recent decades. From other data (Berry1984; Walker 1991), we knowthat there was an explosionof for- mationof grassroots groups and nationaladvocacy groups between the mid- 1960s and the early1980s. During the same period,professional and trade associationshave also proliferated,turning Washington into an "imperial" capital,to use thememorable phrase of Kevin Phillips(1994: chap. 2). Unlike earlierassociational upsurges in U.S. history,such recentex- pansionsdo not appearto be correlatedwith either the emergenceof new transnationalvoluntary federations or therevitalization of older ones. Many of the 30 to 40 encompassingvoluntary federations that were flourishing in mid-twentieth-centuryAmerica have goneinto absolute as well as relative membershipdecline since the 1960s and 1970s.Most of the recently foundedencompassing voluntary associations are structuredlike thousands of smallerones: They are staff-led,mailing-list associations- without local or stategroup affiliates, without three-tiered federal structures. Tellingly,the exceptions to thestatement I just made havebeen on the right-wingside of the partisanspectrum: the NationalRight to Life Com- mitteeand theChristian Coalition have reproduced the old federalpatterns in new ways,even in our era of computer-formulateddirect mailing lists. These groupsare activein relationto localand stateas wellas nationalgovernment.Another long-standing but recently ideologically redirected federal group,the NationalRifle Association, also fitsthis right-wingexception. Still others,like Promise Keepers, may appear on our masterlist soon. But in the centerand the left(such as it is) of the U.S. associational spectrum,virtually no greatfederations have eitherappeared or gaineda clear-cutnew lease on life.Instead, the pattern is a profusionof staff-led, nar- 474 SocialScience History rowlyfocused advocacy groups representing relatively particular sociocul- turalidentities or advocatingpositions on narrow,hot-button policy issues. Unless theyare purelylocal, such groupsare usuallyheadquartered in New YorkCity or Washington,and theirprofessional staffs are orientedto the minutiaeof legislationand litigation.They communicatewith masses of Americansonly through mailings. (Exceptions to thisinclude the National EducationAssociation and the AmericanFederation of Teachers,and perhaps also the environmentalmovement as a whole,which includes both staff-ledadvocacy and lobbyingorganizations and associationswith local clubs,such as theSierra Club.) The queen of all contemporarymailing list associations is, of course, the 36-million-memberAmerican Association of RetiredPersons (AARP). The AARP does not have statebranches, and onlya tinyproportion of its individualmembers are activein local affiliates(Morris 1996). Because, shockinglyenough, I haverecently been recruited to theAARP, I can testify thatyou "join" whenyou receivea letterin the mail at age 49. The letter is computer-printed,and it offersyou a lot of commercialdiscounts and a magazinesubscription in returnfor sending in merelyeight dollars a year. Whyare so manystaff-led, mailing-list associations (most of them small, buta few,like the AARP, very big) flourishingin Americancivic life today? We knowthat more than sheer technological determinism is involved.The rise of new computer-drivencommunication and fund-raisingtechniques mattersa lot. But right-wingfederations, and noworganized labor, too, are showingthat these techniques can be meldedwith grassroots organizations. Otherpossibilities can onlybe mentionedas I wrapup thisessay. Class and gendertransformations surely matter. Most largeU.S. voluntaryassociations(founded or growing)from the 1800s throughthe 1950s were cross-class,single-gender affairs. In mostof these associations, business and professionalpeople joined together with white-collar folks and perhapswith moreprivileged farmers or craftor industrialworkers. Yet it was predomi- nantlymen or women,not both together, who formedmost of thesecross- class, as well as cross-regional,associations. Until recently,but no longer, segregatedmale and femaleroles offeredbroad, encompassing identities throughwhich hundreds of thousands or millionsof Americans could band togetheracross regional and class lines(Clawson 1989). In twentieth-centuryAmerica, male militaryveterans and higher- CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 475 educatedwomen have been leadersof encompassingassociations--in large part,I wouldargue, because both veterans and educatedwomen were spread out geographically.From early in thiscentury, college-educated U.S. men tendedto live and workin metropolitancenters. But not higher-educated women.They wenteverywhere to teachschool, then got marriedand had to stopteaching. Yet they often remained in local communitiesacross all the states.Well-educated women became mainstays of local and stateas well as nationalvoluntary life. Such societalconditions, those propitious for encompassing voluntary federations,have changeda lot in recentU.S. history.Higher-educated womennow havenationally oriented careers, and theycrowd into the same cosmopolitancenters as professionalor managerialmen. By the 1960sthe UnitedStates developed a verylarge professional-managerial upper middle class, full of men (and now women,too) who see themselvesas special- ized experts,not as "trusteesof community"(Brint 1994). Elites like this are arguablymore oriented to givingmoney to staff-lednational advocacy organizationsthan they are to climbingthe local-state-nationalleadership laddersof traditional encompassing voluntary associations. But changingconditions affecting voluntary associations in theUnited Statesgo beyondclass and gender.Conservatives and centristsmay be just a littlebit right that something about the national government has changed. Notthat the U.S. federalbranch got a lotbigger overall -especially notas a taxerand social spender, given the tax cuts and tight federal budgets since the 1970s.But federalregulatory activity did expand.Congressional staffs grew, and congressionalcommittees became morenumerous and decentralized, offeringmany more sites of possibleinfluence over legislation or adminis- trativeimplementation. Seizing such opportunities, staff-level advocacy and lobbyinggroups took much of the action away from more cumbersome popu- larlybased voluntaryfederations. All the moreso, giventhat congressional representativeswere increasingly seeking reelection with the aid ofpollsters and mediaconsultants and televisionadvertisements, eschewing the reliance theyhad formerlyplaced on voluntaryfederations as lifelinesto votersin theirdistricts. Mass politicsin Americahas changedin the last severaldecades, just as Washingtonhas. The excellentscholarship of politicalscientists such as Rosenstoneand Hansen (1993) and Verba,Schlozman, and Brady (1995) 476 SocialScience History shows thatU.S. politicssince the 1960s has become electorallydemobi- lized and increasinglymoney-driven. As Aldrich(1995) has recentlyargued, Americanpolitical parties now providefinancial and consultant"services" to candidates,rather than mediating relations between politicians and citizens,as theydid fromthe 1830s through the 1950s. Except on theright wing of the RepublicanParty, voters these days are rarelycontacted directly by partyor groupworkers. Americans are most likely to be askedto givemoney. Politiciansmay not care much about them at all ifthey aren't relatively well- offor membersof targeted "swing" groups or voters(Ganz 1994).This has happenedin electoralpolitics at thesame time that all ofour mailboxeshave becomefull of targeted, computer-generated mailings from single-issue ad- vocacygroups - groupsthat seek out thenarrowest possible causes that will allowthem to raisemoney from paper "memberships" (Paget 1990). All in all, the verymodel of whatcounts as effectiveorganization in U.S. politicsand civiclife has changedvery sharply since the 1960s. Except perhapson theright, no longerdo leadersand citizensthink of building, or workingthrough, nationwide federations that link face-to-face groups into stateand nationalnetworks. If a newcause arises,people thinkof opening a nationaloffice, raising funds through direct mail, and hiringa mediacon- sultant.Ordinary citizens, in turn,are likelyto feelthemselves to be merely the manipulatedobjects of such efforts.They do not feellike participating citizensor grassrootsleaders active in broadefforts. And theyare right!

Let me end whereI began,with Alexis de Tocqueville.Were Tocqueville to risefrom the dead and returnto thelate-twentieth-century United States for anothervisit, he wouldbe justas worriedabout the national trends I havejust mentionedas aboutpossible declines in purelylocal or small-groupassocia- tionalism.After all, one ofTocqueville's insights in Democracyin America - even if it is an insightrarely mentioned by his conservativerevivers--was thatvital democratic participation served as a kindof "school" where Ameri- cans learnedhow to buildsocial and civicassociations of all sorts,especially translocalones. Tocqueville may have been ideologicallyblind to the ways in whichthe early U.S. nationalstate created a frameworkthat encouraged widespreadvoluntary associations. But he was wellaware of the stimulating effectof vigorous popular political participation on socialengagement. Tocquevillewould surely take very seriously the preliminary data I have CivicEngagement inAmerican Democracy 477 sharedwith you today,data thatsuggest a recentwatershed in the extent and natureof encompassingvoluntary associationalism. Tocqueville would immediatelynotice the class and gendershifts I havementioned. He would worrythat electoral participation has fallenoff, political parties have lost contactwith actual citizens, and electionshave come moreand moreunder the managementof highlypaid, sometimesDick Morris-likepollsters and consultantsand mediapeople who manipulate images on television. Not onlywould Tocqueville think these changes mattered a greatdeal. He wouldsurely be surprisedthat today's conservatives are using his Democ- racyin Americato justifya depoliticizedand romanticlocalism as an im- probableremedy for the largerills of nationalpolitics. Indeed, were Alexis de Tocquevilleto makea returnvisit, he mighteven decide to drop in at theHeritage Foundation and theDemocratic Leadership Council to suggest thatthose groups broaden their agendas of concern about the roots and fate ofcivic engagement in Americandemocracy. Alas, barringa miracle,Alexis de Tocquevillewill not reappearto de- liverthis message. So perhapswe social sciencehistorians will just haveto do it forhim!

Note

ThedaSkocpol delivered an earlierversion of this article at the 12 October 1996 presi- dent'saddress to theannual meeting of the Social Science History Association, Hotel Monteleone,New Orleans, LA. Skocpolis professorofgovernment and sociology at HarvardUniversity. Her research centers on U.S. politics, civil society, and public policy making.The best-knownofSkocpol's eleven books include States and Social Revolu- tions:A ComparativeAnalysis ofFrance, Russia, and China (1979); Protecting Soldiers and Mothers:The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (1992); Social Policy inthe United States: Future Possibilities inHistorical Perspective (1995); and Boomerang: Clinton'sHealth Security Effort and the Turn against Government inUS. Politics(1996).

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