DOCSLIB.ORG

Disconnection and Reorganization: the Transformation of Civic Life in Late-Twentieth-Century America

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Disconnection and Reorganization: the Transformation of Civic Life in Late-Twentieth-Century America Studies in American Political Development, 19 (Fall 2005), 137–156. Disconnection and Reorganization: The Transformation of Civic Life in Late-Twentieth-Century America Theda Skocpol, Harvard University Rachael V. Cobb, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Casey Andrew Klofstad, University of Miami From the early 1800s through the middle of the twen- Led by Robert D. Putnam, social capital theorists tieth century, U.S. democracy was energized by the emphasize the unraveling of many sorts of social con- remarkable propensity of Americans to organize and nections, and they see citizen withdrawal from affilia- join voluntary associations.1 Observers of many per- tions with voluntary associations, especially member- suasions agree on this point – and also concur that ship groups, as an integral part of recent civic shifts.2 the final decades of the twentieth century brought According to the social capital perspective, civic de- fundamental shifts in civic organization and citizen cline in the United States occurred gradually and involvements with voluntary groups in the United steadily after the 1950s and 1960s, with withdrawals States. The nature, tempo, and causes of these from group affiliations happening relatively evenly changes remain a topic for scholarly discussion, how- across social strata. Civic decline is attributed princi- ever. Investigators highlight different aspects of re- pally to generational replacement and steady shifts in cent civic transformations and explore these changes mass behavior propelled by new societal conditions using contrasting theoretical perspectives and types and forms of entertainment. Per social capital theo- of empirical data. ry, increasing social disconnectedness hurts demo- cratic government; however, government activities themselves are not viewed as important causes of re- Various colleagues have given us comments and criticisms that helped to improve this article. We are grateful to anonymous jour- cent civic shifts. nal reviewers; to colleagues in the American Politics Research In contrast, civic reorganization theorists such as Workshop at Harvard University; and, for specific suggestions, to Theda Skocpol and Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Barry Burden, Rob Sampson, and Martin West. Ginsberg focus on abrupt shifts in organizational 1. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Po- populations – the displacement of popularly rooted litical Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, NJ: Prince- ton University Press, 1963); James Bryce, The American Common- membership associations by professionally managed 3 wealth, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1895); Robert D. advocacy groups and nonprofit institutions. Reorga- Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Com- munity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., “Biography of a Nation of Joiners,” American His- 2. Putnam, Bowling Alone. See also Putnam’s Making Democra- torical Review 50 (1)1944: 1–25; Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democ- cy Work (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). racy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman: 3. Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg, Downsizing University of Oklahoma Press, 2003); and Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Skocpol, (1835–1840; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1969). Diminished Democracy; Theda Skocpol “Unraveling from above,” The © 2005 Cambridge University Press ISSN 0898–588X/05 $12.00 137 138 THEDA SKOCPOL, RACHAEL V. COBB, AND CASEY ANDREW KLOFSTAD nization theorists posit that elites led the way in mak- The Decline of Social Connectedness ing new choices about civic affiliations, abandoning Robert Putnam’s social capital theory holds that the cross-class membership groups ahead of nonelite effectiveness of democratic government rests in large Americans. According to these theorists, moreover, part on the presence of interpersonal social ties that the rights revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s and new foster trust and norms of reciprocity among citizens.4 federal welfare-state policies and practices combined Asserting that such social capital fosters collective ac- to play a critical role in spurring the abrupt reorga- tion and makes public administration more efficient nization of the civic group universe and the nature of and responsive, Putnam examines the modern Unit- civic affiliations. ed States, documenting “the erosion of America’s so- In this article, we introduce a new type of long-term cial connectedness and community involvement over empirical data: the civic group affiliations declared by the last several decades.”5 Among the many kinds of Massachusetts state senators over much of the twenti- connections traced are memberships in voluntary eth century. Despite limitations, which we discuss groups; Putnam argues that trade unions, leading in the following sections, these data – used alone and professional associations, and chapter-based volun- in conjunction with other available data – offer a win- tary membership federations (ranging from Rotary dow into the nature and possible causes of shifting to the PTA) have all experienced comparably sharp elite civic affiliations, and help to pinpoint the rela- membership losses since the late 1950s and early tive timing of elite and mass withdrawals from major 1960s.6 According to social survey data gathered membership associations. These new data provide since the 1970s, Americans in general have become greater detail and longitudinal depth than the survey much less likely to participate actively in membership responses collected between the 1970s and the 1990s associations and community groups.7 In Putnam’s that are more typically used to analyze recent civic view, across-the-board citizen withdrawal from such transformations. groups has contributed to – and expresses – declin- We do not aim to test all aspects of social capital ing social connectedness. and civic reorganization arguments about civic In chapter 15 of Bowling Alone, Putnam sketches change in the late-twentieth century. Our fresh data “the complex of factors” that explain recent erosions do, however, help to explore and adjudicate certain of American social capital.8 He does not offer a for- areas of differential emphasis and disagreement be- mal statistical model, yet suggests that about 10 per- tween these perspectives. Social capital theory, we cent of overall decline is due to greater pressures of find, offers valid insights about civic disconnection time and money; about 10 percent is due to subur- and generational replacement, but this perspective banization, urban sprawl, and longer commuting also misses much that is going on beneath the surface times between homes and work; and about 25 per- of general trends, especially after 1965. As the reor- cent is due to the effect of television-watching. Most ganization perspective argues, elites led the way in important, “perhaps half of the overall decline” is at- abruptly changing the types (not just numbers) of tributable to “generational change – the slow, steady, civic groups with which they affiliated. The new evi- and ineluctable replacement of the long civic gener- dence we present also suggests that rights revolutions ation by their less involved children and grandchil- and shifts in government welfare policies might in- dren.”9 Because they experienced the Great Depres- deed have been implicated in late-twentieth-century sion and World War II, members of Putnam’s “long civic reorganizations. civic generation” had unusual experiences of solidar- ity and participation and developed lifelong proclivi- WHEN, HOW, AND WHY DID U.S. CIVIC LIFE CHANGE? ties for group involvements. Americans born later spend hours in front of the television and have more As the foregoing remarks suggest, leading analysts individualistic habits. not only offer contrasting explanations, they also Notable for their absence in Putnam’s explanation highlight somewhat different civic changes as worthy of declining social connectedness are the “rights rev- of theoretical attention. As Putnam’s social capital ar- olutions” of the 1960s and 1970s; the rise in econom- gument is so well known, we summarize it only briefly, ic inequality since the 1970s; and changes in U.S. pol- opting instead to explore less-well-known arguments itics and governance. In Putnam’s view, declines in about civic reorganization in more detail. civic engagement have occurred relatively equally be- American Prospect 25 (1996); and Theda Skocpol, “Voice and In- 4. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, esp. chap. 6. equality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy,” Per- 5. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 277. spectives on Politics 2 (2004): 1–18. The same kind of reorganization 6. Ibid., 54, 81, 84. at the metropolitan level is documented in Peter Dobkin Hall, “Vi- 7. Ibid., chap. 3. tal Signs: Organizational Population Trends and Civic Engage- 8. Generational replacement and increased television-viewing ment in New Haven, Connecticut, 1850–1998,” in Civic Engagement are partially overlapping factors in the pie-chart explanatory mod- in American Democracy, ed. Theda Skocpol and Morris P. Fiorina el Putnam presents, so the percentages summarized in this para- (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press and Russell Sage graph cannot be simply totalled. Foundation, 1999). 9. Ibid., 283.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Analyzing Change in International Politics: the New Institutionalism and the Interpretative Approach
    Analyzing Change in International Politics: The New Institutionalism and the Interpretative Approach - Guest Lecture - Peter J. Katzenstein* 90/10 This discussion paper was presented as a guest lecture at the MPI für Gesellschaftsforschung, Köln, on April 5, 1990 Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Lothringer Str. 78 D-5000 Köln 1 Federal Republic of Germany MPIFG Discussion Paper 90/10 Telephone 0221/ 336050 ISSN 0933-5668 Fax 0221/ 3360555 November 1990 * Prof. Peter J. Katzenstein, Cornell University, Department of Government, McGraw Hall, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853, USA 2 MPIFG Discussion Paper 90/10 Abstract This paper argues that realism misinterprets change in the international system. Realism conceives of states as actors and international regimes as variables that affect national strategies. Alternatively, we can think of states as structures and regimes as part of the overall context in which interests are defined. States conceived as structures offer rich insights into the causes and consequences of international politics. And regimes conceived as a context in which interests are defined offer a broad perspective of the interaction between norms and interests in international politics. The paper concludes by suggesting that it may be time to forego an exclusive reliance on the Euro-centric, Western state system for the derivation of analytical categories. Instead we may benefit also from studying the historical experi- ence of Asian empires while developing analytical categories which may be useful for the analysis of current international developments. ***** In diesem Aufsatz wird argumentiert, daß der "realistische" Ansatz außenpo- litischer Theorie Wandel im internationalen System fehlinterpretiere. Dieser versteht Staaten als Akteure und internationale Regime als Variablen, die nationale Strategien beeinflussen.
    [Show full text]
  • Theda Skocpol
    NAMING THE PROBLEM What It Will Take to Counter Extremism and Engage Americans in the Fight against Global Warming Theda Skocpol Harvard University January 2013 Prepared for the Symposium on THE POLITICS OF AMERICA’S FIGHT AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING Co-sponsored by the Columbia School of Journalism and the Scholars Strategy Network February 14, 2013, 4-6 pm Tsai Auditorium, Harvard University CONTENTS Making Sense of the Cap and Trade Failure Beyond Easy Answers Did the Economic Downturn Do It? Did Obama Fail to Lead? An Anatomy of Two Reform Campaigns A Regulated Market Approach to Health Reform Harnessing Market Forces to Mitigate Global Warming New Investments in Coalition-Building and Political Capabilities HCAN on the Left Edge of the Possible Climate Reformers Invest in Insider Bargains and Media Ads Outflanked by Extremists The Roots of GOP Opposition Climate Change Denial The Pivotal Battle for Public Opinion in 2006 and 2007 The Tea Party Seals the Deal ii What Can Be Learned? Environmentalists Diagnose the Causes of Death Where Should Philanthropic Money Go? The Politics Next Time Yearning for an Easy Way New Kinds of Insider Deals? Are Market Forces Enough? What Kind of Politics? Using Policy Goals to Build a Broader Coalition The Challenge Named iii “I can’t work on a problem if I cannot name it.” The complaint was registered gently, almost as a musing after-thought at the end of a June 2012 interview I conducted by telephone with one of the nation’s prominent environmental leaders. My interlocutor had played a major role in efforts to get Congress to pass “cap and trade” legislation during 2009 and 2010.
    [Show full text]
  • Measuring the Research Productivity of Political Science Departments Using Google Scholar
    The Profession ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Measuring the Research Productivity of Political Science Departments Using Google Scholar Michael Peress, SUNY–Stony Brook ABSTRACT This article develops a number of measures of the research productivity of politi- cal science departments using data collected from Google Scholar. Departments are ranked in terms of citations to articles published by faculty, citations to articles recently published by faculty, impact factors of journals in which faculty published, and number of top pub- lications in which faculty published. Results are presented in aggregate terms and on a per-faculty basis. he most widely used measure of the quality of of search results, from which I identified publications authored political science departments is the US News and by that faculty member, the journal in which the publication World Report ranking. It is based on a survey sent appeared (if applicable), and the number of citations to that to political science department heads and direc- article or book. tors of graduate studies. Respondents are asked to I constructed four measures for each faculty member. First, Trate other political science departments on a 1-to-5 scale; their I calculated the total number of citations. This can be
    [Show full text]
  • Review Article the MANY VOICES of POLITICAL CULTURE Assessing Different Approaches
    Review Article THE MANY VOICES OF POLITICAL CULTURE Assessing Different Approaches By RICHARD W. WILSON Richard J. Ellis and Michael Thompson, eds. Culture Matters: Essays in Honor of Aaron Wildavsky. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997, 252 pp. Michael Gross. Ethics and Activism: The Theory and Practice of Political Moral- ity. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 305 pp. Samuel P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996, 367 pp. Ronald Inglehart. Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in Forty-three Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, 453 pp. David I. Kertzer. Politics and Symbols:The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996, 211 pp. HE popularity of political culture has waxed and waned, yet it re- Tmains an enduring feature of political studies. In recent years the appearance of many excellent books and articles has reminded us of the timeless appeal of the subject and of the need in political analysis to ac- count for values and beliefs. To what extent, though, does the current batch of studies in political culture suffer from the difficulties that plagued those of an earlier time? The recent resurgence of interest in political culture suggests the importance of assessing the relative merits of the different approaches that theorists employ. ESTABLISHING EVALUATIVE CRITERIA The earliest definitions of political culture noted the embedding of po- litical systems in sets of meanings and purposes, specifically in symbols, myths, beliefs, and values.1 Pye later enlarged upon this theme, stating 1 Sidney Verba, “Comparative Political Culture,” in Lucian W.
    [Show full text]
  • Theda Skocpol | Mershon Center for International Security Studies | the Ohio State Univ
    Theda Skocpol | Mershon Center for International Security Studies | The Ohio State Univ... Page 1 of 2 The Ohio State University www.osu.edu Help Campus map Find people Webmail Search home > events calendar > september 2006 > theda skocpol September Citizenship Lecture Series October Theda Skocpol November December "Voice and Inequality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy" January Theda Skocpol Professor of Government February Monday, Sept. 25, 2006 and Sociology March Noon Dean of the Graduate Mershon Center for International Security Studies April School of Arts and 1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201 Sciences May Harvard University 2007-08 See a streaming video of this lecture. This streaming video requires RealPlayer. If you do not have RealPlayer, you can download it free. Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She has also served as Director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard from 1999 to 2006. The author of nine books, nine edited collections, and more than seven dozen articles, Skocpol is one of the most cited and widely influential scholars in the modern social sciences. Her work has contributed to the study of comparative politics, American politics, comparative and historical sociology, U.S. history, and the study of public policy. Her first book, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge, 1979), won the 1979 C. Wright Mills Award and the 1980 American Sociological Association Award for a Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship. Her Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Harvard, 1992), won five scholarly awards.
    [Show full text]
  • Coming in the NEXT ISSUE
    Association News contributors to the international scientific DBASSE can be accessed at http://sites. community. Nearly 500 members of the nationalacademies.org/DBASSE/index. Coming NAS have won Nobel Prizes” (See http:// htm. Presiding over DBASSE presently nasonline.org/about-nas/mission). is political scientist Kenneth Prewitt. in the For the past century and a half, mem- Scholars who are not NAS members also NEXT bers have investigated and responded to regularly participate as members of NAS questions posed by our national leaders committees, and we urge all political sci- ISSUE as a form of service to the nation without entists to give serious consideration to financial recompense. As Ralph Cicerone, these requests. A preview of some of the articles in the president of the NAS, never fails to relate The discussion at this year’s meeting April 2014 issue: to new members at the annual installation of NAS-member political scientists at ceremony, while our advice is often solic- the APSA convention centered on how to SYMPOSIUM ited—its first report to the Lincoln admin- effectively transmit the best social science US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION istration addressed whether our country knowledge to the government through FORECASTING should adopt the metric system, and sent the NRC. One issue facing the NRC in Michael Lewis-Beck and back a consensus “yes” answer—this ad- general and the DBASSE in particular Mary Stegmaier, guest editors vice is not always followed. Scientific is that by charter the NAS is not permit- FEATURES objectivity is the goal of the Academy, not ted to solicit contracts from government political advocacy.
    [Show full text]
  • SIS 802 Comparative Politics
    Ph.D. Seminar in Comparative Politics SIS 802, Fall 2016 School of International Service American University COURSE INFORMATION Professor: Matthew M. Taylor Email: [email protected] Classes will be held on Tuesdays, 2:35-5:15pm Office hours: Wednesdays (11:30pm-3:30pm) and by appointment. In the case of appointments, please email me at least two days in advance to schedule. Office: SIS 350 COURSE DESCRIPTION Comparative political science is one of the four traditional subfields of political science. It differs from international relations in its focus on individual countries and regions, and its comparison across units – national, subnational, actors, and substantive themes. Yet it is vital to scholars of international relations, not least because of its ability to explain differences in the basic postures of national and subnational actors, as well as in its focus on key variables of interest to international relations, such as democratization, the organization of state decision-making, and state capacity. Both subfields have benefited historically from considerable methodological and theoretical cross-fertilization which has shaped the study of international affairs significantly. The first section of the course focuses on the epistemology of comparative political science, seeking to understand how we know what we know, the accumulation of knowledge, and the objectivity of the social sciences. The remainder of the course addresses substantive debates in the field, although students are encouraged to critically address the theoretical and methodological approaches that are used to explore these substantive issues. COURSE OBJECTIVES This course will introduce students to the field, analyzing many of the essential components of comparative political science: themes, debates, and concepts, as well as different theoretical and methodological approaches.
    [Show full text]
  • Rewriting the Epic of America
    One Rewriting the Epic of America IRA KATZNELSON “Is the traditional distinction between international relations and domes- tic politics dead?” Peter Gourevitch inquired at the start of his seminal 1978 article, “The Second Image Reversed.” His diagnosis—“perhaps”—was mo- tivated by the observation that while “we all understand that international politics and domestic structures affect each other,” the terms of trade across the domestic and international relations divide had been uneven: “reason- ing from international system to domestic structure” had been downplayed. Gourevitch’s review of the literature demonstrated that long-standing efforts by international relations scholars to trace the domestic roots of foreign pol- icy to the interplay of group interests, class dynamics, or national goals1 had not been matched by scholarship analyzing how domestic “structure itself derives from the exigencies of the international system.”2 Gourevitch counseled scholars to turn their attention to the international system as a cause as well as a consequence of domestic politics. He also cautioned that this reversal of the causal arrow must recognize that interna- tional forces exert pressures rather than determine outcomes. “The interna- tional system, be it in an economic or politico-military form, is underdeter- mining. The environment may exert strong pulls but short of actual occupation, some leeway in the response to that environment remains.”3 A decade later, Robert Putnam turned to two-level games to transcend the question as to “whether
    [Show full text]
  • Government 2010. Strategies of Political Inquiry, G2010
    Government 2010. Strategies of Political Inquiry, G2010 Gary King, Robert Putnam, and Sidney Verba Thursdays 12-2pm, Littauer M-17 Gary King [email protected], http://GKing.Harvard.edu Phone: 617-495-2027 Office: 34 Kirkland Street Robert Putnam [email protected] Phone: 617-495-0539 Office: 79 JFK Street, T376 Sidney Verba [email protected] Phone: 617-495-4421 Office: Littauer Center, M18 Prerequisite or corequisite: Gov1000 Overview If you could learn only one thing in graduate school, it should be how to do scholarly research. You should be able to assess the state of a scholarly literature, identify interesting questions, formulate strategies for answering them, have the methodological tools with which to conduct the research, and understand how to write up the results so they can be published. Although most graduate level courses address these issues indirectly, we provide an explicit analysis of each. We do this in the context of a variety of strategies of empirical political inquiry. Our examples cover American politics, international relations, compara- tive politics, and other subfields of political science that rely on empirical evidence. We do not address certain research in political theory for which empirical evidence is not central, but our methodological emphases will be as varied as our substantive examples. We take empirical evidence to be historical, quantitative, or anthropological. Specific methodolo- gies include survey research, experiments, non-experiments, intensive interviews, statistical analyses, case studies, and participant observation. Assignments Weekly reading assignments are listed below. Since our classes are largely participatory, be sure to complete the readings prior to the class for which they are as- signed.
    [Show full text]
  • Political Order in Changing Societies
    Political Order in Changing Societies by Samuel P. Huntington New Haven and London, Yale University Press Copyright © 1968 by Yale University. Seventh printing, 1973. Designed by John O. C. McCrillis, set in Baskerville type, and printed in the United States of America by The Colonial Press Inc., Clinton, Mass. For Nancy, All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form Timothy, and Nicholas (except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Library of Congress catalog card number: 68-27756 ISBN: 0-300-00584-9 (cloth), 0-300-01171-'7 (paper) Published in Great Britain, Europe, and Africa by Yale University Press, Ltd., London. Distributed in Latin America by Kaiman anti Polon, Inc., New York City; in Australasia and Southeast Asia by John Wiley & Sons Australasia Pty. Ltd., Sidney; in India by UBS Publishers' Distributors Pvt., Ltd., Delhi; in Japan by John Weatherhill, Inc., Tokyo. I·-~· I I. Political Order and Political Decay THE POLITICAL GAP The most important political distinction among countries con­ i cerns not their form of government but their degree of govern­ ment. The differences between democracy and dictatorship are less i than the differences between those countries whose politics em­ , bodies consensus, community, legitimacy, organization, effective­ ness, stability, and those countries whose politics is deficient in these qualities. Communist totalitarian states and Western liberal .states both belong generally in the category of effective rather than debile political systems. The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union have different forms of government, but in all three systems the government governs.
    [Show full text]
  • Government 601: Methods of Political Analysis I Fall 2003, Tueday 7:00–10:00P (WE 104)
    Government 601: Methods of Political Analysis I Fall 2003, Tueday 7:00–10:00p (WE 104) Professors: Walter R. Mebane, Jr. Jonas Pontusson 217 White Hall 205 White Hall 255-3868 255-6764 [email protected] [email protected] office hours: T 3–5, W 2–3 office hours: MW 10–11 Assignment Due Dates due date description TBA one weekly discussion paper as assigned (weeks 3–10, 12) October 28 “explanations” paper November 11 research pre-proposal November 18 Boolean exercise December 15 research proposal Reading Availability We will be reading large proportions of most of the following books, and most are worth having on the shelf, so you may want to buy them. On the other hand, several are expensive. Most of the books should also soon appear on reserve in the Government Reading Room in Olin (room 405). Photocopies of other required reading should also be available in the Reading Room. Browning, Christopher R. 2000. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. New York: Cam- bridge UP. Browning, Christopher R. 1998. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins. Campbell, Donald T., and Julian C. Stanley. 1966. Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research. Chicago: Rand McNally. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. 1996. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holo- caust. New York: Knopf. Golden, Miriam. 1997. Heroic Defeats. New York: Cambridge UP. Hedstr¨om,Peter, and Richard Swedborg, eds. 1998. Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. New York: Cambridge UP. King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba.
    [Show full text]
  • The Analytical Narrative Project
    The Analytical Narrative Project The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Bates, Robert H., Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry R. Weingast. 2000. The Analytical Narrative Project. American Political Science Review 94(3): 696-702. Published Version http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2585843 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3710302 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Analytic Narratives September 2000 TheAnalytic Narrative Project ROBERT H. BATES Harvard University AVNER GREIF Stanford University MARGARET LEVI Universityof Washington JEAN-LAURENT ROSENTHAL Universityof California, Los Angeles BARRY R. WEINGAST Stanford University In Analytic Narratives,we attempt to address several bounded rationality. We believe that each of these issues. First, many of us are engaged in in-depth perspectives brings something of value, and to different case studies, but we also seek to contribute to, and degrees the essays in our book represent an integration to make use of, theory. How might we best proceed? of perspectives. By explicitly outlining an approach that Second, the historian, the anthropologist, and the area relies on rational choice and mathematical models, we specialist possess knowledge of a place and time. They do not mean to imply that other approaches lack rigor have an understanding of the particular.
    [Show full text]