xxix Journal of Interdisciplinary History, :4 (Spring, 1999), 725–762. Myron P. Gutmann and Sara M. Pullum FROM MYRONLOCAL TO P. GUTMANNNATIONAL ANDPOLITICAL SARA M.CULTURES PULLUM From Local to National Political Cultures: Social Capital and Civic Organization in the Great Plains It is exciting to think about Putnam’s concept of social capital in the context of the semi-arid American Great Plains. Will his theorem hold in an environment so different—in every social and physical sense—from that of urban Italy? Putnam ªnds that people who form voluntary associations based on common activities or concerns experience greater levels of social integration and politi- cal involvement. He calls this civic engagement “social capital” because the power of the group transcends potential individual productivity. Beneªts of these reciprocal networks include better community institutions; the building of neighborhood trust, re- sulting in lower crime rates; and political activism to further local needs. In his work on Italy, Putnam focuses on the overtly political ramiªcations of social capital. He shows that as regional measures of social capital became stronger in Italy from 1970 to 1989, politicians responded by placing greater emphasis on compromise and efªciency. By pooling resources, citizens were able to alter the prevailing beliefs about government’s role and its relationship to the community, which Putnam terms “political culture.” As a result of the active application of social capital, politicians viewed regional loyalty as more important than party afªliation, and citizen satisfaction as a concrete and achievable goal.1 Myron P. Gutmann is Director of the Population Research Center and Professor of History, University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Towards the Modern Economy: Early Industry in Europe, 1500–1800 (New York, 1988); co-author, with Kenneth H. Fliess, of “The Social Context of Infant and Childhood Mortality in the American Southwest, 1850–1910,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXVI (1996), 589–618. Sara M. Pullum is a Ph.D. candidate, University of Texas, Austin. The research for this article was supported by grant number 1R01 HD33554 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. The authors are grateful to Geoff Cunfer and the rest of the Great Plains Population and Environmental team in Austin, as well as to the administrative ofªces of the United States National Grasslands, for advice and assistance. © 1999 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 1 Robert D. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy, VI (1995), 65–78; idem, with Roberto Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219599551877 by guest on 26 September 2021 726 | MYRON P. GUTMANN AND SARA M. PULLUM Although the title of this article refers to civic organizations, our investigation initially focuses on political participation in gen- eral elections. When we extend it later to local institutions, we turn not to civic institutions (having to do with cities) but to rural institutions—speciªcally, ªfteen publicly owned grasslands, ad- ministered in a variety of ways along the communal and demo- cratic spectrum. We ask how differences in the administration of the grasslands reºect on longer traditions of public participation. The most dramatic changes that we ªnd do not reºect a loss of social capital so much as a change in political culture from a local to a national perspective. Although the voter-participation index that we use cannot detect all the elements of social capital, it is an adequate way to gauge the differences between counties and the changing nature of public life over time. Considerable evidence suggests that local political cultures were extremely im- portant until the 1952 presidential election, as indicated by the differences between states in voter participation. After 1951, local identiªcation—through states—played less of a role, and religion and ethnic origin played more of one. This new political culture is more diverse but still vibrant. The new national media—espe- cially television—might have been responsible for bringing it about by giving people multiple sources of identity that go beyond their local or state community. The Great Plains are part of the great natural grassland that stretches across the central part of North America eastward from the Rocky Mountains. We deªne the boundary of the Great Plains on the east by the line of 700 mm average annual precipi- tation, on the west by 5,000 feet of elevation, on the north by the Canadian border, and on the south by the thirty-second parallel in Texas and New Mexico. Counties are our units of analysis—450 of them in ten states throughout the area that we deªne as the Great Plains. In many ways, the social history of the Great Plains, like that of much of the United States, does not conform to Putnam’s analyses. European-Americans began to settle the region only in the second half of the nineteenth century; white farmers and ranchers made a signiªcant appearance in some areas only after World War I. Moreover, many of the people who settled in the region did not stay long. High rates of immigration and emigration are consistent themes in the settlement of the United States. Many Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219599551877 by guest on 26 September 2021 FROM LOCAL TO NATIONAL POLITICAL CULTURES | 727 people came not to establish their families as long-term farmers, like European peasants, but to proªt in the short term from land speculation. However, whether they proªted or not, they de- parted. That tradition continued as the region became more urbanized.2 In the absence of a population that stayed in the same place over a long period of time, it is difªcult to see how the kind of cultural stability encapsulated in Putnam’s concept of social capital could have existed in the Great Plains. Not only did people there not recall 500 years of public participation; many of them could not have known a pattern of public participation that was a generation old. Moreover, the history of the European-settled Great Plains does not include the kind of cultural and political autonomy that Putnam asserts for certain Italian regions. The governing structure of the United States has always been federal, with no large-scale introduction of regional autonomies to parallel the Italian model. Hence, we seem to be searching for something that could not have existed. There is another side to the story, however. The Great Plains region, as we deªne it, is not so homogeneous that all its residents behaved in the same ways. Differences between groups of Great Plains counties might well translate into variations in levels of social capital, just as Putnam hypothesized about differences in Italy. Our conceptualization of the social, economic, and envi- ronmental history of the Great Plains suggests that some groups of people, in certain counties, were more likely than others to participate in a political or civic process. Our search for evidence of different levels of social capital in the Great Plains counties begins with environmental and loca- tional effects and then turns to patterns of land use. The Great Plains area is large enough to be divided into a grid of environ- mental sub-regions by temperature (from low temperatures at the north to high temperatures to the south) and precipitation (from low levels in the east to very low levels in the west). The 2 Gutmann et al., “Staying Put or Moving On? Ethnicity, Migration and Persistence in Nineteenth-Century Texas,” Texas Population Research Center Papers (Austin, 1990); Terry G. Jordan, German Seed in Texas Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth-Century Texas (Austin, 1996); Jon Gjerde, “The Effect of Community on Migration: Three Minnesota Townships 1885–1905,” Journal of Historical Geography, V (1979), 403–422; Sonya Salamon, Prairie Patri- mony: Family, Farming, and Community in the Midwest (Chapel Hill, 1992). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219599551877 by guest on 26 September 2021 728 | MYRON P. GUTMANN AND SARA M. PULLUM temperature gradient is not associated with any particular way of life beyond adaptations to cold or heat, but the east–west aridity gradient is associated with different forms of agriculture. Precipi- tation, soil texture, and soil depth largely determine whether the land is better-suited for crops or livestock; most crops grow in areas of high precipitation and rich, deep soils. Due to greater population density, cropping regions probably were more likely to show patterns of community participation than ranching re- gions were, despite the traditions of group action in ranching, such as roundups. Figures 1 and 2 present maps of precipitation and cropping.3 Our second way of looking at political participation focuses on the likelihood of groups to participate in the political process. European settlers came to the region in a series of migratory waves. Many of the immigrants were British, but a signiªcant number of them were German, Scandinavian, other Western European, Spanish, and, more recently, Mexican. Ethnic groups organized their lives in their own manner, at least in terms of agriculture and community. Some were more inclined than others to stay in one place. Germans and Scandinavians, for example, were more geographically persistent than the British or the Irish. Spanish settlers, or Hispanos, who came to New Mexico in the sixteenth century, were remarkably resistant to migration, devel- oping and maintaining distinctive cultural patterns. The ethnic composition of counties should reºect political participation, es- pecially in those counties with strong clusters of one group or another.