Abstract:  As a result of the dramatic events of recent years, social scientists have devoted increasing attention to explaining what causes democratization as well as what makes democracies vibrant and successful over the long term Yet, whereas a generation ago most scholars tackling these issues stressed economic, political, or institutional factors, today societal and cultural variables are in vogue. This article argues that examining societal and cultural variables in isolation from their broader context leaves fundamental questions unanswered and misinterprets some of the most important dynamics of political development. To know whether civil society activity will have positive or negative consequences for democratic development, we need to marry an analysis of societal and cultural factors to the study of political institutions.
 

In recent years totalitarian regimes have collapsed and new democracies have proliferated, while old democracies seem to have lost their momentum, optimism, and vigor. Social scientists, accordingly, have devoted increasing attention to explaining what causes democratization in the first place, as well as what makes democracies vibrant and successful over the long term. Yet, whereas a generation ago most scholars tackling these questions stressed economic, political, or institutional factors, today societal and cultural variables are in vogue. Tocqueville is the theorist of the decade-he who emphasized the crucial role played by "habits, opinions . . . in a word, mores" in shaping democracy in America (Tocqueville, 1969, p. 308). Neo-Tocquevillians such as Robert Putnam (1993a, 1995, 1996) argue that civil society is crucial to "making democracy work," whereas authors like Francis Fukuyama (1995) and Benjamin Barber (1995), who differ on everything else, agree that it plays a key role in driving political, social, and even economic outcomes.

Societal and cultural factors are indeed worth studying; by looking at them in isolation from their broader context, however, the neo-Tocquevillians leave crucial questions unanswered and fundamentally misinterpret some of the most important dynamics of political development. In particular, many authors fail to recognize that under certain circumstances a robust civil society may not produce beneficial effects, but rather may signal-and hasten-a democratic regime's degeneration. To know whether civil society activity will have positive or negative consequences for democratic development, we need to marry an analysis of societal and cultural factors to the study of political institutions -- something that recent neo-Tocquevillians (unlike the master himself) have ignored.

To some extent, social science history may be repeating itself here, as the current civil society boom parallels another movement several decades ago, when "mass society" theorists tried to explain Europe's slide into barbarism during interwar years. Then, as now, political development was held to be a function of societal and cultural factors; then, as now, Tocqueville (1969) was seen as the guiding light of political analysis. Because "mass society" and contemporary neo-Tocquevillian analyses share many of the same diagnoses and fears, it is worth examining them in conjunction.

MASS SOCIETY AND NEO-TOCQUEVILLIAN THEORIES

A crucial goal of the postwar mass society theorists was to "specify the social conditions that sustain liberal democratic institutions. The sources of strength and weakness in democratic political systems," (Kornhauser, 1960, p. 7) these scholars argued, should be "sought in . . . social structure." Their central argument was that "insofar as a society is a mass society, it will be vulnerable to political movements destructive of liberal democratic institutions" (Kornhauser, 1960, p. 7). They defined a mass society, in turn, as one in which an aggregate of individuals are related to each other only by way of their relation to a common authority, especially the state. That is, individuals are not related to one another in a variety of independent groups. (Arendt, 1973, pp. 316-317; Kornhauser, 1960, p. 32). Mass society theorists could be found on all parts of the political spectrum: Jose Ortega y Gasset, Erich Fromm, William Kornhauser, and Hannah Arendt were all proponents of some version of this theory.1

For many of these scholars, civil society was a crucial antidote to the political viruses to which mass society was vulnerable. Kornhauser (1960), for example, selected as the epigraph to his classic The Politics of Mass Society Tocqueville's warning that "If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased." Participation in civil society associations, it was argued, could help counter the alienation engendered by modernity. Ripped from their traditional moorings by liberalism and capitalism, Western publics found themselves bereft and rootless, searching for ways of belonging -- and hence open to the blandishments of totalitarian movements. Civil society could help counter these trends by providing citizens with an alternative set of linkages and communal bonds. Further, where modernity released individuals from the constraints placed on them by traditional social ties and mores, civil society activity helped keep them in check and maintain order:

Without a multiplicity of independent and often conflicting forms of association people lack the resources to restrain their own behavior as well as that of others. Social atomization engenders strong feelings of alienation and anxiety, and therefore the disposition to engage in extreme forms of behavior to escape from these tensions. (Arendt, 1973, pp. 316-317; Kornhauser, 1960, p. 32)

Finally, mass society theorists argued that participation in civil society associations created cross-cutting cleavages; fostered the skills necessary for democratic governance; and, perhaps most important, helped to generate a "consciousness of common interest" among the disparate individuals composing Western societies.

Today's neo-Tocquevillians, although differing in certain respects, share with mass society theorists the fundamental belief that the key to successful democracy lies in societal and cultural factors.2 Both schools also view the vibrancy of associational life as a crucial measurement and predictor of the health of democracy. Putnam (1993a), for example, argues that Civil associations contribute to the effectiveness and stability of democratic government . . . both because of their "internal" effects on individual members and because of their "external" effects on the wider polity. Internally, associations instill in their members habits of cooperation, solidarity, and public spiritedness.... Externally... a dense network of secondary associations... [enhances the articulation and aggregation of interests and] contributes to effective social collaboration. (pp. 89-90)

As did mass society theorists, contemporary neo-Tocquevillians praise associational life for its effects on the way individuals relate to each other and their society; in particular, they see participation in civil society organizations as producing the patterns of individual behavior and social interaction necessary for healthy democratic governance. Associational life helps "foster sturdy norms of generalized reciprocity and encourage[s] the emergence of social trust" (Putnam, 1995, p. 67), which, in turn, helps resolve dilemmas of collective action and smooth economic and political negotiations.3 In addition, associations "broaden the participants' sense of self, developing the 'I' into the `We.' " (Putnam, 1995, p. 67). They thus foster what Tocqueville (1969) termed "self-interest properly understood," as well as a wider sense of community and social purpose. Vibrant civil society, in short, creates the cultural and societal building blocks of successful democracy-which is why signs of civil society's decay (such as a decline in group bowling) should be cause for worry.4

THE PROBLEMS WITH MASS SOCIETY AND NEO-TOQUEVILLIAN ANALYSES

Because mass society and contemporary neo-Tocquevillian analyses share so many similarities, it is not surprising that they share key weaknesses as well. Most important, both fail to recognize that civil society can often serve to weaken rather than strengthen a democratic regime. Because they are unable to differentiate between the positive and negative consequences of a vibrant associational life, both theoretical schools are thus unable to predict or account for situations in which civil society activity produces inauspicious patterns of individual behavior and social interaction. To correct this critical flaw and move debate forward, however, we must first understand what these theories get right.

Mass society and contemporary neo-Tocquevillian scholars are correct in arguing that individuals in modern societies often feel atomized and ineffectual, and in noting that these feelings can be overcome through participation in civil society organizations. They are also correct in arguing that such organizations can facilitate collective endeavors and create important social skills and connections. Their mistake comes in assuming that collective endeavors and activist skills are good things in and of themselves, without regard to the purposes to which they will be directed. There is no intrinsic reason why civil society activity should bolster an existing political system; under certain circumstances, in fact, civil society organizations may help dissatisfied individuals come together to air and share their grievances, mobilizing them for subversive political activity. Indeed, without a stable associational infrastructure, opponents of a regime would find it impossible to form a "consensus on the causes of dissatisfaction, on the solution to the situation and on plans for coordinating actions" (Crouch, 1968, p. 318).5

Sure enough, research during the 1960s and 1970s-spurred in part by mass society theorizing-found that the rise of radical and often antidemocratic movements during the interwar and postwar eras was not the work of unattached, isolated individuals but often of those who actively participated in civil society organizations. As one scholar noted,

Intermediate structures . . . serve to facilitate mass movements by offering means of mobilization and communication and providing motivation and legitimation. The individuals most likely affected by these factors are the most highly integrated, not the least, as argued by mass theory. (Halebsky, 1976, p. 87; Parkin, 1968, pp. 12-14) Poujadism in France, extreme right-wing activity in the United States, and Naziism in Germany were all supported by a vibrant associational infrastructure. (Berman, 1997; Gusfield, 1962; Hagtvet, 1980; Pinard, 1971; Wolfinger et al., 1964).

Mass society and contemporary neo-Tocquevillian theorists are also correct in pointing out that a well-functioning democracy (and, indeed, any type of stable political regime) requires a "sense of common interest" and a commitment to a national community. But they err in assuming that civil society alone can produce these outcomes. Indeed, civil society activity often serves to fragment, rather than unite, a society, accentuating and deepening already existing cleavages. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this dynamic came in interwar Germany where, in contrast to the assertions of mass society theorists, civil society flourished but exacerbated, rather than alleviated, the country's painful divisions.6 Socialists, Catholics, and bourgeois Protestants each joined their own choral societies and bird-watching clubs, and however civic minded and "horizontally organized" these associations may have been, they served to hive their memberships off from each other and contribute to the formation of what one observer called "ferociously jealous 'small republics'" (Fritzsche, 1990). Civil society activity alone was not able to overcome the social cleavages or provide the political cohesion that would have been necessary to weather the crises that beset Germany after 1914.

The Weimar example is buttressed by research on a wide variety of cases that should make us skeptical about the ability of associational ties to create an attachment to a wider national community or set of institutions and structures (Gusfield, 1962; Halebsky, 1976, chap. 4). Some scholars have argued that just the opposite is in fact the case and emphasize the danger that a vibrant civil society may split into "warring factions (a possibility that theorists since Hegel have worried about) or degenerat[e] into congeries of rent-seeking 'special interests'" (Foley & Edwards, 1996, p. 39).7 The formation of a rich associational infrastructure has been a crucial factor in the formation and perpetuation of "subcultures" in varied settings across the globe.

A crucial question to ask, therefore, is why civil society activity often produces, in the words of one scholar, "unsocial" instead of "social" capital (Levi, 1996). Why are the social skills and relationships generated by civil society activity sometimes placed in the service of nondemocratic rather than democratic goals? Why does participation in associational life sometimes serve to fragment, rather than integrate, a society?

One suggested answer involves looking at the internal characteristics of civil society organizations themselves. An early and underappreciated statement of this viewpoint is found in Harry Eckstein's "A Theory of Stable Democracy" (1961). Eckstein argues that "a government will tend to be stable if its authority pattern is congruent with the other authority patterns of the society of which it is a part" (1961, p. 234). Because democracy requires a mixture of behavior patterns (i.e., democratic, constitutional, and authoritarian), he claims, countries in which civil society organizations and social relations reflect and foster such mores will tend to have stable and effective systems of democratic governance. "If a society has a vigorous associational life, but if the associations themselves are highly undemocratic," Eckstein notes, "then, upon my theory, democracy should not be stable, and upon Kornhauser's, it should" (Eckstein,1961, p. 282). Putnam echoes this conclusion in Making Democracy Work, arguing that only where civil society is organized around "horizontal bonds of mutual solidarity" rather than "vertical bonds of dependency and exploitation" will it produce trust and cooperation. (Putnam, 1993a, pp. 144-145, 174-175).

Yet however reasonable this criteria may sound in the abstract, in practice it is extremely problematic and serves primarily as an arbitrary way for neo-Tocquevillians to praise the groups they favor and denigrate those they do not. For example, in his study of Italy, Putnam (1993a) argues that organizations such as the Church and the Mafia should not be considered "true" components of civil society because they are "vertically" organized. Yet participation in religious life and associations is one of the civil society activities most often praised in the United States, dating back to Tocqueville himself! Why the Church should foster different attitudes and patterns of behavior in Italy than it does in the United States is unclear. Similarly, it is not at all clear how in practice one determines whether an organization is vertically or horizontally organized. The Boy Scouts, for example, are a hierarchically organized group, yet they seem to be placed by most neo-Tocquevillians squarely in the civil society camp. Militias and other nationalist organizations conversely-which civil society proponents generally ignore or distance themselves from-do not appear to be much more vertically or hierarchically organized than other types of civil society associations. They clearly do foster, moreover, precisely the sense of solidarity and trust, as well as a willingness to engage in collective endeavors, that neo-Tocquevillians celebrate; the problem is that the skills and relationships fostered by such organizations are used in the service of goals of which most of us would not approve. Finally, the sociability of the "capital" generated by civil society organizations is not set in concrete. Even the most seemingly harmless and "civil" organizations can, under certain circumstances, be turned to antidemocratic purposes. The Nazis, for example, were able to use choral societies and bird-watching clubs in their infiltration and eventual takeover of German society (Berman, 1997).

It is not that the internal characteristics of organizations have no bearing at all on the behavior and attitude of their members; they probably do have some. A more important factor to examine in determining when civil society activity will bolster or weaken a democratic regime, however, is the political context within which that activity unfolds. We need to shift our focus back, in other words from looking at how social context shapes the performance of political institutions to looking at the crucial role played by political institutionalization in shaping the character and impact of civil society on political development. The most important difference between civil and uncivil polities and well-functioning and problematic democracies, I contend, is not to be found in an analysis of societal and cultural factors, but rather in an examination of political institutions.

THE IMPORTANCE OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONALIZATION

At the same time that mass society scholars were grappling with the question of why modern, industrial societies succumbed to the lure of fascism, other social scientists were trying to explain why some countries were having trouble achieving modernity and industrialization in the first place. By the 1960s, the high hopes accompanying postwar decolonization and Third World independence movements were rapidly fading. Attempts at political modernization and development had not catapulted new countries into the first world, but instead left many of them mired in economic stagnation and political instability. Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) urged us to explain this state of affairs not by looking to economic or societal variables, as most scholars were doing, but rather by focusing on political ones. Huntington argued that the fundamental difference between developed and developing societies lay not in their levels of wealth, health, or education, but rather in their level of political institutionalization. Developing countries were characterized by a "lag in the development of political institutions behind social and economic change" (1968, p. 5); above all else they were being held back by "a shortage of political community and of effective, authoritative, legitimate government" (1968, p. 2). The solution to underdevelopment, in this view, lay in creating political institutions capable of dealing with the challenges confronting developing societies. Like mass society and contemporary neo-Tocquevillian theorists, Huntington (1968) sought to understand what created political stability, a sense of community, and a citizenry willing and able to compromise and cooperate to achieve collective goals-in short, to understand what lay behind "civic" polities. He found the answer, however, in political institutions instead of civil society:

The degree of community in a complex society thus, in a rough sense, depends on the strength and scope of its political institutions. The institutions. The institutions are the behavioral manifestation of the moral consensus and mutual interest. The isolated family, clan, tribe, or village may achieve community with relatively little conscious effort.... As societies become larger in membership, more complicated in structure and more diverse in activities, the achievement or maintenance of a high level of community becomes increasingly dependent upon political institutions.... [Indeed], without strong political institutions, society lacks the means to define and to realize its common interests. The capacity to create political institutions is the capacity to create public interests. (Huntington, 1968, p. 10, 24)

In this view, the more complex and diverse a society, the greater the need for strong political institutions capable of bringing together people with a wide variety of interests and associational affiliations and mobilizing them in the service of societal, rather than individual, goals. "Civicness" could not be created by civil society alone because this sphere remained tied to the varied and particular interests of citizens; only strong political institutions worked in the service of society as a whole and not its individual components. For similar reasons, Huntington argued, the trust necessary to hold together modern societies required strong political institutions capable of overcoming the diverse and often competing interests of individual citizens and focusing on the achievement of long-term rather than short-term goals--of representing and implementing, in other words, the public rather than merely private interests: those societies deficient in stable and effective government are also deficient in mutual trust among their citizens, in national and public loyalties, and in organizational skills and capacity. Their political cultures are often said to be marked by suspicion, jealousy, and latent or actual hostility toward everyone who is not a member of the family, the village, or perhaps the tribe. (Huntington, 1968, p. 28)

This type of analysis cut against the grain of much of the existing literature on development, and Huntington (1968) attributed the resistance to his conclusions to a general reluctance to "give up the image of social harmony without political action. This was Rousseau's dream. It remains the dream of statesmen and soldiers who imagine that they can induce community in their societies without engaging in the labor of politics" (pp. 10-11). He was correct, and the attitudes he described have continued to distort analysis of these questions, particularly among scholars prone to extrapolate from America's unique history. Blessed in the century after its founding with a high level of social harmony and equality, economic abundance, and a lack of external threats, the United States was able to modernize without the assistance of a strong centralizing government or political institutions. This created an abiding belief in a natural harmony of interests, as well as a view that political stability emerges naturally from economic development and social modernization, without the need for strong political institutions. Both pluralist and mass society analyses, for example, are premised on the "assumption that there is a natural harmony of interests which sustains the social and political system" (Gusfield, 1962, pp. 26-27); to the extent this is true, strong governmental and political institutions are not only unnecessary but also potentially a threat to freedom (Gusfield, 1968). Unfortunately, however, history offers few examples of such harmony. Even in Europe, industrialization and modernization forced a centralization of government authority and a strengthening of political institutions; only the United States managed to develop successfully while maintaining a political framework suited to dealing with the conflicts and problems of 16th- and 17th-century England.

In Political Order, Huntington (1968) focused on the developing world because it was there that the political gap seemed greatest: The challenges facing such societies were extremely high, whereas the level of political institutionalization was very low. Yet in theory such a gap could appear anywhere--if the level of social conflict and the problems confronting a society grow and its political institutions do not evolve in such a way as to be able to deal with these changes, political frustration and even instability may well follow. In this situation, strengthening civil society may exacerbate rather than alleviate the problem. Civil society activity will not be able to create the sense of national community or commitment to the public interest that such a polity needs; by bringing together dissatisfied individuals, moreover, associational activity may actually deepen societal cleavages and serve as a base from which oppositional movements can be launched. The definition of an uncivic policy for Huntington, in fact, is one in which citizens are highly active and mobilized, whereas political institutions are weak and unresponsive.

Here, it seems to me, lies the answer to the question of when civil society activity produces social or unsocial capital: It depends heavily on the political context. If a country's political institutions are capable of channeling and redressing grievances, then associationism will probably buttress political stability and democracy by placing its resources and beneficial effects in the service of the status quo. This is the pattern Tocqueville (1969) described.

If, on the other hand, political institutions are weak and/or the existing political regime is perceived to be ineffectual and illegitimate, then civil society activity may become an alternative to politics for dissatisfied citizens, increasingly absorbing their energies and satisfying their basic needs. In such situations, associationism will probably undermine political stability and have negative consequences for democracy by deepening cleavages, furthering dissatisfaction, and providing rich soil for oppositional movements. A flourishing civil society under these circumstances signals governmental and institutional failure and bodes ill for political stability and democracy.

This latter pattern seems to fit an uncomfortably large number of cases, with provocative implications. Parts of the contemporary Arab world are witnessing a remarkable growth in Islamist civil society activity that feeds on the citizenry's frustration with the region's unrepresentative and unresponsive authoritarian governments. In such situations civil society may not necessarily promote liberal democracy, as the neo-Tocquevillians would have it, but rather simply corrode the foundations of the current political order while providing an organizational base from which it can be challenged. From this perspective, the fact that a militant Islamist movement, for example, provides its supporters with religious classes, professional associations and medical services tells us little about what might happen should the movement ever gain power; it tells us much more about the political failure and gloomy prospects of the nation's existing regime.

Unfortunately, one need not look so far abroad to find examples of this trend--one which may only be exacerbated by the policy advice contemporary neo-Tocquevillians offer: to foster local associational life as the key to reinvigorating American democracy. If a population increasingly perceives its government and political institutions to be inefficient and unresponsive, diverting public energies and interest into secondary associations may only worsen the problem, fragment society, and weaken political cohesion further-as seems to be taking place in America's most dramatic instance of governmental failure, Washington D.C. Both the New York Times and the New Republic have recently noted how District citizens are banding together to provide the services that the public sector is no longer able to provide.8 Everything from ambulance services to fire services to street cleaning now requires voluntarism and private donations to function properly. Yet this replacement of public with private sector activity has divided the city further, as wealthier White residents are naturally much better prepared to compensate for governmental failure. Perhaps the best example of this is in the educational system, in which those families of Northwest Washington whose children are still in the public schools have banded together to do everything from pay teachers to fix school buildings. While public schools in Northwest thus manage to scrape by with parental help, schools in other parts of Washington D.C. where families are not as well positioned to take up the slack degenerate further, deepening the material differences and social distance between the parts of the city.

Other observers have noted similar phenomena across the country. Many have remarked, for example, on the increasing tendency for middle- and upper-class Americans to opt out of the public sector and provide everything from their own police forces to their own schools:

Many associations-gated suburbs and business improvement districts . . . are driven in some respects by self-concerned fear. They represent a secession of a smaller, more privileged community from the larger one. The recently arrested Viper militia in Arizona fits Tocqueville's description of a classic American association: a small group of like-minded neighbors gathering together for a common purpose.... Tocqueville would not be surprised to learn that America also leads the world in militia movements.9

Militia movements, business improvement districts, and home schooling societies all arise out of dissatisfaction with how the public institutions are doing their jobs; all of them should be seen as signs of sickness rather than signs of health.

CONCLUSION

In the years since Tocqueville visited the United States, American society has changed dramatically. Tocqueville's (1969) America was characterized by extreme social equality, a relatively simple economic structure, and disengagement from the larger world. This picture had already changed dramatically by the end of the l9th century, and the ongoing processes of industrialization, immigration, and world engagement almost obliterated the image entirely. By the 1960s America was once again poised for dramatic change, with the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam war highlighting significant social cleavages. Interestingly, it is from this period onward that most contemporary neo-Tocquevillians date the beginning of democracy's problems in America. Rather than blaming this primarily on a decline in civil society activity (or the rise of television), however, we should probably consider the main culprit to be the inability of political institutions to respond to the new challenges confronting American society. As Huntington (1968) argued years ago, if the social conflicts and problems facing a society grow but their political institutions prove unable to adapt, the result may be political instability and even degeneration. This "political gap" (as Huntington would call it) has only expanded as the collapse of communism has deprived the American government of some of the legitimacy and purpose provided by the Cold War, whereas globalization has at least to some degree eviscerated the power of governments and political institutions everywhere. Not surprisingly, an examination of Americans' confidence in their political institutions reveals a fairly steady decline since the 1960s (Lipset, 1995).

Instead of focusing on civil society, therefore, people concerned about democracy in America might do better to focus on making government more responsive to citizen needs and strengthening those political institutions that have fallen into a particular state of disrepair. One obvious place to start might be with our political parties-institutions long vilified in American life, but ones that can provide a crucial link between citizens and government and that are a necessary component of a well-functioning democracy. Parties can not only bring together a wide variety of citizens in the service of the public good but can also provide perhaps the most powerful institutionalized linkage between the private and public sectors. Further, political parties themselves are a crucial source of civil society activity." Another place to start might be the system of campaign finance, which so obviously corrupts the nation's political system and undermines public confidence in its fairness and purity. Wherever one's opinion on where the reforms should begin, however, one can say with confidence that unless the decline of American political institutions is reversed, the problems and conflicts confronting our society are not likely to be adequately addressed, no matter how many bird-watching clubs and benevolent associations we all join. Fostering voluntarism, in other words--despite being politically palatable because it is nonpartisan and requires little effort or expenditure on the part of government--will not alone solve the problems facing advanced, industrial democracies. Instead, concerned citizens, elites, and politicians should focus on trying to find ways of helping our political institutions cope with the problems of the contemporary era.

NOTES

1. See, for example, Arendt (1973), Neumann (1942), Mannheim (1980), Ortega y Gassett (1932), Fromm (1941), and Reisman (1961).

2. One important difference between mass society theorists and recent neo-Tocquevillian analyses is that the former attempted to explain Europe's susceptibility to totalitarianism in the 1920s and 1930s, whereas the latter are concerned with understanding "what makes democracy work." Although the health of democratic institutions and their collapse are clearly related, it should be stressed that the dependent variables of the two groups of scholars are somewhat different.

3. On social capital, see Coleman (1990).

4. Contemporary neo-Tocquevillians also share with many of their mass society counterparts the conviction that the mass media (especially television) is the most important culprit in societal and cultural degeneration. See Putnam (1995). For a review of the literature on the connections between mass culture and society, see Brantlinger (1983).

5. See also Pinard (1968); von Eschen, Kirk, and Pinard (1971); Jenkins (1983); and Oberschall (1973).

6. For a full discussion of the interwar German case, see Berman (1997).

7. Perhaps the most prominent advocate of this view is Mancur Olson (1982).

8. See "Washington's Troubles Hit Island of Affluence," and "The Death of Home Rule."

9. See "Bowling Together: Civic Engagement in America Isn't Disappearing but Reinventing Itself."

10. During the early 19th century, for example, associational life in America was spurred on by the rise of mass suffrage and the emergence of mass parties. In Europe, this dynamic is even more pronounced with political parties spawning everything from their own soccer clubs to debating societies (Skocpol, 1996; Tarrow, 1996).

REFERENCES

Arendt, H. (1973). The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Barber, B. (1995). Jihad vs. McWorld: How the planet is both falling apart and coming together and what this means for democracy. New York: New York Times Books.

Berman, S. (1997). Civil society and the collapse of the Weimar Republic. World Politics, 49.

Berman, S. Bowling together: Civic engagement in America isn't disappearing but reinventing itself. (1996, July 22). Time, pp. 35-36.

Brantlinger, P. (1983). Bread and circuses: theories of mass culture and social decay. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Coleman, J. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University.

Crouch, C. (1968). Collective behavior: An examination of some stereotypes. Social Problems, 15.

The death of home rule. (1997, January 20). The New Republic, pp. 9-13.

Eckstein, H. (1961). A theory of stable democracy (Research Monograph No. 10). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Center for International Studies.

Foley, M. W., & Edwards, B. (1996). The paradox of civil society. Journal of Democracy, 7(3), 38-52.

Fritzsche, P. (1990). Rehearsals for fascism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Avon Books. Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: Social virtues and the creation of prosperity. New York: Free Press.

Gusfield, J. R. (1962). Mass society and extremist politics. American Sociological Review, 27.

Hagtvet, Beret. (1980). The theory of mass society and the collapse of the Weimar Republic. In Steinvgelvik Larsen et al. (Eds.), Who were the Fascists? Uslo: Universitet storlget,.

Halebsky, S. (1976). Mass society and political conflict: Toward a reconstruction of theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Huntington, S. (1968). Political order in changing societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Jenkins, J. C. (1983). Resources mobilization theory and the study of social movements. Annual Review of Sociology, 9, 527-553.

Komhauser, W. (1960). The politics of mass society. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.

Levi, M. (1996). Social and unsocial capital: A review essay of Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work. Politics and Society, 24, 46-55.

Lipset, S. M. (1995). Malaise and resiliency in America Journal of Democracy, 6, 4-18.

Mannheim, K. (1980). Man and society in an age of reconstruction. New York: Kegan Paul.

Neumann, S. (1942). Permanent revolution. New York: Harper.

Oberschall, A. (1973). Social conflict and social movements. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Ortega y Gassett, J. (1932). The revolt of the masses. New York: Norton.

Parkin, E (1968). Middle class radicalism. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Pinard, M. (1968). Mass society and political movements: Anew formulation. American Journal of Sociology, 682-690.

Pinard, M. (1971). The rise ofa third party: A study of crisis politics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Putnam, R. (1993a). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modem Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Putnam, R. (1993b). The prosperous community. American Prospect, 35-42.

Putnam, R. (1995). Bowling alone: America's declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6.

Putnam, R. (1996). The strange disappearance of civic America. The American Prospect, 24.

Reisman, D. (1961). The lonely crowd. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Skocpol, T. (1996, October 12). The Tocqueville problem: Civic engagement in American democracy. Presidential address for the annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, New Orleans, LA.

Tarrow, S. ( 1996). Making social science work across space and time: A critical reflection on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work. American Political Science Review, 90.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. (1969). Democracy in America. New York: Harper & Row.

von Eschen, D., Kirk, J., & Pinard, M. (1971). The organizational substructure of disorderly politics. Social Forces, 49.

Washington's troubles hit island of affluence. (1996, July 26). The New York Times.

Wolfinger, R., et al. (1964). America's radical Right: Politics and ideology. In David Apter (Ed.), Ideology and discontent. New York: Free Press.