Pundits and social observers have voiced alarm each year as fewer Americans involve themselves in voluntary groups that meet regularly. Thousands of nonprofit groups have been launched in recent times, but most are run by professionals who lobby Congress or deliver social services to clients. What will happen to U.S. democracy if participatory groups and social movements wither, while civic involvement becomes one more occupation rather than every citizen’s right and duty? In Diminished Democracy, Theda Skocpol shows that this decline in public involvement has not always been the case in this country—and how, by understanding the causes of this change, we might reverse it.

American democracy is in many ways more vital than ever before. Advocacy groups proliferate and formerly marginalized groups enjoy new opportunities. But worrisome trends exist. Millions of Americans are drawing back from involvements with community affairs and politics. Voters stay home; public officials grapple with distrust or indifference; and people are less likely to cooperate on behalf of shared goals. Observers across the spectrum of opinion agree that it is vital to determine what is happening and why—so that Americans can take well-informed, effective steps to revitalize our national community. The book opens with an eagle-eye look at the roots of America's special patterns of civic engagement, examining the ways social groups and government and electoral politics have influenced each other. Other chapters examine the impact of advocacy groups and socioeconomic inequalities on democratic processes and probe the influence of long-term social and cultural changes on voluntary associations and civic participation. The book concludes by asking why social liberation has been accompanied by new inequalities and the erosion of many important forms of citizen leverage and participation. Coming together from several disciplines, contributors include Jeffrey M. Berry, Henry E. Brady, John Brehm, Steven Brint, Elisabeth S. Clemens, Peter Dobkin Hall, Wendy M. Rahn, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Robert Wuthnow. Copublished with the Russell Sage Foundation

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It is a commonplace that the United States lagged behind the countries of Western Europe in developing modern social policies. But, as Theda Skocpol shows in this startlingly new historical analysis, the United States actually pioneered generous social spending for many of its elderly, disabled, and dependent citizens. During the late nineteenth century, competitive party politics in American democracy led to the rapid expansion of benefits for Union Civil War veterans and their families. Some Americans hoped to expand veterans' benefits into pensions for all of the needy elderly and social insurance for workingmen and their families. But such hopes went against the logic of political reform in the Progressive Era. Generous social spending faded along with the Civil War generation. Instead, the nation nearly became a unique maternalist welfare state as the federal government and more than forty states enacted social spending, labor regulations, and health education programs to assist American mothers and children. Remarkably, as Skocpol shows, many of these policies were enacted even before American women were granted the right to vote. Banned from electoral politics, they turned their energies to creating huge, nation-spanning federations of local women's clubs, which collaborated with reform-minded professional women to spur legislative action across the country. Blending original historical research with political analysis, Skocpol shows how governmental institutions, electoral rules, political parties, and earlier public policies combined to determine both the opportunities and the limits within which social policies were devised and changed by reformers and politically active social groups over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining afresh the institutional, cultural, and organizational forces that have shaped U.S. social policies in the past, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers challenges us to think in new ways about what might be possible in the American future.

Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations.

Theda Skocpol, author of the award-winning 1979 book States and Social Revolutions, updates her arguments about social revolutions.

Skocpol (government and sociology, Harvard U.) explores the changing currents of domestic U.S. politics through the prism of the defeat of President Clinton's comprehensive health care plan. She argues that the defeat reflected the success of Reaganite conservative tactics which switched from direct attacks on social programs to a fiscal starvation in the name of lower taxes. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Obama’s 2008 victory, coming amid the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, opened the door to major reforms. But he quickly faced skepticism from supporters and fierce opposition from Republicans. What happened? Skocpol surveys the political landscape to help us to understand Obama’s triumphs and setbacks and see where we might be headed next.

In this penetrating new study, Skocpol of Harvard University, one of today's leading political scientists, and co-author Williamson go beyond the inevitable photos of protesters in tricorn hats and knee breeches to provide a nuanced portrait of the Tea Party. What they find is sometimes surprising.

Reforming health care, revamping the welfare system, preserving or cutting Social Security, creating employment programs for displaced employees, and revising U.S. social programs to help working parents with children - all of these endeavors and more are part of ongoing national debates about the future of social policy in the United States. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, renowned social scientist Theda Skocpol shows how historical understanding, centered on U.S. governmental institutions and shifting political alliances, can illuminate the limits and possibilities of American social policymaking both past and present. Readers will be surprised at many of the findings and arguments of this volume. Skocpol dispels the myth that Americans are inherently hostile to governmental social spending. When universal social programs jointly benefit the middle class and the poor, she shows, Americans since the nineteenth century have been willing to pay taxes for them and happy to partake of the security they provide. Insights from the past also illuminate why ideological attacks against "bureaucratic meddling" by the federal government repeatedly prove so potent in U.S. politics. Skocpol suggests why President Clinton's proposals for comprehensive health care reforms were so quickly attacked, even though Americans agree that the health financing system is in crisis and support universal insurance coverage.