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No 2004:8:
Civil Society in Longitudinal and Comparative Perspective: Voluntary Associations, Political Involvement, Social Trust and Happiness in a Dozen Countries
Paul Dekker
() and
Andries van den Broek
Additional contact information
Paul Dekker: Tilburg University, Postal: SCP, PO Box 16164,, 2500 BD The Hague, the Netherlands.
Andries van den Broek: Social and Cultural Planning Office of the Netherlands
Abstract: There is no shortage of worried studies that warningly point at discomforting trends within the Western world with regard to community life and citizens’ social and political involvement. Probably the most important of these publications in recent years is Robert Putnam’s book Bowling alone. The collapse and revival of American community (2000). Putnam’s main message is that Americans have in the last quarter-century become increasingly disconnected from their families, friends, neighbours, communities, social institutions, and public life. The political scientist Robert Lane expressed similar concerns in his The loss of happiness in market democracies (2000), though from a somewhat different angle, focussing on individual happiness rather than on civic community. Many such concerns of these (and other) American authors have been held to be applicable to other Western countries, if not by the authors themselves, then by others following in their tracks. So far, however, this was done without due systematic international investigation. This paper provides a comparative and longitudinal analysis of civil society. Our focus is on membership of voluntary organizations and on volunteering in such organizations. We connect these characteristics with social trust, political involvement and happiness. Several issues are addressed. After a short theoretical exposé, we address trends in involvement in voluntary organizations, social trust, political involvement and happiness in the 1981-2000 period. Has the general decline taken place in all these countries? Then we turn to a more detailed analysis of patterns of volunteering and of types of voluntary organizations. Finally, we analyse how political involvement, social trust and happiness are correlated to involvement in voluntary associations.
Keywords: Civil society; longitudinal and comparative perspectives; voluntary associations; political involvement; social trust; happiness
Language: English
18 pages, 2004
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