Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life
Theda Skocpol, 384 pages, softcover $24.95. University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

Harvard University professor Theda Skocpol wants to know where all the volunteers have gone. Americans today are less likely to join volunteer groups than at any other time in the past, and the ubiquitous nonprofits across the country are more often staffed by paid professionals than by civic-minded folks looking to help out in their spare time. Skocpol wonders what this means for American democracy — and how we might reverse the trend of management over membership.