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.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life.
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