# Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/books/diminished-democracy-from-membership-to-management-in-american-civic-life/
- Published: 2004-03-31T10:10:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**America’s great civic associations, from the Elks to the Red Cross to the PTA,
were once mass-membership organisations that brought together people from all walks
of life and gave ordinary citizens a voice in public affairs. **
**Theda Skocpol’s
influential and alarming study shows how they have been replaced by professionally
managed advocacy groups that speak for members without involving them. She asks 
what this means for democracy, civil society, and the organisations that depend 
on public engagement.**

In the second half of the twentieth century, American civic life underwent a quiet
but profound transformation. The great cross-class membership associations that 
had defined American civil society for over a century, such as the American Legion,
the League of Women Voters, and the Parent-Teacher Association, steadily gave way
to a new kind of organisation. This was professionally staffed, and likely a Washington-
based advocacy group that mobilised money and expertise rather than active members.

 * [**Buy the book**](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0806136278?tag=219)

Theda Skocpol, one of America’s leading political scientists, traces this shift 
in forensic detail, drawing on historical records, membership data, and case studies
to show how and why it happened.

The causes, she argues, are multiple: changes in tax law that encouraged foundations
to fund advocacy organisations; the rise of direct-mail and later online fundraising
that made it possible to sustain organisations without local chapters; and a broader
professionalisation of civic life that has squeezed out the volunteer and the active
member.

The consequences are serious. When civic organisations become staff-run membership
associations in name only, what Skocpol calls “managed advocacy”, ordinary citizens
lose meaningful routes into public life. Democracy is diminished not by authoritarianism,
but by the slow atrophy of the institutions that gave it substance.

For UK charity leaders and fundraisers, the parallels are uncomfortable but important.
The shift from mass-membership charities to professionally managed organisations,
the dominance of major donor and grant income over broad public support, and the
declining engagement of volunteers in meaningful governance are all British phenomena
too. Diminished Democracy provides the analytical framework to understand them.

## About Theda Skocpol

Theda Skocpol is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard
University, and one of the most influential political scientists of her generation.
Her many books include _Protecting Soldiers and Mothers_ and _Boomerang: Health 
Care Reform_ and the _Turn Against Government_.

## Reviews

“A sweeping, richly empirical account… Skocpol has provided an indispensable history
of the rise and potential decline of American associational life.”
**Perspectives
on Politics**