Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time
A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3435489 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sidney Tarrow (0000-0001-7159-0026, Cornell University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 90 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 389-397 |
| Publication date | 1996-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2082892 |
| OpenAlex | W4254658776 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 235 |
| References cited | 16 |
Political scientists are becoming more self-conscious about how they connect quantitative and qualitative data in social science and about the role of systematic country studies in comparative research. As the most striking example of both practices in recent years, Robert Putnam and his collaborators' Making Democracy Work deserves more serious criticism than it has received. While Putnam's original project aimed at a precise goal-studying how a new administrative reform is institutionalized-his ultimate project aimed at nothing less than examining how differently democracy works in different sociopolitical contexts, operationalized cross-sectionally in southern and northern Italy. The sources of these differences he found in the two regions' histories, which led him to employ the quantitative interregional data he had collected for one purpose to support a model of historical development of North and South. This historical reconstruction rests largely on qualitative data; but it also rests on a set of comparative inferences about individual values and community cohesiveness in the two regions that is of questionable historical validity and innocent of structural grounding. This article applauds Putnam's joining qualitative and quantitative data but attacks his reconstruction of Italian history to fit his model of social capital
Qualitative property · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Capital and Networks
Social Capital
Contesting Citizenship in Latin America
Mapping Political Support in the 1990s
Institutional Explanations for Political Support
Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies
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Postmodernization Erodes Respect for Authority, But Increases Support for Democracy
Market, Hierarchy, and Trust
Social Capital, Impartiality and the Welfare State
Social Capital
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Bowling for Fascism
Critical Citizens
Labour Market Regimes Under Threat? Sources of Continuity in Germany, Britain, and Sweden
Partisan Competition and Welfare State Retrenchment
Democracy and Development
Round Up the Usual Suspects!
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Post‐Industrial Pressures on the Mature Welfare States
The Political Economy of Social Pacts
Five Years After the Fall
The Economic Performance of Governments
The New Politics of the Welfare State
The Comparative Political Economy of Pension Reform
Political Institutions, Veto Points, and the Process of Welfare State Adaptation
Comparative Institutional Advantages of Welfare State Regimes and New Coalitions in Welfare State Reforms
The Dynamics of Welfare State Expansion
Welfare State and Production Regimes in the Era of Retrenchment
Political Institutions and Welfare State Restructuring
Sozialraum und sozialer Ausschluss. Die analytische Ordnung neo-sozialer Integrationsrationalitäten in der Sozialen Arbeit
Tensions Between the Democratic Ideal and Reality
Who Pays for Health Care Reform?
Coping With Permanent Austerity Welfare State Restructuring in Affluent Democracies
Migrant Participation in Local European Democracies
La participación ciudadana y el pago voluntario de los impuestos
Good democratic governance can combat Covid-19 - excess mortality analysis
Perceptions of institutions and social capital accumulation
Discussion networks in Turkey
The ‘civil society policy’ of the European Union for promoting democracy in Turkey
How and Why Does History Matter for Development Policy
Post-Peasant Progressivism
Political Science/Political Theory
Area Studies/Asian Studies
Beyond Blue Eyes
Social and Political Trust in Established Democracies
Anthropology
Philosophy and Critical Realism
Philosophy and Standpoint Theory
Sociology
Sociology and Economics
Institutions and Democratic Citizenship
Social Capital
Social Traps and the Problem of Trust
The myth of social capital in community development
Citizenship in Britain
How criminal organisations exert secret power over communities
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Civil Society and Democracy
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Democratic Values in a Globalizing World
Placing social capital
Trust, Networks and Norms
Beyond Diversity
Creating Social Capital in Russia
Social Capital as Obstacle to Development
Moving from the Stock of Social Capital to the Flow of Benefits
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Situating the ‘Tulip Revolution’
The Italian Prefects
Social and Unsocial Capital
The Moral Basis of a Backward Society
Making Democracy Work
Making Democracy Work
The Western Allies 50 Years Later
Bowling Alone
Political Dualism and Italian Communism
Explaining Institutional Success
Bridging the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide in Political Science
Path Dependency and Civic Culture
Thinking about how Democracy Works
| Unique citing works | 235 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7,83 |
| Citation span | 1996 - 2025 (30) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 235 |