Democracy in America at the End of the Twentieth Century

When Alexis de Tocqueville 1 visited the United States in the 1830s, it was the Americans' propensity for civic association that most impressed him as the key to their unprecedented ability to make democracy work. Recently, American social scientists of a neo-Tocquevillean bent have unearthed a wide range of empirical evidence that the theoretical premise of his argument is no less accurate today-that the quality of public life and the perfonnance of social institutions (and not only in America) are powerfully influenced by nonns and networks of civic engagement.