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Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. By Theda Skocpol. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003; pp xi + 366. $29.95.
The United States has always had a paradoxical relationship with participatory democracy. Our citizens sing the praises of democracy, our leaders fight wars in the name of bringing democracy to the infidels in far-off lands, and our popular culture overflows with images of democratic iconography.
And yet, we practice democracy only minimally. Participation rates in most elections place the United States near or at the bottom of the industrial nations in rates of voting, and an academic cottage industry has arisen to help us understand why it is that we are such miserly democratic participants.
Even the brand of democracy practiced in the United States-procedural democracy-is but the most minimal version of democracy imaginable. We may be promoters of democracy, but we are not practitioners.
In this brilliant work, Harvard University's Theda Skocpol, as part of the Civic Engagement Project, takes a historical look at participation in civic organizations, and her results challenge the accepted wisdom in ways difficult to ignore or refute....