Jan-David Franke 
A critical evaluation of Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone: America’s declining Social Capital” 

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Politics – International Politics – Region: USA, grade: 1.0, Jacobs University Bremen g Gmb H, course: Civic Networks & Social Capital, language: English, abstract: This paper critically evaluates Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone: America’s declining social capital”, published in 1995 in the Journal of Democracy, both empirically and theoretically. It counterchecks the empirical findings by Putnam based on data from the World Values Survey of 2006 and thereby also provides an updated view on Putnam’s claim of declining social capital in the United States. Subsequentially Putnam’s theory is put into contrast with and linked to works by Granovetter (1973), Dalton (2008); Fischer (2001); Fischer & Hout (2006); Stolle, Hooghe & Micheletti (2005); Kadushin (2004).