Abstract
Abstract In 2000, Robert Putnam forecast that United States (US) democracy was at risk from the twin challenges of declining civic engagement and rising interpersonal inequality. Sixteen years later, his predictions were vindicated by the election of Donald Trump as president of the US. This paper analyses the extent to which the 2016 election of Donald Trump—and his failed re-election bid in 2020—have been related to levels of social capital and interpersonal inequalities. We posit an alternative: that the rise in votes for Trump has been the result of long-term economic and population decline in areas with strong social capital. This hypothesis is confirmed by the econometric analysis conducted for US counties. Long-term declines in employment and population—rather than in earnings, salaries, or wages—in places with relatively strong social capital propelled Donald Trump to the presidency and almost secured his re-election. By contrast, low social capital and high interpersonal inequality were not connected to a surge in support for Trump. These results are robust to the introduction of control variables and different inequality measures. The analysis also shows that the discontent at the base of the Trump margin is not just a consequence of the 2008 crisis but had been brewing for a long time. Places in the US that remained cohesive but witnessed an enduring decline are no longer bowling alone, they have golfed with Trump and will, in all likelihood, continue to golf with Trumpism or other forms of populism.
Highlights
In this paper, we will argue that the rise of populism in the United States (US), as proxied by the swing to Donald Trump, is not related, as feared by Putnam (2000), to low levels of social capital, high interpersonal inequality, or their combination, but mainly to long-term economic and demographic decline
Just over 20 years ago, Robert Putnam (2000) wrote Bowling Alone
Putnam (2000) warned that American democracy was at risk from the twin challenges of the decline in civic engagement and social capital on the one hand, and the rise in interpersonal inequality on the other
Summary
In this paper, we will argue that the rise of populism in the US, as proxied by the swing to Donald Trump, is not related, as feared by Putnam (2000), to low levels of social capital, high interpersonal inequality, or their combination, but mainly to long-term economic and demographic decline. The results highlight that, once the income per capita of the different counties in the US and the conditions of their state are controlled for, interpersonal inequality, long-term employment change and differences in social capital across US counties are connected to a swing towards Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election (Table 1, Regression 4).
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