Associations, Voluntary
Associations, Voluntary
Voluntary associations are associations that people voluntarily join. Voluntary associations may be religious, fraternal or sororal, economic, social, cultural, or political. There are three types of membership incentives: social solidary (a term used by James Q. Wilson), purposive, and material (Wilson 1995). Social solidary incentives include the satisfaction of getting to know other people and networking with others. Purposive incentives involve working with an association to fulfill a social, political, or economic interest in society. Material incentives provide members with some tangible benefit (e.g., a discount card).
Associations facilitate people’s participation in civil society. Such civic engagement makes for a more connected society. As people get to know one another by way of their civic associations, they can in turn use their relationships to help accomplish other goals or objectives. People thus gain capital socially, what is also referred to as social capital. Social capital is composed of those “features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions” (Putnam 1993, p. 167). As one’s social networks increase, one’s ability to organize and effect change in one’s interests is also increased (Putnam 1993, 2000). Increased interconnectedness is believed to increase social productivity. Yet social capital may be used for positive or negative circumstances. Positive uses of social capital contribute to a better society.
Those who participate in organizations face problems of collective action (Olson 1971). They have to overcome problems related to coordinating tasks among group members and problems related to limited resources. Limited resources can exist in the form of smaller memberships, limited financial resources, limited communication between members, and limited networks with other associations or institutions. Trust is a resource that can reduce some of the problems related to collective action. Those who are more trusting in others, who exhibit more social trust, can associate with others more freely and can later use these relationships to their benefit by asking for reciprocation.
While trust is an important resource in social relations, it is also important in the relationships between people and government, where it is referred to as political trust (Hetherington 1998, 2001, and 2005). When citizens trust in government, the relationship between citizens and government is more positive (Hardin 1998). Political efficacy affects perceptions of trust in government: Those who feel that they have a say in government or who feel that they have some effect on changes in government tend to trust in government more (Brehm and Rahn 1997). Those who exhibit more social trust also trust in government more (Brehm 1998). Over time, social trust (Putnam 2000; Rahn and Transue 1998) and political trust (Putnam 2000; Hetherington 2005; Rahn and Transue 1998) have been declining in the United States. Since their heyday in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, memberships in associations have also been declining (Gamm and Putnam 1999).
Distrust of people or government may have a deleterious effect on society. As social networks decrease, memberships in associations also decrease. Distrust leads citizens to feel less connected to government, but it also protects people against the possibility that their relationships with others or with government might be abused (Hardin 2004).
Collective action can also be important for countering government actions that disfavor people’s interests. People, however, also may face collective action problems when they try to coordinate large numbers of people to participate in activities to represent their interests. Despite the organization of associations, some people may be more likely to participate in associational activities than others. This leads to those who do not participate in associational activities free-riding on the work of those who do participate and still reaping the benefits of collective action (Olson 1965). The power of collective action, however, is also evident by way of social movements, when large numbers of people and sometimes several associations and their members can protest en masse for change. Moreover, social movements can connect the networks of many people and many associations to represent their interests more broadly (Tarrow 1994).
SEE ALSO Social Capital
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brehm, John. 1998. Who Do You Trust? People, Government, Both, or Neither. Paper presented at the Duke University International Conference on Social Capital and Social Networks, Durham, NC, October 30–November 1.
Brehm, John, and Wendy Rahn. 1997. Individual-Level Evidence for the Causes and Consequences of Social Capital. American Journal of Political Science 41 (July): 999-1023.
Gamm, Gerald, and Robert D. Putnam. 1999. The Growth of Voluntary Associations in America, 1840-1940. In Patterns of Social Capital: Stability and Change in Comparative Perspective: Part II, special issue, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (4): 511-577.
Hardin, Russell. 1998. Trust in Government. In Trust and Governance, ed. Valerie Braithwaite and Margaret Levi. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Hardin, Russell. 2004. Introduction. In Distrust, ed. Russell Hardin. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Hetherington, Marc. 1998. The Political Relevance of Political Trust. American Political Science Review (December).
Hetherington, Marc. 2005. Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hetherington, Marc, and John D. Nugent. 2001. Explaining Public Support for Devolution: The Role of Political Trust. In What Is It about Government that Americans Dislike?, ed. John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Rahn, Wendy M., and John Transue. 1998. Social Trust and Value: The Decline of Social Capital in American Youth, 1976-1995. Political Psychology 19 (3): 545-565.
Tarrow, Sidney. 1994. Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, James Q. 1995. Political Organizations. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Shayla C. Nunnally