The review I chose was from The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy. From this article, one of the first things I was able to conclude was that I am not a conservative. This review compares the opinions of conservatives and neoliberals on Bowling Alone. I fell more in line with the neoliberal reactions to Bowling Alone because I found Robert Putnam’s claims to be alarming and thought something ought to be done to reestablish citizens’ engagement in civic society, “Conservatives are unlikely to be persuaded by the data and arguments Putnam has marshaled in the book-length version of the essay, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.”
However, this review did create problems with Putnam for me. I originally thought Putnam had a sound argument, but this review pointed out that he had no counterargument, “The book, however, offers no systematic demonstration that the benefits of its utopian agenda would outweigh the costs of ‘using government’ to bring it into being,” To only talk about the benefits and ignore all of the costs makes Putnam lose the majority of his legitimacy. Also, if some of the costs were addressed, they would lead to consequences that would most likely decrease civic involvement:
He proposes an enormous extension of social control over the lives of private individuals, which, if undertaken, would bring about massive growth of the government bureaucracy and statutory law. From that growth would unavoidably arise increases of coercion, taxation, fraud, and abuses of state power…
With this, I think that if another is able to read Bowling Alone and reach these conclusions, I think it would be best for Putnam to go back and reevaluate his ideas and apply them to the costs and benefits argument.
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