Department of Government

Citation for 2008 Warren E. Miller Prize: Robert Putnam is one of the most influential scholars of public opinion and mass political behavior of the past half century. His research has emphasized the connections between the social structures of everyday life and the political process-a connection that is frequently neglected in the study of individual political attitudes and behavior. In his pioneering study, Making Democracy Work (1993), Professor Putnam used the concept of social capital-the integration of individual citizens into broader social networks through participation in informal social groups-to explain the difference in political culture and democratic development between Southern and Northern Italy. In Bowling Alone (2000) he analyzed the decline of social capital in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century and its implications for political participation. His theories and findings have sparked widespread debate among students of American democracy and inspired new research on the role of social networks in opinion formation and political participation.