2007 Charles Merriam Award

Presented biennially to “a person whose published work and career represent a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research.”

Award Committee: Joseph Nye, Chair, Harvard University; Amy Gutmann, University of Pennsylvania; and Thomas Mann, Brookings Institution

Recipient: Robert D. Putnam, Harvard University

Citation: Few scholars have left a larger mark on the art of government through their research, teaching, and outreach as a public intellectual than Robert Putnam. No social scientist of our time has done more to develop the concepts of social capital, civic engagement, and civil society, and to demonstrate their importance in supporting and sustaining the lives of both democracies and democratic citizens. Putnam has explored the associational preconditions of democracy in the contrasting histories of different regions in Italy. He then extended this investigation of the democratic importance of associational life to other countries, including the United States. The over arching theme of Putnam’s social scientific inquiry is captured by a frequently-cited phrase, “bowling alone,” which is also the title of his best-selling book on the importance of social capital to American democracy. The thesis of bowling alone has become an essential touchstone for both scholars and practitioners of the art of democratic government. Putnam also developed a theory of two level games that relates international agreements to domestic audiences.

Bob Putnam is currently the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the British Academy, and past president of the American Political Science Association. In 2006, Putnam received the Skytte Prize, one of the world’s highest accolades for a political scientist. Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised in a small town in the Midwest and educated at Swarthmore, Oxford, and Yale. From 1990-1992, he served as Dean of the Kennedy School of Government.

He has written a dozen books, translated into 17 languages, including the best-selling Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, and more recently Better Together: Restoring the American Community, a study of promising new forms of social connectedness. His previous book, Making Democracy Work, was praised by the Economist as “a great work of social science, worthy to rank alongside de Tocqueville, Pareto and Weber.” Both Making Democracy Work and Bowling Alone rank high among the most cited publications in the social sciences worldwide in the last several decades. Putnam has worked on these themes with both the Clinton and Bush White Houses, as well as with the Blair Government, the Irish Taoiseach, and other political leaders and grassroots civic activists around the world. He founded the Saguaro Seminar, bringing together leading thinkers and practitioners to develop actionable ideas for civic renewal.

His earlier work included research on comparative political elites, Italian politics, and globalization. Before coming to Harvard in 1979, he taught at the University of Michigan and served on the staff of the National Security Council. He is currently working on three major empirical projects: (1) the changing role of religion in contemporary America, (2) the effects of workplace practices on family and community life, and (3) practical strategies for civic renewal in the United States in the context of immigration and social and ethnic diversity.

Bob has been also been a shepherd and critic of the political science profession, particularly when he has felt that it was straying too far away from relevance to the art of government. He expressed these concerns clearly in his APSR presidential address when he urged us to remember what he called “mother-in-law questions:”  “Simple questions about major real-world events have driven great research. Worrying about the same ‘big’ issues as our fellow citizens is not a distraction from our best professional work, but often a goad to it.” Or to use another of his pithy phrases, “Better an approximate answer to an important question than an exact answer to a trivial question.” One thing that is clear from Bob’s work and career is that he has practiced what he preaches. His work is a great contribution to the art of government in the tradition of Charles Merriam, and he amply deserves this award.