Civil Society in Longitudinal and Comparative Perspective: Voluntary Associations, Political Involvement, Social Trust and Happiness in a Dozen Countries Paper presented at the 6 th International Conference of the International Society for Third-sector Research, Ryerson University, Toronto, 11-14 July, 2004 Paul Dekker and Andries van den Broek ∗ Abstract There is no shortage of worried studies that warningly point at discomforting trends within the Western world with regard to community life and citizens’ social and political involvement. Probably the most important of these publications in recent years is Robert Putnam’s book Bowling alone. The collapse and revival of American community (2000). Putnam’s main message is that Americans have in the last quarter-century become increasingly disconnected from their families, friends, neighbours, communities, social institutions, and public life. The political scientist Robert Lane expressed similar concerns in his The loss of happiness in market democracies (2000), though from a somewhat different angle, focussing on individual happiness rather than on civic community. Many such concerns of these (and other) American authors have been held to be applicable to other Western countries, if not by the authors themselves, then by others following in their tracks. So far, however, this was done without due systematic international investigation. This paper provides a comparative and longitudinal analysis of civil society. Our focus is on membership of voluntary organizations and on volunteering in such organizations. We connect these characteristics with social trust, political involvement and happiness. Several issues are addressed. After a short theoretical exposé, we address trends in involvement in voluntary organizations, social trust, political involvement and happiness in the 1981-2000 period. Has the general decline taken place in all these countries? Then we turn to a more detailed analysis of patterns of volunteering and of types of voluntary organizations. Finally, we analyse how political involvement, social trust and happiness are correlated to involvement in voluntary associations. ∗ Paul Dekker is professor of civil society studies at Globus, Tilburg University, and fellow of the Social and Cultural Planning Office of the Netherlands. Andries van den Broek is fellow of the Social and Cultural Planning Office of the Netherlands. The first author wants to acknowledge the support of the Synthesis Foundation to his research. Please direct correspondence on this paper to p.dekker@scp.nl or to the authors, SCP, PO Box 16164, 2500 BD The Hague, the Netherlands.