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And when, more than forty years later, Harvard’s Robert Putnam wrote the now classic book Bowling Alone, he also saw non-voting as part of a broad pattern of social disengagement.

If Americans in the late 20th century had begun “bowling alone,” the title of Robert Putnam’s 2000 book about social decline, a quarter century later they were barely bowling at all.

Other initiatives were the subject of Join or Die, a 2023 documentary inspired by Robert Putnam’s work.

Robert D. Putnam’s 2000 book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” which surveys how Americans have become increasingly disconnected from each other with the decline of social institutions like bowling leagues, had been a big influence in Schur’s crafting of “Parks and Recreation” and Leslie Knope’s guiding principle.

On this, leading political scientist Robert Putnam explains in a recent interview with the New York Times: