Bowling for Fascism: Social Capital and the Rise of the Nazi Party

Shanker Satyanath, Nico Voigtlaender and Hans-Joachim Voth
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Nico Voigtländer ()

No 19201, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Social capital is often associated with desirable political and economic outcomes. This paper contributes to the literature exploring the “dark side” of social capital, examining the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany. We collect new data on the density of associations in 229 German towns and cities. Denser networks of clubs and societies went hand-in-hand with a more rapid rise of the Nazi Party. Towns with one standard deviation higher association density saw at least 15% faster Nazi Party entry. All types of societies – from veteran associations to animal breeders, chess clubs and choirs – positively predict NS Party entry. Party membership, in turn, is correlated with electoral success. These results suggest that social capital aided the rise of the Nazi movement that ultimately destroyed Germany’s first democracy. Crucially, we examine the question when a vibrant civic society can have corrosive effects. We show that the effects of social capital depended on the political context – in federal states with more stable governments, higher association density was not associated with faster Nazi Party entry.

JEL-codes: N14 N44 P16 Z1 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-soc
Note: DAE POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Published as Shanker Satyanath & Nico Voigtländer & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2017. "Bowling for Fascism: Social Capital and the Rise of the Nazi Party," Journal of Political Economy, vol 125(2), pages 478-526.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19201.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19201

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19201

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().