Bowling for fascism: Social capital and the rise of the Nazi Party in Weimar Germany, 1919-33

Shanker Satyanath, Nico Voigtländer () and Hans-Joachim Voth

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: Social capital – a dense network of associations facilitating cooperation within a community – typically leads to positive political and economic outcomes, as demonstrated by a large literature following Putnam. A growing literature emphasizes the potentially "dark side" of social capital. This paper examines the role of social capital in the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany by analyzing Nazi party entry rates in a cross-section of towns and cities. Before the Nazi Party's triumphs at the ballot box, it built an extensive organizational structure, becoming a mass movement with nearly a million members by early 1933. We show that dense networks of civic associations such as bowling clubs, animal breeder associations, or choirs facilitated the rise of the Nazi Party. The effects are large: Towns with one standard deviation higher association density saw at least one-third faster growth in the strength of the Nazi Party. IV results based on 19th century measures of social capital reinforce our conclusions. In addition, all types of associations – veteran associations and non-military clubs, "bridging" and "bonding" associations – positively predict NS party entry. These results suggest that social capital in Weimar Germany aided the rise of the Nazi movement that ultimately destroyed Germany's first democracy.

Keywords: social capital; democracy; political economy; Weimar Germany; Nazi Party (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N44 P16 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-pol and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Bowling for Fascism: Social Capital and the Rise of the Nazi Party in Weimar Germany, 1919-33 (2015)
Working Paper: Bowling for Fascism: Social Capital and the Rise of the Nazi Party in Weimar Germany: 1919-33 (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:1375

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