Bowling for Fascism: Social Capital and the Rise of the Nazi Party in Weimar Germany, 1919-33

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 19 th 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.2

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“…11 Satyanath, Voigtländer, and Voth (2013) show that dense networks of civic associations facilitated the rise of the NS party in Germany.…”

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“…Scholars argue that the social capital plays a key role in the production of human capital and public goods (Coleman (1988)), good governance (Putnam et al (1994)), financial development (Guiso et al (2004)), political participation (DiPasquale and Glaeser (1999), Berman (1997), Satyanath et al (2013)), efficiency of the judiciary system (La Porta et al (1997)), political accountability (Nannicini et al (2010)), labor market institutions (Algan and Cahuc (2009)). Economists have always tried to understand, whether through these or other channels, the social capital has an impact on growth and development.…”

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