I am interested in the Tocquevillian thesis that participating in voluntary groups enhances democratic and liberal values.

John Dewey was another major proponent of this view. Alan Ryan emphasizes Dewey’s belief that democracy, properly understood, “bubble[s] naturally upward from small-scale interactions and [is] not to be imposed from above.” (Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, 1995, p.169).

The Democracy for All Project is a collaboration between the Charles F. Kettering Foundation and Gallup that collects representative survey data, most recently from 23,000 people surveyed from April 24 to June 10, 2026. The main report is entitled Frustration Rises, Commitment Endures.

I analyzed the raw data from Kettering/Gallup, looking for relationships between three measures of community engagement and several beliefs relevant to democracy.

The three measures of community engagement are:

• “How often do you attend events in your community, such as festivals, town halls, arts performances, etc.”?
• “How often do you usually attend church, synagogue, mosque, or temple?”
• [Have you] “volunteered or actively participated in organizations or groups that are designed to improve conditions in your community”?

I chose these three because they offer a nice range of frequent forms of engagement.

I put them in regression models along with gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, and partisanship. I will report the relationships between those variables and the following questions of interest.

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1. [Are you concerned are about] “People being harmed by federal agents, military, or law enforcement during peaceful protests”?

To make my assumptions explicit, I want people to say yes to this question. The model shows that people are more likely to agree if they are younger, more highly educated, not White, and if they volunteer in their communities or attend community events. But they are less likely to agree if they attend religious services frequently. Party identification and gender are unrelated to this outcome.

Because I used a regression model, we can reject the explanation that local engagement is related to this democratic value because the people who are locally engaged are younger or more diverse or more highly educated. The model is supposed to detect relationships that hold once everything else is held constant. So a White, less educated person who volunteers is more likely to be concerned than one who is not.

2. [Are you concerned are about] “People who are ineligible to vote casting ballots in U.S. elections”?

Again, to disclose my own assumptions: I am against ineligible people voting, but I think this is very rare, and being very concerned about it is problematic. So I would like people to say no.

In the model, concern is lower for those who are Democrats, female, younger, and more educated and who volunteer. It is higher for those who attend religious services. Attending local events is unrelated.

3. “How concerned, if at all, are you that political leaders are blaming or targeting people from certain groups for problems they see in the country?“

Here I would want to see agreement. Positive answers go with being a Democrat, female, younger, not White, and more educated. Support also rises with volunteering and attending events, but religious attendance is negatively correlated.

[Are you concerned are about]“Political leaders pressuring election officials to change election outcomes”?

For the record, I am concerned. So are people who are younger, female, more highly educated, prone to volunteer, frequent attendees at local events, and not regular attendees in religious services. Party identification is not significantly related to this question in the model, meaning that it can be explained away with the other variables.

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Overall, we see some support for the Tocquevillian thesis, except that church participation is negatively related to the values that I would espouse. (This is not always the case: see “active church membership may counteract problematic religious messages” and “church attendance, religious identity, and politics” [revisited].) For some of these questions, the relationship with party identification drops out once we measure the other factors. Volunteering has a consistent relationship with the values that I would espouse. Attending local events is less consistent.