Robert D. Putnam

Robert D. Putnam
Putnam in 2019
Born	Robert David Putnam (1941-01-09) January 9, 1941 (age 83) Rochester, New York, U.S.
Other names	Bob Putnam[4]
Spouse	Rosemary ​ (m. 1963)​
Awards	Commander of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity (2004) Skytte Prize (2006) National Humanities Medal (2012)
Academic background
Education	Swarthmore College (BA) Balliol College, Oxford Yale University (MA, PhD)
Thesis	Politicians and Politics[1] (1970)
Academic work
Discipline	Political sociology
School or tradition	Communitarianism
Institutions	University of Michigan Harvard University
Doctoral students	David E. Campbell[2] David Rayside[3]
Main interests	Social capital
Notable works	Making Democracy Work (1993) Bowling Alone (2000)
Notable ideas	Two-level game theory

Robert David Putnam^[a] (born January 9, 1941) is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Putnam developed the influential two-level game theory that assumes international agreements will only be successfully brokered if they also result in domestic benefits. His most famous work, Bowling Alone, argues that the United States has undergone an unprecedented collapse in civic, social, associational, and political life (social capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative consequences.^[5] In March 2015, he published a book called Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis that looked at issues of inequality of opportunity in the United States.^[6] According to the Open Syllabus Project, Putnam is the fourth most frequently cited author on college syllabi for political science courses.^[7]

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