The changing conduct of political discourse as a reflection of the type of political participation

"The changing pattern of civic participation in American communities over the last two decades has shifted the balance in the larger society between the articulation of grievances and the aggregation of coalitions to address those grievances. In this sense, this disjunctive pattern of decline--cooperation falling more rapidly than self-expression--may well have encouraged the single-issue blare and declining civility of contemporary political discourse" (pp. 45 -46)

From Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone"