RECIPROCITY
Presented on the 100th Anniversary of the DG Bank
Frankfurt, Germany, October 23, 1995

by Daniel Yankelovich

The biblical story of Adam and Eve instructs us that once we have eaten of the apple, nothing can ever be the same. There is no going back. Innocence is lost. We can never go home again.

In the half century since the end of World War II, the advanced industrialized democracies have all shared a common experience that evokes this ancient theme. The Depression mentality of the prewar 1930s had lingered long into the early postwar years. In countries like Japan it had persisted well into the 1970s. But gradually a flowering of economic growth and affluence overcame it . A new, more expansive outlook sprang into being. The prolonged period of affluence had helped to shape a new and distinctive set of values. In one society after another, concern with individualism and individual rights reached new peaks of intensity. Traditional values yielded to expressive ones. A new philosophy of values emerged which eventually came to be called "expressive individualism."

The name is apt: it calls attention to the two main features of the new outlook -- individualism and the expressive side of being. In the United States for a period of about a quarter century -- from the late 1960s to the early 1990s -- there occurred an extraordinary transformation in values. Societal change moved swiftly in a single direction: toward broadening individualism far beyond political freedom, and toward releasing the bottled up expressive urges of the individual.

In the past, traditional values had centered on hard work, duty, savings for the future, social conformity, responsibility to others, the importance of sacrifice on the part of each member of the family, and respect for social taboos against having children outside of marriage and against easy divorce. The new philosophy of expressive individualism shoved these traditional values into the background. Living in the present took precedence over saving for the future. Self-fulfillment became more important than responsibility to others. Roles in marriage grew blurred. Self-sacrifice was deemed unnecessary -- even foolish. Many social taboos constraining individual desire fell by the wayside. Choice of lifestyle became an ethical imperative.

Reversing long-held moral beliefs, the expressive side of life was deemed superior to the dull, duty-driven, nose-to-the-grindstone values that had persisted throughout the long years of economic hardship. People everywhere began to experience the thrills of choosing their own lifestyles, exercising their independence and autonomy, expressing the sensual side of their nature more freely, finding more satisfying work, and freeing themselves from the bonds of obligation to others.

It was a heady and sometimes exhilarating experience. But it spoiled Americans for the rigors of harder economic times, leaving them unprepared for the self-discipline and abnegation associated with economic struggle.

This state of mind has now created a problem for a majority of Americans. Most Americans have been obliged to become deeply re-engaged in economic struggle because the economy of the 1990s has not lived up to the expectations of those who believed that a widely distributed affluence for all would go on indefinitely. In today’s economy, one cannot take for granted either job security or the likelihood that one’s income will steadily improve or that children will be better off than their parents. For people living on a limited income, the turn in the economy has made the pursuit of expressive individualism particularly troubled. The consequences of life choices such as divorce, quite apart from their emotional toll, can be devastating economically and even married people in dual earner households, including high income ones, feel they are on an economic treadmill.

In the early 1990s, following the turn in the economy in the United States, the movement of social change began to shift direction. Instead of further expansions of expressive individualism, various conservative social movements representing more traditional values made their voices heard, evoking in most Americans some degree of responsiveness. Our studies show a new yearning in the culture for a return to community, discipline, and absolute rather than relative moral values. And yet, despite this yearning, most people are finding it difficult to return to the traditional values linked to economic hard times. Having eaten of the apple of expressive individualism, they can no longer return to the old ways.

The result: we live today in a climate of moral confusion. People no longer know what to believe, whom to trust, how to live. They have grown accustomed to insisting on their individual "rights" -- for education, health care, welfare, security in old age and other forms of protection from the brutalities of life. When governments and other institutions fail, as they must, to meet their expectations, people feel victimized. They blame their institutions. They accuse their leaders of bad faith and incompetence. They lurch from one false solution to another.

I believe that since the 1960s our societies have been living through a cultural revolution whose effects are destabilizing. The social and moral values of our advanced industrial societies have grown confused and uncertain. Economic and social change have occurred at such a furious tempo that we have not had the time to bring the two into harmony. As a consequence our societies are confronting a series of economic, social and moral crises simultaneously with which we are ill-equipped to cope.

In this paper, I explore a theme that might help to reduce the conflict and contradictions in our social values, and bring them into greater harmony with each other and also with the realities of a world economy. The theme is that of cooperation and reciprocity. It is my hypothesis that a greater stress on reciprocity between individuals and institutions can bridge the gap between the traditional values that people yearn to restore and the values of expressive individualism they most cherish. Reciprocity fits both value systems. It exemplifies traditional values and yet is compatible with the more socially benign aspects of expressive individualism.

I also hypothesize that leadership initiatives to strengthen values like cooperation, reciprocity and community have a reasonable chance of success. We may not be compete masters of our fate, but neither are we helpless victims of either impersonal forces or ideological zealots.

I have divided the paper into two parts. In Part I, I recap briefly how economic changes in the post World War II period affected people’s values in the advanced industrial democracies. In Part II, I discuss the concept of reciprocity. Pursued intelligently, the cultivation of a spirit of reciprocity and cooperation in our societies may guide us out of the moral morass in which we currently find ourselves.

PART I

HOW THE ECONOMY AFFECTS OUR SOCIETIES

For thirty years, since the mid 1960s, I have conducted an annual survey of changing American attitudes and values.[1] It has proven illuminating to examine the survey findings in the light of various theories of social change.

One such theory is that of sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf. In his book, Life Chances,[2] Darhendorf describes swings in Western culture as efforts to strike the proper balance between choices and bonds. Choices enhance individualism and personal freedom; bonds strengthen social cohesiveness and stability.

In societies where the bonds that link people to one another and to institutions are rigid, the individual's freedom of choice is limited. As people struggle to enlarge their sphere of choice, the bonds that bind them together slacken. In Dahrendorf's view, it is the creative tension between the pull that bonds exert and the appeal of greater choice that, more than any other factor, shapes modern culture.

Traditional society emphasized bonds: an elaborate network of kinship, ethnic ties, moral obligations, rigid roles and social norms that held the community together. Punishment for violating these norms was often severe, especially when norms governing sexual behavior or property rights or authority were involved. The history of modern society can be seen as a prolonged and strenuous effort to loosen the grip of these bonds in the interest of making room for greater individual choice.

Dahrendorf does not say much about the forces that cause societies to shift the balance of forces in one direction or another. He implies that imbalances tend to be self-corrective. My own studies suggest that they are not always self-corrective but are sometimes driven by external factors, and that the most powerful drivers of shifts in the balance between bonds and choices are changing economic conditions. In the post World War II decades in the United States and other industrialized democracies, as people became better off and had more money to spend, and as they became convinced that this benign condition would continue indefinitely, they grew bolder in their life choices and expressions of individualism. Now in the 1990s, however, people suspect that their economic well being is in jeopardy. So they begin to pull back; they grow more cautious and conservative in their moral outlook. Whenever economic changes are abrupt and unclear, people grow confused, disoriented. They don’t know which way to turn, which set of life values to emphasize.

In the United States from the 1960s to the present time, cultural change has closely tracked changes in the economy, within the larger context of the Dahrendorf model. In the 1960s and 1970s, as affluence spread, Americans expanded their search for greater choice and freedom of personal expression. A vast enthusiasm developed for creating one's own individual lifestyle. People felt that questions of how to live and with whom to live were too much a matter of individual choice to be governed by restrictive social norms. Americans came to experience bonds of all sorts -- to marriage, family, children, job, community, nation -- as constraints. Commitments were loosened. The culture witnessed an explosion of divorces, single households, latchkey children, children born out of wedlock, job changes, second careers, dropping out of school, returning to school, and restless moving about from place to place. So eagerly did Americans embrace the ideal of making one's own choices that most constraints on personal choice were experienced as unjust and even immoral.[3]

The path of change, however, proved difficult as the quest for greater choice clashed directly with the obligations and social norms that in the past had held families and communities together. But to an extraordinary degree, social change was driven by a psychology of affluence, i.e., an assumption that economic good times were here to stay.

Here are the most striking changes in social values for which strong survey documentation exists[4]:

• duty -- less value placed on what one owes to others as a matter of moral obligation
• social conformity -- less value placed on "keeping up with the Jones"
• respectability -- less value placed on symbols of correct behavior for a person of a particular social class
• social morality -- less value placed on observing the rules, as long as one does not break the law
• pluralism -- greater acceptance of differences in ethnicity and life style
• sacrifice -- less value placed on sacrifice as an intrinsic moral good, replaced by more pragmatic criteria of when sacrifice is or is not called for
• expressiveness -- a higher value placed on forms of choice and individualism that express one's inner nature and give it its unique distinctiveness
• the environment -- greater value placed on respecting and preserving nature and the natural
• technology -- greater value placed on technological solutions to a vast array of problems and challenges
• sexuality -- less moral value placed on "correct" sexual behavior; a loosening of some but not all norms of sexual morality
• pleasure -- fewer constraints on pleasure, especially bodily pleasure; pleasure regarded as a good
• family -- a high value placed on family life, but with a vastly expanded concept of family beyond the traditional nuclear form
• husband-wife relationships -- a far-reaching shift from role-based obligations to shared responsibilities.
• health -- greater value placed on maintaining and enhancing one's own health
• work ethic -- a shift from the Protestant Ethic valuation of work as having intrinsic moral value, to work as a source of personal satisfaction, and therefore less tolerance for work that does not provide personal satisfaction
• women's rights -- a higher value placed on women achieving self-fulfillment by paths of their own choice rather than through roles dictated by society

This enumeration is far from complete, but it suggests the breadth of change. Some of these changes are so extensive that they reversed previously held values. Where, for example, social conformity and respectability was once the norm of the land, individualism and choice of life style became the norm. Where marriage revolved around sharply differentiated roles for men and women, role relationships have grown blurred and a different conception of marriage has taken hold among a majority of Americans.

Now in the mid 1990s, the process of reconciling conflicting values is taking yet another turn. The United States has shifted from rising expectations to lowering expectations. The psychology of affluence that dominated the past few decades has disappeared. The majority of Americans see an economic threat to individual choice, and they feel trapped. They realize that they had better think about tomorrow once again. And, in thinking about tomorrow, people grow uneasy, suspicious that opportunities for jobs, income growth, home ownership and retirement are in jeopardy at the same time that responsibilities for education, child care, elder care and health care are mounting.

Today, most Americans in all walks of life are adjusting their expectations downwards and adapting their lives to what they regard as a more difficult, less open, less fair, more demanding, and more stressful economic environment.

People do, however, learn from experience. As they do, they modify their behavior and also their values and beliefs. Americans are learning that in an era of lowering expectations the new self-expressive values do not always serve them well.

Here are some of the value conflicts that middle and upper income Americans are currently struggling with:

They are confronting the reality that the expanded life choices they value so highly have come at the expense of time stress and financial debt, and that these are painfully burdensome. They find they do not have enough time for themselves (some women in dual earner households do not even have enough time for adequate sleep), and they are loaded down with the kind of debt that suddenly becomes frightening if one is nervous about one's economic prospects (which they are).

The world of work has, for many, also proven to be less satisfying than they expected. They have learned that giving too much to work and career comes at the expense of family and quality of life, especially in an economic climate in which loyalty is a one-way affair (the employer expects it but doesn't give it in return).

The quest for greater self expression has taken a heavier toll on personal relations than had been anticipated. Children have suffered. Families have been at risk. Relationships between men and women have grown distressingly complex -- and often unstable. Peoples' powerful needs for affiliation have been frustrated, and some forms of pleasure seeking have proven disappointing and unsatisfying.

Outside the United States in the other industrial democracies, similar cultural changes are now occurring, though in less extreme form. They follow a dialectic pattern: first, a reaction against the constraints of traditional bonds in favor of greater individual choice, followed by striving for an accommodation that preserves some of the traditional bonds while making room for greater individual choice.

People are making these accommodations in a confusing economic environment where growth and stagnation exist side by side and where the inequality of the social and economic gap between the educated and uneducated segments of the population grows ever wider.

In each culture, the pattern expresses itself in a distinctive form, reflecting the history, institutional structure and material conditions peculiar to it. But in all advanced industrial countries today, it is the tension between personal choice and social bonds, and between the skilled and the unskilled that underlies the fear people everywhere feel that the moral foundations of society are being threatened.

PART II

RECIPROCITY

These changes pose a formidable challenge to our societies. If we are to avoid a serious threat to social stability and democratic practice, a better way must be found to reconcile economic realities with social values, and to reconcile the conflicting value claims of greater autonomy for the individual (choices) with communal needs (bonds).

The depth of public disaffection with the present imbalance is profound. In the United States, public concern with the state of social morality has reached nearly universal proportions: 87 percent of the public fear that something is fundamentally wrong with America’s moral condition (up from 76 percent a year ago).[5]

The symptoms of moral decline that drive this perception range from worry about violence, crime, drug abuse and disorder in the schools, to a sense that everyday life is growing more impersonal ("our neighbors don't even wave to us anymore"). Americans are particularly perturbed about growing signs of incivility and "lack of respect." No symptom of moral decay bothers people more than the small indignities they encounter every day which they sum up under the heading of lack of respect: the inability to lodge a complaint about bad service to anybody except a computer; the indifference of retail clerks or government employees or businesses, the lack of responsiveness of employers. People feel they are being ignored, shoved aside, treated 'like a number,' uncared for.

Many factors contribute to this mood of public frustration. Observers blame much of it on the media, or on the abrasiveness and decline in civility of the political process, or on the fear of economic insecurity. My interpretation is that, in addition to these influences, there is another important cause of public distress about social morality. It relates to the ways in which the society's value systems all contribute to an imbalance in our social morality: various value systems converge to reinforce an ethic of what might be called unenlightened self-interest, one that is highly destructive of social cohesiveness.

We are all familiar with the virtues of enlightened self-interest, the idea that in serving the interests of the larger community, far-sighted people also contribute to their own interests. Unenlightened self-interest is the pursuit of selfish goals that serve no interests other than those of the individual.

Certainly, many of the current forms of expressive individualism accentuate the egoistic and narcissistic aspects of self, rather than the altruistic, self-effacing aspects. The preoccupation with "me," "my needs," "my self-fulfillment," "my beliefs and values" inevitably weakens social bonds, social trust, and moral norms. Unfortunately, other value systems reinforce this same tendency.

Consider government, for example. At first glance, the values associated with democratic government would appear to move in the opposite direction. The modern welfare state has its roots in the belief that government has a moral responsibility to take care of citizens who cannot take care of themselves. It is often observed that the quality of a society can be measured by how well it treats its children and older citizens. People of good faith everywhere share this view. Historically, it has played a prominent role in American beliefs.

This value is the opposite of unenlightened self-interest. It is a powerful communal value. But ironically, something strange happens when responsibility is shifted from the society to the formal organized government of the state. The value of caring for those in need becomes transformed. The transfer from society to state is fraught with unintended consequences.

Unlike the society at large which can express its moral responsibilities in a variety of forms -- through private initiatives, organized charity, compassion, mercy, individual generosity, idiosyncrasy, etc.-- the state is constrained in the manner in which it must exercise its responsibilities. The state is always coercive; it must apply its regulations uniformly and with bureaucratic evenhandedness; and most importantly, the state must resort to the systems and mechanisms of the law. So when the welfare state takes over the obligations of the civil society, it uses the methods of coercion, bureaucratic uniformity and law, and in so doing it undermines in a subtle but far-reaching fashion the very values it seeks to strengthen.

In the welfare state, the communal concern with people’s needs is implemented through passing laws that codify these needs into legal "rights." In the United States much of the legislation of the welfare state reflects the doctrine of need-based legal rights, generally known as "entitlements." This is the doctrine that people in need of the fundamentals of life are legally entitled to have these needs met, and the state is legally obligated to meet them.

The accumulated effect of this doctrine has been to imbue the public with a psychology of entitlement: "I have a right to the best medical care that money can buy whether or not I can afford it." "I need a good education, and therefore have a right to one." "I am entitled to comfort and security in my old age." "Whether or not my children were born out of wedlock, I am entitled to provide them with the food and shelter they need."

When people are convinced they have a legal right to a benefit, it is automatically endowed with moral fervor. The legal and moral obligation on the part of the state is unconditional, irrespective of resources. When this obligation is violated or scanted in any fashion, the recipients feel they have been cheated. They are filled with a brooding sense of injustice and victimization. Thus, ironically, what started as a communal value -- a moral conviction that people must not think only of themselves but must also take care of others -- ends up as a preoccupation with the self, its needs and its rights.

The psychology of entitlement is a form of unenlightened self-interest: recipients are not concerned about others or the consequences to the community at large: they are preoccupied with their own rights. Taxpayers who must bear the burden of these various entitlements find their good will and patience stretched thin, and they are driven to focus increasingly on their own self-interest.

The historic reasons for shifting from private charity to the welfare state are not being questioned here. Undoubtedly, the coercive mechanisms of the state were needed to recognize communal values that purely private efforts could not realize adequately. I am merely pointing out one of the saddest and most perverse unintended consequences of the state takeover of societies’ communal functions: the fact that through encouraging dependency, through undermining self-reliance and responsibility, and through inadvertently creating a psychology of entitlement and victimization, the welfare state has reinforced the most narcissistic side of expressive individualism.

Similarly, the value system associated with market economics also reinforces self-interest. The underlying principle of market economics is self-interest. The organization of markets rewards corporate management handsomely for maximizing the short-term profitability of their companies. These pressures create conflicts of interest among those managers who, in the name of enlightened self-interest, would prefer to devote more resources toward the long-term well-being of the larger community in which they serve. Downsizing is seen as good for shareholders irrespective of the impact on employees. What the late economist Joseph Shumpeter called the "creative destruction" of the market shapes an environment of constant change and instability for citizens. The fundamental principle of markets is competition, not cooperation: products and services are pitted against each other. Advertising and promotion are directed at increasing consumption. Their appeal is to give consumers a wider range of choices. These choices are highly valued the world over. I am not deriding them, but simply pointing out that they cater to the self-interest of the individual not the shared needs of the larger community.

With the failure of socialist forms of organizing economies and the triumph of market economies, there is an inevitable tendency to seek to apply market principles to ever broader spheres of life. This principle is embodied in the notion of privatization, and in the effort to extend market principles to schools, health care, culture, environmental controls and other activities which up to now were not wholly dominated by market driven choices.

In brief, then, the value systems associated with the welfare state and market economics converge to strengthen the already strong value of individualistic self-interest, and thereby weaken the communal institutions and values of civil society. They do this, in part, by diminishing the scope and potency of social norms in favor of legal remedies. As a consequence of the welfare state, the domain of law has been greatly enlarged; as a consequence of market economies, the domain of individual choice is also enlarged. These forces augment the power of expressive individualism at the expense of communal values.

The domain of social morality grows ever smaller and shrunken. For increasing numbers of people, the issue is simply whether what they want is legal or illegal. If it isn’t forbidden by law, it becomes a question of personal choice. Social norms, obligations and taboos lose their influence on behavior as well as on values.

This is a reversal of historic tradition where the spheres of law and of individual choice were narrow and the sphere of social morality (where communal values reside) was large. Boston University’s president John Silber quotes Lord John Fletcher Moulton, a noted English judge, who observed 75 years ago that there were three domains of human action. The first is the domain of human law where he said, "our actions are prescribed by laws binding upon us which must be obeyed." At the other extreme is the domain of free choice which "includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy complete freedom." In between is the sphere that Silber describes as "a domain in which our action is not determined by law but in which we are not free to behave in any way we choose. In this domain we act with greater or lesser freedom from constraint, through a sense of what is required by public spirit..."[6] In the present era, the domain of the public spirit is battered on one side by expanded choice and on the other by law.

An Emerging Consensus

In the United States there exists widespread disagreement about how to diagnose society’s ills. But nonetheless, a consensus is starting to emerge around two broad conclusions: first, that something is wrong in the society, and second, that our society’s communal values need to be strengthened.

In recent years, some promising lines of thought have begun to emerge. In a seminal paper, "Bowling Alone," Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard documents the erosion of social connectedness, civic engagement and civic trust. "High on America’s agenda," he urges, "should be the question of how to reverse these adverse trends..."[7]

Senator William Bradley of New Jersey has been speaking and writing extensively on the theme of a shrinking civil society. Bradley defines civil society as the realm of family, friends, neighbors, schools, churches and workplaces, and the home of an ethic different either from the self-interest of the market economy or the coercive force of government. He sees the ethic of civil society as reflecting voluntary ties of obligation and embodying values such as reciprocity, respect, trust, stability, neighborliness, civil involvement and love. He fears the encroachment both of the market and government on civil society, and he sees our politics as offering only two inadequate alternative to voters: the right compulsively offers market solutions to all problems, while the left compulsively falls back on government solutions. To reweave the society back together, Bradley would give the institutions of civil society far more resources and attention.[8]

Sociologist Amitai Etzioni has made great strides in advancing a social movement called Communitarianism. As its name implies, its chief focus is on the community and community values. Etzioni argues that our societies have been overemphasizing people’s rights and de-emphasizing their responsibilities. In various spheres of public life, Etzioni and his associates are finding new ways to restore the balance between rights and responsibilities, seeking to renew and strengthen communal values.

Philosopher Jurgen Habermas is also exerting an influence on this discussion, particularly in his emphasis on the importance of creating spaces in our democracy for public deliberation and dialogue, free of coercive influence.

The contribution I want to add is to accentuate the strategic importance of one particular communal value, the value of reciprocity.

The Strategic Importance of Reciprocity

Reciprocity is one among a number of values associated with community. I will argue that under existing social and economic conditions it enjoys a strategic advantage over some of the other communal values. It permits people to hold onto the freedom of choice they have come to cherish, which they emphatically do not want to abandon. At the same time, along with freedom of choice, it obliges them to serve the kinds of communal purposes that strengthen bonds, connectedness to others, and civic trust.

Suppose, for example, that as an older person still in good health, I anticipate that at some time in the future as I grow older and more fragile, I may need home care from others. At the present time, I am entitled to such care from the state if I need it without being obliged to pay more than a nominal fraction of its costs, or to pay anything at all if I am without resources.

Suppose it became community practice to require me to reciprocate to the extent of my abilities? I might, for example, be asked to join a group of other older people who, with modest training, can devote time to giving care to others. By rendering such service over a period of months or years, I would be reciprocating in advance for services that I myself may need in the future. Should I need them some day, I would feel that I had deserved them, because through reciprocal care for others I had honorably discharged my obligation to the community.

The concept of reciprocity as a social norm is charged with profound moral overtones. It is an ancient idea on which codes of honor have been based as well as commercial barter arrangements. If you render a service to my family, tribe or nation we are obligated in honor to return the service, in some equivalent form. Dignity, respect, respectability, gravitas, fairness: all such traditional virtues are inherent in the act of reciprocity. The rendering of a service creates a moral obligation that must be discharged if the recipients are to maintain their self-respect and the respect of others.

The concept sits well with the public. When people are asked in surveys how they would feel about government programs grounded in reciprocity, they respond positively. The sentiment is growing that people should no longer expect something for nothing. In the United States, this is a shift in attitudes from the 1960s and 1970s. Then, the idea of need-based rights was acceptable to the public. The prevailing attitude was, "I am doing well. Why shouldn't those in need get a break?"

In the 1990s, however, this attitude has changed dramatically. Today’s attitude is: "Times are tough. My family and I are struggling to make ends meet. People should no longer expect something for nothing. Above all, they should not expect something for nothing as a matter of right."

Admittedly, there is a certain inconsistency in public attitudes. At the same time people say that recipients of public services should not expect "something for nothing as a matter of right," they also support existing entitlement programs, such as Social Security and health care for the aged and indigent (Medicare and Medicaid) that do give something for nothing.

In part, this contradiction is due to a misunderstanding. Most people believe, incorrectly, that through their taxes they are paying in full for the benefits they receive. But even with this misunderstanding, there remains an inconsistency. The idea of reciprocity is too new for people to grasp its full implications and to see how it differs from need-based entitlements (except in areas like welfare). So the most accurate statement would be that the public is potentially more strongly supportive of policies based on reciprocity than on need-based rights, but the public needs time and experience to get used to the change.

Overall, the survey data suggest that the public is strongly receptive to the idea of shifting the moral foundations of entitlements ("if you need it, you have a right to it") to a more balanced social contract: if the society gives you a benefit, you must, if you are able, reciprocate in some appropriate form. Such a shift would be seen as fairer to the middle-class than existing policies. It would place government programs on a firmer moral foundation.

There are many advantages to shifting the basis of societal obligation from need-based legal rights to reciprocity. One is that it does not conflict, as need-based rights do, with the prevailing concept of fairness. Few values are more fundamental to society than the conviction that the "system" is fair: nothing undermines social stability more injuriously than the smoldering resentment generated by the suspicion of unfairness.

People judge a social system as fair or unfair depending on whether they and others "get what they deserve." If someone commits a crime, he deserves to be punished. If someone does a good job, she deserves to be rewarded. A system is unfair if those who do a good job and those who do a poor job both receive the same reward -- or if neither receives the appropriate recognition for what they "deserve."

In the 1970s when the principle of need-based rights was introduced into the United States, the public did not initially understand the potential conflict between fairness based on deserving and fairness based on need. But in the 1980s, the conflict rose to the surface, and it outraged the public’s sense of fairness. For example, it was public policy to award scholarships for higher education based on need. This policy created resentment among those who were deprived of scholarships which they felt they deserved in favor of families who did not deserve them. Thus, in interviews, people would say something like this: "My family worked hard and saved every penny to pay for our son’s college tuition. But even though his grades were better than our neighbor’s son, our son did not get the scholarship. Our neighbor’s son got it, even though he didn’t deserve it. His family never bothered to save, preferring instead to buy fancy automobiles. It just isn’t fair."

The principle of reciprocity avoids this dissonance between the two conceptions of fairness, one based on need and the other on deserving. If people are obliged to give something in return for the benefits they receive, then they will be seen to "deserve" those benefits. Thus, if our societies find a way to shift from need-based rights to reciprocal obligations, the most unworkable feature of the welfare state will have been at least partly corrected.

Another advantage of reciprocity is that it is seen as more suitable to difficult economic conditions than a "something-for-nothing" philosophy. If through applying the principle of reciprocity, those who receive public benefits can render useful services, taxpayers will feel they are getting value for their tax dollars. Many of those who need public benefits can give something back -- in the form of child care, elder care, keeping the environment clean, providing security services, etc. Students whose higher education is subsidized can be obliged to render service to the community later. Everyone except the very young and the sick can reciprocate the help the community provides for them. In doing so they will gain dignity, self-respect and the respect of others -- intangibles whose importance should not be underestimated.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of reciprocity is that it is compatible both with the freedom of choice associated with expressive individualism and advancement of the common good associated with the values of community and civil society. Instead of returning to the rigid and repressive norms of the past, people remain free to choose the life styles that suit them, but at the same time recognize that these choices come with obligations and costs. If a man chooses to father children out of wedlock, he may not be subject, as in the past, to a "shotgun" wedding to maintain respectability. But he will learn that he is obliged to take responsibility for the child, or if he tries to evade his responsibilities be severely sanctioned.

The opportunity to give something back to the community is a powerful human motivation that should not be brushed aside in the present-day preoccupation with self-interest. Shaped thoughtfully, the reciprocal obligations of citizens can serve the larger community and also reinforce the communal sense of fairness, justice and trust, and civility.

Many readers may agree with the advantages of elevating reciprocity to a higher level of public consciousness and commitment, but feel a sense of futility about being able to do so. Ordinarily, we do not think of heightening moral consciousness as an arena for action. It is not like passing a law or throwing money at a problem. Norms and ethics belong to the domain of culture, and culture is treated as a given, unsusceptible to action.

I conclude this paper with the simple observation that often a great deal can be done to strengthen or weaken moral norms: the actions in a number of nations to curb drunk driving or lower rates of smoking and drug use among young people are just a few examples of recent changes in culture that resulted from deliberate cultural intervention. At the same time, we want to avoid the interventionism of zealots determined to shape culture to fit their own moral sensibilities, irrespective of the choices that free citizens wish to make.

Leaders cannot impose their own moral values on a public that rejects them. What leaders can do is to strengthen tendencies that already exist in a latent form in the society, and are waiting for leadership to bring forward.

If our publics were wedded to the concept of need-based rights, they could not be persuaded to shift to reciprocity as a basis for fair treatment. If our publics were motivated solely by self-interest and didn’t give a damn about the community, they could not be persuaded to elevate reciprocity to a higher level of social commitment. But the fact that reciprocity is what people really want implies that the legitimate role of leadership is to find a strategy for making it happen.

1 DYG SCANSM -- A Trend Identification Program. The DYG SCANSM is a product of DYG, Inc. of Danbury, CT.

2 Ralf Dahrendorf, Life Chanc es: Aproaches to Social and Political Theory (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1979).

3 For a detailed description of these changes see Daniel Yankelovich, New Rules: Searching for Self-Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down (Random House, 1981).

4 See Daniel Yankelovich, How Changes in the Economy are Shaping American Values, in Values and Public Policy, ed. Henry J. Aaron, Thomas E. Mann, and Timothy Taylor (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994).

5 DYG SCANSM, 1995.

6 John Silber. Will Our Media Moguls 'Do the Right Thing'. In the Christian Science Monitor, June 16, 1995, p. 19.

7 Robert D. Putnam. Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital, in the Journal of Demoncracy, Volume 6, #1, January 1995.

8 William Bradley. In Speech to the Civic League, November 11, 1994.