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Civic solidarity is said to be important for motivating participation and fostering support for redistribution within democratic societies. This paper explores the content that contemporary political theorists have given to the idea of civic solidarity and consider the implications of the different models for the integration of immigrants. In section 1, I examine constitutional patriotism, which maintains that civic solidarity can and should be based on shared ideals or principles embodied in the constitution and political culture of a democratic society. This model is widely thought to reflect what it means to be an American. To be or become an American all that is required is a professed commitment to the political ideals embodied in the American constitution and American political culture. In section 2, I consider, liberal nationalism, which views a shared national culture as the appropriate basis for civic solidarity. Liberal nationalists defend the promotion of a common national culture on the grounds that it fosters the trust necessary for solving coordination problems, enabling deliberative democracy, and supporting redistributive policies of the welfare-state. In section 3, I examine a third model of solidarity, deep diversity, which acknowledges a diversity of ways of belonging to a political community. I argue that while deep diversity is the most inclusive of the three models, it is the least plausible since it is likely to be the result of civic solidarity rather than a possible basis for it. In section 4, I briefly consider the implications of these different models for the integration of immigrants. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital theory, particularly the work of Robert Putnam, has received a great deal of scholarly and popular attention. We argue that Putnam's formulation ignores the ways in which race is fundamental and constitutive to the structure and function of social capital in the United States. We suggest an alternative framework, one that: (1) treats race as more than an independent variable; (2) addresses the structural factors underlying social capital development; and (3) includes the role of gatekeepers in the process. Such a framework would allow us to have a more accurate, and more nuanced, understanding of how social capital operates in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]