Our Enemies and US

Our Enemies and US

America's Rivalries
and the Making
of Political Science

IDO OREN

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2003 by Cornell University

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First published 2003 by Cornell University Press

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Oren, Ido, 19 58 -
Our enemies and US : America's rivalries and the making of political
science / Ido Oren,
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8014-3566-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Political science— United States— History— 20th century. 2. United
States— Politics and government. 3. United States— Foreign relations.
I. Title: America's rivalries and the making of political science. II.
Title.
JA84.U5 O 73 2003
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Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the
pedigree of ideas.
L ord A cton , History of Freedom

All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always

knowledge from particular points of view.
M ax Weber, "'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy"
 Preface, ix
Introduction A m erican Political Science as Ideology, 1
Chapter i Im perial Germ any, 23
C hapter 2 N azi Germ any, 47
C hapter 3 Stalin's Soviet Union, 91
C hapter 4 C old War Politics, 126
C onclusion Toward a Reflexive Political Science, 17 2
Notes, 18 3
Index, 227
 A decade ago I was working on a mathematical and statistical study of
arms races that fell well within the substantive and epistemological
bounds of mainstream political science. I published the results in profes­
sional journals, and I remain proud of the work's quality. But even a cur­
sory glance at this book w ill show that m y intellectual horizon has shifted
considerably. This book questions the very presuppositions of the science
of politics into which I had been socialized. How did this reorientation
come about?
After the end of the Cold War, scholarly interest in the previously pop­
ular subject of the arms race waned. With the collapse of communism and
the apparent spread of democracy, many scholars were intrigued by the
prospect of a "democratic peace." By the mid-1990s, the proposition that
democracies do not fight one another, which had had little resonance just
a few years earlier, w as gaining widespread acceptance. It received sup­
port from numerous statistical analyses, and the Clinton administration
invoked it as a rationale for its foreign policy of "democratization." I was
skeptical of the notion that peace between states w as enhanced by the
shared democratic character of their regimes, but had to admit that the
statistical studies of the relationship seemed technically sound. To be ef­
fective, a critique of these studies would have to rest on a foundation
other than their own scientific grounding.
In this context, a question crossed m y mind: How did Woodrow Wil­
son perceive Imperial Germany — not in 19 17, when he declared war "to
make the world safe for democracy," but twenty to thirty years earlier?
Wilson's legacy was consciously embraced by proponents of the demo­
cratic peace thesis, and I thought that the thesis might be undermined if
it turned out that Wilson's characterization of Germany as "autocratic"
followed, rather than preceded, the German-American conflict. I vaguely
knew that Wilson was a political scientist before he entered politics, but I
knew little else about the history of political science. A t that point, I was
extremely fortunate to be able to turn to a wise colleague, Jim Farr, for in­
dispensable tutoring in disciplinary history. Jim suggested, among other
things, that m y investigation might be profitably expanded to include
John Burgess, an ardent Germanophile who founded the first graduate
school of political science in the United States.
In m y research on arms races, I had come to appreciate the power of
mathematical models to generate insights that might not have been read­
ily apparent otherwise. As I immersed m yself in the academic writings of
Woodrow Wilson and John Burgess, I realized that historical investiga­
tion, different though it w as from mathematical deduction, nonetheless
gave me a similarly exciting sense of discovery. To m y fascination, I dis­
covered that some of the analytical categories and concepts habitually
used b y Wilson and Burgess had since become virtual taboos (e.g.,
"A ryan " and other racial categories), that concepts which command uni­
versal approval today were not universally endorsed a century ago, and
that the present meanings of some concepts differ from the connotations
they had then.
Steeped as I was in the present-minded culture of political science, this
conceptual elasticity was a revelation that offered a fresh vantage point
from which to critique the notion of democratic peace. I came to see that
political scientists' current understanding of "dem ocracy" is the product
of a historical process partly shaped by America's international rivalries.
Those aspects of democracy that made America appear similar to its en­
emies have been marginalized over time, whereas those that m agnify the
apparent distance between America and its enemies have become privi­
leged. Therefore, when we project our present definitions of democracy
upon the past, it should not be surprising that our analyses validate sci­
entific claims about the mutual peacefulness of democracies, for the con­
cept of democracy is a product of the very same historical patterns against
which the claims are being "tested." M y critique of the democratic peace
proposition, published in the journal International Security, became a step­
ping-stone for this book, as it whet m y appetite for exploring the con­
nection between U.S. political science and U.S. foreign relations in greater
depth.
At the time of m y "historical turn," I was fortunate to have sympa­
thetic colleagues who actively supported m y new path even as it led me
to raise tough questions about the presumed objectivity of the discipline
and its alleged commitment to democracy. Two of them deserve special
mention. Jim Farr was not only an invaluable tutor but a constant source
of guidance and encouragement. I remain awed by Jim 's dogged w ill­
ingness to stick his neck out for me. Bud Duvall greeted this project
warm ly from its very inception; at a critical early stage in its develop­
ment, he helped me articulate m y argument in far clearer and sharper
terms than I w as able to do myself.
In working on this manuscript I have incurred many debts. Peter
Katzenstein recognized the importance of the project at an early stage,
and suggested that I develop it into a book before this idea had crossed
my own mind; Peter graciously continued to provide counsel and en­
couragement along the way. Simon Reich read the entire manuscript
twice and made suggestions that greatly enhanced it. Dan Monk helped
open my eyes to important philosophical implications of my historical
analysis. Roger Hay don of Cornell University Press, an editor extraordi­
naire, unflaggingly nurtured this project from the moment my proposal
landed on his desk. Roger made demands, broached suggestions, raised
ideas, and provided materials that made the manuscript into a far better
book than it would have been otherwise. Other individuals who pro­
vided useful counsel, information, and / or moral support include (with
apologies to those I might have inadvertently omitted) Tarak Barkawi,
Sammy Barkin, Bruce Cumings, Larry Dodd, David Easton, Geoff Eley,
Maria Fanis, James Fesler, David Gibbs, Jack Gunnell, Ann Hawthorne,
Aida Hozic, Larry Jacobs, Peggy Kohn, Friedrich Kratochwil, Mark Laf-
fey, Jeff Legro, John Mearsheimer, John Owen, Samuel Popkin, Louise E.
Robbins, Brian Schmidt, Rogers M. Smith, Joe Underhill-Cady, Robert Vi­
talis, and Kenneth Waltz.
The early development of this book was facilitated by an award from
the Social Science Research Council of an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation
Postdoctoral Fellowship on Peace and Security in a Changing World. Addi­
tional support was extended by the Humanities Scholarship Enhancement
Fund of the University of Florida's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Portions of chapter x were first published in International Security 20
(fall 1995): 147-84, and portions of chapter 4 in the European Journal of In­
ternational Relations 6 (December 2000): 54 3 -7 3 . 1 thank the journals' re­
spective publishers, MIT Press and Sage Publications, for permission to
reproduce the material here. Robert Dahl and David Easton kindly per­
mitted me to quote from the transcripts of their oral history interviews,
archived at the University of Kentucky Library. W. Michael Reisman,
Harold D. Lasswell's literary executor, granted me permission to publish
material from Lasswell's papers, archived at Yale University Library. Fred
Riggs permitted me to quote from his letters. Permission to publish cita­
tions from the Charles E. Merriam Papers w as extended by the Special
Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library. I have
also used the following archival collections in accordance with the pol­
icies of the libraries possessing them: the papers of Carl J. Friedrich and
the papers of Bruce Campbell Hopper (both at Harvard University A r­
chives), the papers of James W. Fesler (Yale University Library), the papers
of James K. Pollock (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan),
and the papers of Herbert W. Schneider (Columbia University Rare Book
and Manuscript Library).
The publication of this book gives me an opportunity to acknowledge
an enduring debt to two mentors who contributed to my intellectual
growth in important ways. Israel Gershoni of the Department of Middle
Eastern History at Tel Aviv University supervised my senior paper and,
in the process, taught me what it means to be a scholar. I came to appre­
ciate his example more and more as I was becoming a scholar myself.
Chris Achen, m y dissertation supervisor, treated me as a peer as well as
a student. He taught me to set m y theoretical sights high, think critically,
and analyze rigorously.
M y parents, Miriam and Pinchas Oren, instilled in me the value of
learning and maintained firm confidence in m y cerebral abilities, even
when objectively I had little to show for them. M y mother succumbed to
cancer while I was working on this manuscript. Knowing how extraor­
dinarily proud she would have been to see it in print, I dedicate this book
to her memory. M y greatest debt is to Jodi, an island of stability in an oth­
erwise turbulent world. Without her love and support this book would
not have been born, let alone our precious mutual treasures, Avigail,
Maya, and Eytan Oren.
I do O r e n
Gainesville, Florida
Our Enemies and US
 American Political Science as Ideology

American political scientists seldom reflect upon the identity of their

discipline. They instinctively associate political science with freedom and
democracy even as their texts represent the discipline as an objective sci­
ence. Thus, the self-image of American political science is paradoxically
that of a detached science attached to particular ideals.
The linkage between political science and liberal democracy is so taken
for granted in the profession that it requires little explicit affirmation ex­
cept, from time to time, in rituals such as the annual address of the pres­
ident of the American Political Science Association (APSA). Thus, in his
address to the 1987 annual meeting of the association, Samuel Hunting-
ton, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University,
observed that "it is impossible to have political scientists in the absence
of political participation" and that "the connection between democracy
and political science has been a close and continuing one." He empha­
sized that "where democracy is strong, political science is strong; where
democracy is weak, political science is w eak" and added that "the rela­
tionship [between the two] is nowhere more notable than in countries,
such as Germany and Italy, that, prior to World War II, had strong tradi­
tions of scholarship in history, social theory, and sociology, but not in po­
litical science."1
But a careful reading of the same text raises some doubt about the firm­
ness of the alleged bond between political science and democracy The
main theme of Huntington's essay is that democratic reforms must be car­
ried out slowly, incrementally, and with great caution. Dictatorships must
not be pushed too hard because "however bad a given evil m ay be, a
worse one is always possible and often likely: witness the unhappy re­
cent experiences of Cuba, Vietnam, Cam bodia.. .. The political scientist,
consequently, can only be skeptical of a claim that, as one Chilean dissi­
dent [Ariel Dorfman] put it, 'there is no w ay in which we are going to see
anything worse than General Pinochet' or the argument of an opponent
of apartheid that 'the first African government of South Africa . . . could
scarcely be any worse' than the current regime." A worse alternative ap-
parently w as a government led by "the revolutionaries of the African N a­
tional Congress."2
Huntington's mention of South Africa was not accidental; several
years earlier he had traveled to Johannesburg to meet with South African
officials and lecture before the South African Political Science Association
on political reform.3 The context of his trip was the apartheid regime's at­
tempt to engineer limited constitutional change that would extend some
political rights to the country's mixed-race and Asian population but
none to the black majority. The commentary on this endeavor b y Joseph
Lelyveld, the South African correspondent of the New York Times in the
early 1980s (and later the newspaper's executive editor), deserves to be
quoted at some length, both because it offers food for thought regarding
the connection between political science and democracy and because it
foreshadows m y approach in the following pages.
The serviceability of the jargon generated by American political scien­
tists for this kind of approach to the renovation of apartheid w as al­
w ays marvelous to behold___ The ruling National party can now hold
a mirror to itself and discover that it has the potential to become, in the
words of Professor Robert Rotberg of MIT, a "model modernizing oli­
garchy." Terms like "parameters" and "legitimacy" float in the con­
versations of white politicians and officials like slices of exotic fruit in
a highball. A Stellenbosch professor told me of the party's efforts to
engineer a "paradigm switch." The first major document on the new
approach to constitutional change, a report by a committee of a mul­
tiracial advisory body called the President's Council, was written by
an in-house academic with a Cornell Ph.D. who managed to append
a bibliography with citations to about thirty American political scien­
tists; all to dress up an argument th at. . . blacks could not be included
in "a successful democracy in current and foreseeable circumstances"
because of their "cultural differences, relative numbers, conflicting in­
terests and divergent political objectives." In other words, there w as
a danger that the majority might abuse democracy to serve its own
interests. The report then called for "limited consociation" among
whites, coloreds, and Indians based on "segmental autonomy," which
it promised "w ould not in the least disturb existing power rela­
tions."4
The committee report that Lelyveld mentioned cited Huntington more
frequently than almost any other American scholar.5 The report con­
tained, for example, a lengthy quotation from the paper Huntington de­
livered in South Africa, which asserted that although "the liberal belief
that each person deserves equal political and civic rights" appealed to
Americans, "the congruence of that [liberal] principle with South African
traditions and its relevance to South African n eed s. . . seem to me to be
questionable."6
In his paper Huntington also considered, as Lelyveld put it, "the ab­
stract proposition that increased authoritarianism might actually be nec­
essary for reform."7 Huntington stated that "it is not inconceivable that
narrowing the scope of political participation may be indispensable to
eventually broadening that participation" and that "the centralization of
power m ay also be necessary for the government to maintain the control
over violence that is essential to carry through major reforms."8 Regard­
less of what Huntington actually meant by abstractions like "centraliza­
tion of power," South African officials used the "Huntington thesis," as
national police chief Johan Coetzee called it, to legitimate their actions.
"To advance such a thesis in Johannesburg," Lelyveld commented, "with­
out considering the actual methods b y which 'control over violence' is
maintained in South Africa . . . was to offer a form of unction, to say, man
to man, that w e all know how difficult reform can be."9
Lelyveld's unflattering commentary does not imply that the majority
of American political scientists shared the views expressed by Hunting-
ton, let alone endorsed the use of those views by the apartheid regime. It
is fair to assume that most political scientists did not, and that the schol­
ars cited in the report of the South African President's Council did not
necessarily agree with the report's conclusions. It is also worth recogniz­
ing that some political scientists, such as Willard Johnson of the Massa­
chusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), took an active part in the struggle
against apartheid.10 But Lelyveld's commentary does illustrate how os­
tensibly disinterested scholarship can serve to rationalize repression.
Lelyveld's book also suggests that U.S.-trained South African political
scientists were willingly working in the service of the country's racist
regime, and that political science had been a thriving discipline in
Afrikaner universities. It helps remind us that in Afrikanerdom's intel­
lectual seat, Stellenbosch University, the "theology and political science
classrooms served as academic laboratories of the 'Grand Apartheid'
dream of Hendrik Verwoerd," South Africa's former prime minister.11
This state of affairs belies Huntington's claim that "where democracy is
weak, political science is weak."
In sum, Lelyveld's observations suggest that although political scien­
tists as private persons m ay be committed to democracy, political scien­
tific concepts and political science as a profession are not inherently
incompatible with illiberal, nondemocratic regimes. The bond between
liberal democratic values and political science may not be as natural and
as exclusive as Huntington claimed.
 Huntington's own biography raises doubts not only about the attach­
ment of political science to democracy but also about the other element
of the paradoxical self-image of American political science: its presump­
tion of objectivity Throughout his long and illustrious career, Huntington
has advised not only foreign officials but also, and far more extensively,
his own government. That career provokes the question whether Ameri­
can political science is in fact more attached to its homeland than to
"democracy."
In July 1961 Huntington wrote to political scientist Harold Lasswell, a
longtime consultant to U.S. national security agencies, to thank him for
facilitating Huntington's election to the Cosmos Club. "The Cosmos has
always been my idea of the proper Washington home for the gentleman-
scholar," he wrote. "Given the present [Kennedy] administration, I expect
to make frequent use of the club's facilities."12
Huntington's intimacy with the national security and foreign policy
agencies of the U.S. government outlasted the "present administration."
He not only advised the Johnson administration on the prosecution of the
Vietnam War but also served as "consultant to numerous government
agencies," including the State Department, the office of the Secretary of
Defense, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA). Huntington lectured or consulted at the Air War College,
the National War College, the Industrial College of the Arm ed Forces,
and the A ir Force Academ y He served on the Presidential Task Force on
International Development (1969-70), the Commission on U .S.-Latin
American Relations (1974-76), the Commission on Integrated Long
Term Strategy (1986-88), and the Commission on Protecting and Re­
ducing Government Secrecy (1995-97)* I*1 1977-78 Huntington w as co­
ordinator of security planning at the National Security Council, then
headed by his close friend, Columbia University political scientist Zbig­
niew Brzezinski. Some of Huntington's published research w as funded
by the C IA .13
While maintaining close ties to various foreign policy agencies of the
U.S. government, Huntington produced some of the most influential
books of twentieth-century political science, including Political Order in
Changing Societies (1968), American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony
(1981), The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1991),
and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). Hunt­
ington's scholarship earned him prestigious awards and honors, includ­
ing a Guggenheim Fellowship, the presidency of the APSA , and the
Grawemayer World Order Award.
M y concern is not with the ethical propriety of individual scholars'
working for the government.14 Scholars are citizens, too, and are enti-
tied — some would say obligated — to serve their nation. M y concern is
rather with the connection between the politics of U.S, foreign policy and
the substance of political science scholarship. Is Huntington's scholarly
career independent of his foreign policy career, or are they two sides of
the same coin? Is Huntington's scholarship unaffected by the politics of
U.S. foreign policy in which he took an active part? Does his career sug­
gest that American political science might be more attached to America's
regime than to democracy per se? What are the ramifications of political
scientists' imbrication in the politics they study for the claims of their pro­
fession to be a detached science, in which the researcher is separate from
the object of study?
Although the notion that politics and scholarship constitute a single
nexus has been powerfully articulated in recent decades, most notably by
Michel Foucault and Edward Said, the more general idea of the relativity
of knowledge, including social scientific knowledge, goes back quite
far.15 More than sixty years ago the British scholar Edward H. Carr imag­
inatively employed Karl M arx's theory of ideology and Karl Mannheim's
sociology of knowledge to expose the ideological foundations of the An­
glo-American science of international relations.16 And in Germany a cen­
tury ago M ax Weber, in his essay on objectivity in social science, stressed
that "all knowledge of cultural reality . . . is always knowledge from par­
ticular points of view /' The social scientist's point of view, Weber argued,
is shaped b y historical context:
The cultural problems which move men form themselves ever anew
and in different colors, and the boundaries of that area in the infinite
stream of concrete events which acquires meaning and significance for
us . . . are constantly subject to change. The intellectual contexts from
which it is viewed and scientifically analyzed shift. The points of de­
parture of the cultural sciences remain changeable throughout the lim­
itless future.. . . A systematic science of culture, even only in the sense
of a definitive, objectively valid, systematic fixation of the problems
which it should treat, would be senseless in itself.
Weber suggested that the "point of view " of social scientific scholar­
ship varies not only across time but also by national origin. His point was
not that scholars from different national backgrounds could not agree on
the validity of empirical or logical truths. On the contrary, "a systematically
correct scientific proof in the social sciences, if it is to achieve its purpose,
must be acknowledged as correct even by a Chinese---- Furthermore, the
successful logical analysis of the content of an ideal and its ultimate ax­
ioms and the discovery of the consequences which arise from pursuing
it, logically and practically, must also be valid for the Chinese." The point
was rather that "our Chinese can lack a 'sense' for our ethical imperative
and he can and certainly often w ill deny the ideal itself and the concrete
value-judgments derived from it."
Weber thus held that it would be futile to seek a universal, Archimedean
perspective from which to analyze the complex and ever-changing real­
ity of human affairs. Meaningful social scientific knowledge is necessar­
ily established from particular perspectives; changing historical and
cultural circumstances supply social science with its objects of investiga­
tion and shape "the construction of the conceptual scheme which will be
used in the investigation."17
Although Weber and Carr have become canonical figures in contem­
porary political science, the discipline has not internalized their view s on
the historical and geographic relativity of social scientific knowledge.
Carr became an icon of realist thought in international relations, but con­
temporary scholars in that subfield almost never dissect their discipline
with the tools of Ideologiekritik that Carr applied to interwar-era interna­
tional relations. Similarly, although American political scientists have
held Weber in high regard since World War II, his insistence on the per­
spective-bound nature of knowledge and his skepticism about the possi­
bility of a systematic science of society have had little resonance in the
discipline. More recent debate about the nexus between power and knowl­
edge has generated even less interest except in small circles in the sub­
fields of political theory and international relations.
Although individual political scientists often acknowledge, in private
or in published personal recollections, that their research agenda has been
shaped by the flow of national and international events or by personal in­
volvement in government and political work,18 the profession's method­
ological texts are virtually silent on these issues. These texts offer students
useful advice on how to validate the empirical truth of theoretical propo­
sitions, but they rarely discuss where these propositions come from. Their
conception of "significance" is statistical, not cultural-historical. Indeed,
from books on the scope and method of political research one would
hardly guess that point of view is an important issue of social science epis­
temology. Nor do these books invite political researchers to examine their
position critically vis-à-vis the object of their research. By default, the im­
age of political science that emerges from its discourse is one of an objec­
tive science that investigates politics yet remains outside politics, and
whose questions and conceptual constructs are not embedded in any his­
torical or national context. The notion that political science in the United
States might reflect a distinctly American point of view receives virtually
no consideration.19
In this book I raise two questions about the self-image of American polit­
ical science. M y prim ary question is: H ow accurate is this self-image, in
both its elements? Is political science an objective science independent of
its national origin and historical context, or is it distinctly American in
character? And how committed is political science to freedom and
democracy? A secondary question, which I address in the conclusion, is:
How can the internal inconsistency of the discipline's self-image be ex­
plained? How is it that political science is grasped as being at once value-
free and partial to democratic values?
Although the case of South Africa is not the focus of this book, Joseph
Lelyveld's critical commentary hints at m y analytical approach: hold for­
eign political regimes, and the relations of the United States with these
regimes, as mirrors to the face of the discipline. More specifically, this
book probes the character of the discipline as reflected in its characteri­
zation of America's chief enemies in the twentieth century, its concomi­
tant characterization of the United States (which I often call "U S"), and
its actual involvement in the wars against America's enemies. All the en­
emies on which I focus — Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and Stalin's
Soviet Union (as well as Fascist Italy, which I discuss briefly) — main­
tained decent, sometimes even cordial, relations with the United States
before they became its bitter rivals.20 To make the case that political sci­
ence is written from a distinctly American perspective (rather than being
objective) I document a systematic pattern of change in the portrayals of
these enemies before and after their conflict with US. To bolster m y case
I document a pattern of concurrence between America's wars and major
theoretical transformations in the discipline (which are tantamount to
transformations in political scientists' visions of US). And I further dem­
onstrate the Americanness of political science by documenting the growth
of intimate relationships between important circles in the profession and
the U.S. government and tracing how this intimacy between political
power and political science gave rise to major theoretical concepts and re­
search programs.
Exploring the discipline's characterization of America's enemies af­
fords a critical examination not only of the presumed objectivity of polit­
ical science but also of its purported attachment to democracy. America's
chief enemies included the most murderous regimes of the twentieth
century. Yet before the onset of conflict with the fascist and Stalinist dic­
tatorships, the profession's leading journals and textbooks expressed un­
critical, sometime downright friendly, attitudes toward them.
In chapters 1 to 3 , 1 compare postconflict images and normative eval­
uations of the regimes of America's enemies with contemporaneous de­
pictions of them. In all cases the images presented by American political
scientists became considerably darker (and substantially less similar to
the image of US) after the onset of the conflict. In chapter 1 1 show that
the current image of Imperial Germ any as an "autocratic" antithesis of
American "dem ocracy" was not shared b y two of the most important po­
litical scientists of the late nineteenth century, John Burgess and Woodrow
Wilson. Burgess, founder of the first graduate school of political science
in America, regarded Germany's political system as second only to Am er­
ica's. Whereas political scientists today regard the kaiser's lack of parlia­
mentary accountability as a serious flaw, Burgess saw this conservative
feature of the Wilhelmine system as its virtue. Similarly, in the 1890s Wil­
son regarded Imperial Germany as an advanced constitutional state
whose efficient administration was a model for American administrative
reform. Whereas present-day political scientists condemn the three-class
electoral system of Prussia for its violation of equal suffrage, Wilson rec­
ommended that American cities adopt that very system because it privi­
leged the "better" elements in society. Thus, Imperial Germany appeared
far more like US relative to the norms espoused b y Burgess and Wilson
than it does relative to the norms b y which political scientists today com­
pare these polities.
The labels typically attached to Mussolini's Italy — "fascist" or "total­
itarian" — now connote a particularly harsh type of dictatorship. Since
World War II, political scientists have had little or nothing good to say
about Fascist Italy, but in the 1920s and 1930s prominent scholars ex­
pressed rather uncritical views of Mussolini's regime. Some portrayed
Mussolini's dictatorship as a vigorous modernizing force appropriate for
a backward nation such as Italy;21 others believed that certain aspects of
fascism might be appropriate for modem America. Charles Merriam, for
example, the most important political scientist of the interwar era, was in­
trigued by Mussolini's "striking experiment" in civic education. Merriam
sponsored a study of the methods by which the Fascist regime fostered
civic loyalty, characterized those methods as "full of meaning for the stu­
dent of civic training," and was open to the possibility of adapting them
to American conditions.22 Merriam's uncritical attitude toward Fascist
Italy is discussed in chapter 2 as a prelude to its main topic: political sci­
entists' depiction of Nazi Germany.
Hitler's Germany is now our paradigm of extraordinary evil. The atti­
tude that Nazi Germany had its "good points" is taboo in current politi­
cal science (as in American culture more broadly), but before the w ar it
was well within the bounds of legitimate discourse. A review of the En­
glish edition of Mein Kampf in the American Political Science Review in Feb­
ruary 1934 praised the editor for presenting a "very fair picture of Hitler,"
including Hitler's "most enlightened comments on the theory o f the state
and the nature of government/'23 This review was not an aberration. Dur­
ing the 1930s some prominent political scientists maintained that Nazi
Germany should be studied dispassionately, that the Nazi regime was not
without positive achievements, especially in the area of public adminis­
tration, and that Americans could learn from those achievements. Such
attitudes were evident in articles in the American Political Science Review
as late as 1939.
In the 1950s political scientists, most notably Merle Fainsod and Carl
Friedrich, played a key role in elaborating the concept of totalitarianism
and applying it to the Soviet Union. The concept, which enjoyed near-uni­
versal acceptance in the profession at the height of the Cold War, entailed
an analogy between the regimes of Stalin and Hitler and connoted a form
of tyranny far more "ghastly" than that of conventional autocracies.24
But, as I argue in chapter 3, during the 1930s it was not uncommon for
American political scientists to portray Stalin's Soviet Union in far more
positive terms. Merle Fainsod, for example, was intrigued in 1934 by the
Soviet experiment in central planning and conspicuously refrained from
identifying Stalin's regime as a dictatorship. And the University of
Chicago's leading Sovietologist, Samuel Harper, threatened to sue his
publisher in November 1938 to prevent inclusion of Harper's book in a
series titled "European Dictatorships."25
In sum, the current images of Imperial Germany, Fascist Italy, Nazi
Germany, and Stalin's Soviet Union in American political science differ
markedly from those presented before the regimes became America's en­
emies. Imperial Germany was transformed from a progressive constitu­
tional state into a reactionary "autocracy"; Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany,
and Stalin's Soviet Union metamorphosed from legitimate laboratories of
social or administrative experimentation into embodiments of "totalitar­
ian" evil.
The image of Japan, America's other great enemy in the twentieth cen­
tury, underwent the same process. That case has already been ably ex­
amined by Richard Samuels, whose findings are remarkably similar to
mine. "The intellectual history of Japanese studies in this country," he
concluded, "reflects closely the changes in the foreign relations of the
United States and Japan. The predominant images of Japan in U.S. schol­
arship have been positive when U.S.-Japanese relations have been
friendly and have turned critical when the relationship has been more ad­
versarial. Indeed, American Japan scholarship has been more deeply em­
bedded in the political culture of the bilateral relationship than in social
science."26
The pattern of historical change in political science's images of Amer­
ica's enemies is thus quite systematic: in all the cases presented in the fol­
lowing pages, as well as in the case of Japan, the enemy's image has
shifted in a decidedly negative direction, and the shift has coincided with
the onset of conflict. This pattern strongly suggests that the changes have
been driven as much b y America's changing rivalries as by the emergence
of new facts about the regimes. M y point is not that fact-based learning
did not occur, but that the overall pattern of change in the images of
America's enemies has been too systematic to be explained primarily, let
alone exclusively, by rational learning.

The history of America's foreign relations has impinged on the history of

American political science in still more w ays, occasioning broad theoret­
ical changes that amounted to changes in the image of America itself.
Such theoretical re-imaginings were partly inspired b y the active in­
volvement of political scientists in America's w ar efforts, as consultants,
advisers, or ideological warriors in the service of the foreign policy agen­
cies of the U.S. government.
Together, then, the following chapters present a history of American
political science narrated in terms of America's major wars. The birth of
political science as an academic profession occurred in the aftermath of
the Civil War. The trauma of national rupture issued the compelling task
of laying intellectual foundations for national cohesion. The pioneers of
the profession located such foundations primarily in theories of Amer­
ica's Teutonic heritage and in the doctrine of the supreme sovereignty of
"the state" to which their German mentors introduced them.
World War I shaped the theoretical trajectory of American political sci­
ence in several ways. First, conflict with Germany shattered the image of
America as an Aryan/Teutonic nation. Second, the war launched the pre­
cipitous decline of the doctrine of the state, a decline that had as much to
do with its German accent as with analytical shortcomings identified by
its critics. Third, in 19 17 and 19 18 political scientists participated in the
massive campaign to propagate America's w ar aims throughout the
world and to persuade a reluctant American public to rally behind the ad­
ministration's decision to enter the war. The remarkable success of this
propaganda campaign alerted political scientists to the significance of
nonrational forces in human affairs and suggested to them that mass
opinion w as fickle. This "lesson" contributed to the emergence of a "so­
cial control" vision of American democracy in influential circles within
the profession, most notably in the University of Chicago's political sci­
ence department, led by Charles Merriam.
Merriam, who served as chief U.S. propagandist in wartime Italy, did
not abandon hope for democracy, but in the 1920s he lost whatever faith
he had had in the educability of the masses. He came to believe that pro­
gressive reform could best be achieved by expert technocrats who would
harness psychological, social, and eugenic science to the causes of na­
tional economic planning, improving the welfare of the masses, and fos­
tering civic harmony. Merriam's progressive vision of social control was
developed further by his prize student, Harold Lasswell, who elaborated
on how the technocratic elite would use propaganda techniques in order
to sublimate political conflict and train the public to accept the correct
path of reform.
The first war against Germany demolished Teutonic theory and se­
verely damaged the theory of the state. It would take a second w ar to
wreck another theoretical field with a marked German connection: pub­
lic administration. From the late 1880s through World War II, public ad­
ministration had been a central subfield of political science, attracting
many top minds. The field w as unified by a paradigm that conceptual­
ized administration as a technical, not political, endeavor and celebrated
bureaucracy's rationality and efficiency. The founders of the field, in­
cluding Woodrow Wilson, sought to rescue wide areas of policymaking
from the corruption and inefficiency of partisan politics by entrusting
them to a meritocratic civil service. Dismayed by the backwardness of
American public administration, these scholars turned to foreign models
for inspiration, and they especially admired the German bureaucracy for
its efficiency and professionalism. After World War I, public administra­
tion's distrust of mass politics and its focus on scientific technique fitted
neatly within the emergent vision of technocratic social control. In the late
1920s Charles Merriam facilitated the continued health and well-being of
the field b y establishing the Public Administration Clearing House — a
resource-rich adjunct to Chicago's political science department whose
function w as to foster national and international networks of adminis­
trative experts.
The luster of German administrative efficiency survived the Great War.
The Chicago-based Clearing House maintained cooperative relations with
German scholars after 1933, and the Nazi takeover did not put an end to
pilgrimages to Germany by American scholars of administration. These
scholarly pilgrims did not endorse the political aims of Nazism, but their
tradition of conceptualizing administration as apolitical permitted them
to study Nazi administrative reforms dispassionately and to consider ap­
plying them in the United States. World War II and the Holocaust — by
illustrating how a long-admired bureaucracy could so rationally execute
a horrible political program — finally discredited the notion that admin­
istration was apolitical and led to political scientists' (belated) discovery
of Max Weber's pessimistic view of bureaucracy. The Nazi "lesson" ex­
plains w hy public administration fell into a prolonged identity crisis soon
after the war and w hy it lost the status it had previously enjoyed in Am er­
ican political science.27
The imprints left upon political science by America's next big conflict,
the Cold War, are discussed in chapters 3 and 4. The conflict with the So­
viet Union distanced political science from ideals and concepts associated
with socialism, even if the association was tenuous. In the early 1950s
leaders of the profession self-consciously chose to identify it as a "behav­
ioral science," since "social" science w as conflated with socialism in the
minds of some politicians and members of foundation boards (contrary
to popular belief in the profession, the new label had little to do with the
notion of behaviorism in psychology).28 The term (and the vision of) so­
cial control died aw ay for similar reasons. Notwithstanding the aging
Charles Merriam's sincere insistence that his cherished notion of a
planned society was strictly democratic, in the charged anticommunist
atmosphere of the early 1950s anything that smacked of "planning" was
deemed too Soviet to remain part of the conceptual vocabulary of politi­
cal science.
Progressive definitions of "democracy" that had been common in the
1930s met a similar fate. During the Great Depression, political scientists
often defined democracy as much in economic as in political terms, and
as much in terms of substantive ideals as in terms of electoral processes.
Merle Fainsod, for example, maintained in 1934 that "democracy is as
much concerned with the eradication of p o v erty. . . and with the allevi­
ation of unemployment as it is with universal suffrage," Charles Merriam
defined democracy partly in terms of ideals such as "the perfectibility of
mankind" and fair distribution of economic gains throughout society.
But in the 1950s political scientists concluded that faith in human "per­
fectibility" was a pathology associated with "totalitarian" regimes, and
they abandoned substantive visions of democracy in favor of procedural
definitions inspired by the work of Joseph Schumpeter. The most influ­
ential books of the decade, by D avid Truman and Robert Dahl, resolved
American democratic government into a pluralistic social process har­
monized by a democratic social consensus. The vision of America as a
strong state in which technocratic elites scientifically controlled inter­
group conflict and guided society toward progressive ends gave w ay to
a vision of America as a strong society whose politics no longer needed
to be rescued by apolitical, public-minded administrators. A s Terence Ball
has observed, the state was banished from the conceptual inventory of
American political science precisely at a time when the state envisioned
in N ew Deal programs — which Merriam and many political scientists
fought for in the 1930s — was being consolidated into concrete reality.
Only the context of the Cold War can explain this paradox.29
 The political science of the 1950s evinced yet another paradox. At the
very time that the apparatus of the state — planners, administrators,
technocratic experts — was being elided from political science discourse,
prominent political scientists were enthusiastically placing their expertise
at the disposal of the government's national security agencies; the pro­
fession w as becoming enmeshed in the state to an unprecedented de­
gree.30 The intimacy between political science and the national security
state began as a transitory affair during World War I, when political sci­
entists participated in the Wilson administration's propaganda cam­
paign, and blossomed into an enduring relationship during World War II.
In the early 1940s political scientists flocked to Washington to serve in the
rapidly expanding federal government. Some of them joined intelligence
and psychological warfare agencies, a fact with significant consequences
for their own careers and for the profession as a whole. Agencies such as
the Office of Strategic Services, the Office of War Information, and Harold
Lasswell's propaganda analysis unit at the Library of Congress func­
tioned as informal postgraduate schools where the country's brightest
minds mentored young talent in research methods. The list of scholars
who benefited from contact with Harold Lasswell during or immediately
after the w ar reads like a who's who of postwar social science, including
Gabriel Almond, Heinz Eulau, Alexander George, Irving Janis, Morris
Janowitz, Abraham Kaplan, Nathan Leites, Daniel Lemer, Ithiel de Sola
Pool, and Edward Shils. The wartime work of these and other scholars
not only enhanced their technical research skills but also exposed them to
knowledge that placed them in a favorable position to respond to the re­
newed demand, created by the Cold War, for psychological and ideolog­
ical warfare expertise.
Gabriel Alm ond's career, which I examine in detail in chapter 4, is a
case in point. Almond studied under Merriam and Lasswell in the 1930s
and continued his informal education while analyzing propaganda and
civilian morale during the war. In the late 1940s and the 1950s Almond
consulted to the Air University, the State Department, the Office of N aval
Research, the RAN D Corporation, the A ir Force, and the Psychological
Strategy Board of the White House. Alm ond's book The Appeals of Com­
munism (1954) w as researched in the context of the U.S. campaign to curb
communism in Italy and France, and Almond kept the Psychological
Strategy Board abreast of his findings. Some of the research for this book
w as commissioned to pollster Elmo Wilson, who had worked with A l­
mond in the Office of War Information during World War II. Wilson's
polling organization, which was closely tied to the U.S. Information
Agency, also conducted most of the field research for Almond's later clas­
sic, The Civic Culture. The Civic Culture was explicitly motivated by the
need to w in the hearts and minds of the peoples of the ''emerging na­
tions/' and Almond self-consciously regarded his study as a sequel to
Merriam's studies in civic education, which in turn originated in Mer-
riam's fight for the hearts and minds of the Italian people. The Civic Cul­
ture can thus be seen as the culmination of a trajectory in which political
science scholarship and the politics of foreign policy continually shaded
into and fed each other.31
Chapter 4 sketches three additional w ays in which political power and
political science became commingled in the context of the Cold War. For
one, the postwar decline of the field of public administration w as eased
b y the active participation of public administration scholars in U.S. for­
eign aid programs in the underdeveloped world, including Vietnam. The
other instances of enmeshment involve the Cold War career of the Cen­
ter for International Studies at MIT — a CIA-supported think tank that
evolved into MIT's department of political science — and the story of
Evron Kirkpatrick, who left the intelligence unit of the State Department
in 1954 to become the executive director of the APSA. Kirkpatrick pro­
moted the discipline's identity as an objective science while engaging in
the politics of the liberal anticommunist wing of the Democratic Party
and maintaining covert ties to U.S. intelligence agencies.
Together these sketches provide a clear, if by no means complete, pic­
ture of an intimate relationship between U.S. political science and U.S.
foreign policy agencies during the Cold War. The intimacy between po­
litical science and the politics of U.S. foreign policy challenges a central
presupposition of the scientific approach to the study of politics, namely
that the researcher and the object of study are separate.
In chapter 4 1 also discuss some of the marks left b y the Vietnam War
on political science discourse. First, the Vietnam experience, mediated by
the agency of Samuel Popkin, sowed some of the seeds of the rise of the
"rational choice" approach in comparative politics. Popkin worked in
Vietnam on a counterinsurgency research project sponsored by the Pen­
tagon, and w as later jailed for refusing to cooperate with the investiga­
tion of the unauthorized dissemination of the Pentagon Papers. He
rejected the psychocultural approach represented by the w ork of Lass-
well, Almond, and Almond's apprentice Lucian Pye, and produced the
first major rational choice analysis of Third World politics.32
The Vietnam War was also an important factor in the internal turmoil
that produced an intense, if short-lived, democratic revival in the A PSA
in the late 1960s. In addition, the Vietnam War w as an important back­
ground condition for the emergence of serious challenges to the prevail­
ing pluralist vision of American politics. Among students of political
theory and American politics, disenchantment with pluralism led to in­
terest in concepts of social an d /or participatory democracy. In compara­
tive politics, the flight from pluralism led scholars to consider concepts
that stressed the autonomy of "the state," most notably "corporatism."
But in the 1980s these challenges to pluralist orthodoxy petered out, and
today most undergraduate textbooks in American government continue
to portray the United States as a pluralist democracy.
Finally, in another twist of the evolving paradoxical relationship among
political science, the state, and the concept of the state, the Vietnam War,
at the same time that it gave resonance to calls to "bring the state back"
into theoretical discourse, resulted in a straining of the relationship be­
tween political science and the actually existing state.33 The budgetary
pressures created both by the escalation of the w ar and by the postwar
shrinkage of the defense budget adversely affected the generous funding
of political research by the Defense Department, slowing the momentum
of the behavioral (scientific) revolution that had swept the profession in
the 1950s and 1960s. The Vietnam experience also drove a wedge between
the government and the academic community, creating a climate on Amer­
ican campuses in which collaboration between social scientists and gov­
ernment intelligence agencies was regarded as unethical.
The norm against cloak-gown collaboration appears to have evapo­
rated since the end of the Cold War. As a Yale University political scien­
tist with ties to the CIA put it in late 2000, cooperation between professors
and U.S. intelligence agencies "is now very much to the fore."34 The war
on terrorism launched in response to the September 2001 attacks on N ew
York and Washington may result in further retightening of the relation­
ship between American political science and the American government.
The question persists whether political science can be an objective, disin­
terested science while it serves the interests of the American state.

To recapitulate, in this book I probe the objectivity and the commitment

to democracy of American political science by holding America's foreign
relations as a mirror to the discipline's face. The fact that American polit­
ical scientists have a record of expressing uncritical attitudes toward for­
eign tyrannies raises doubts about the purported bond between political
science and democracy. The historical correspondence between the trans­
formation of foreign regimes from friends to foes and the transformation
of political scientists' images of those regimes supports Max Weber's
claim that social science is always written from a particular point of view.
The particularly American character of the discipline comes into yet
sharper relief once we notice the pattern of correspondence between
America's w ars and changes in political scientists' portrayals of Am er­
ica's own image, as well as the effect of those wars on the relations be­
tween political science and the American state. World War I undermined
the theories used b y political scientists to respond to the challenge pre­
sented by the Civil War: the theory of America's Germanic identity and
the theory of state sovereignty. World War II dealt a blow to the vision of
an America controlled b y apolitical, enlightened experts. The Cold War
undermined the connection between "dem ocracy" and socioeconomic
ideals, giving resonance to the pluralistic, procedural vision of American
democracy. The Cold War also increased demand b y the state for the ex­
pertise of political scientists, which they were happy to satisfy even as
they elided the apparatus of the state from their theories. Vietnam dis­
tanced the discipline from the government, but this estrangement m ay
have come to an end since the declaration of the w ar on terrorism, if not
since the end of the Cold War.

Political Science as Ideology

How do political scientists label a body of thought that bears the mark
of a national and historical perspective, yet does not acknowledge that
perspective? What term in the vernacular of social science describes per­
spective-bound human thought that abstains from self-examination and
perceives itself as timeless and universal? Political scientists would prob­
ably describe such thought as ideological Regrettably, they rarely bother
to reflect upon the ideological character of their own thought (but then,
lack of self-reflection is in itself a mark of ideological discourse). Political
science in America is a historically and nationally rooted ideology as
much as an objective science.
I employ the concept of ideology in the general sense in which it was
understood b y thinkers such as Karl M arx and Karl Mannheim, namely
as knowledge embedded in particular social and historical circumstances
that its purveyors falsely, if sincerely, believe to be universal.35 I do not
mean to suggest that American political science constitutes an ideology
in the sense of being an "ism " — a fixed, rigid, tight-knit system of ideas
oriented to an explicit normative end. Indeed, the conceptualization of
ideology as an "ism " was in itself a product of America's international
rivalries; it w as popularized at the height of the Cold War, when Am eri­
can intellectuals attributed ideological rigidity and zeal to totalitarian
regimes while declaring the "end of ideology" in America itself.36 Rather
than being a fixed "ism ," American political science is often in flux; rather
than being rigid and uniform, it vibrates with debates and controversies.
But beneath the flux there is an enduring undercurrent: America.
The welfare of America is the master value of the discipline, and the
seemingly objective concepts of political science mask normative visions
of US. When political scientists debate abstract analytical concepts — in­
eluding, prominently) the concept of democracy — they actually debate
America's identity, and what it should be. Now, identity, or self-under­
standing, is virtually vacuous unless placed in relation to an "Other"; it
is only by w ay of delineating contrasts and similarities to "Them " that
"U S " acquires a meaning.37 Thus, American political scientists continu­
ally negotiate the identity of US by w ay of direct or indirect comparisons
with foreign regimes. Although "Am erica" is the abiding concern of
American political science, the identity of "Am erica" is ever contested,
ever fluid; and because identity is a relational concept, the envisioning
and re-visioning of "Am erica" necessarily involve the (re)envisioning of
the outside world.
The mutual constitution of the visions of US and the world m ay as­
sume three stylized ideological configurations. First, political scientists
m ay harbor an "oppositional" vision of America, seeing American polit­
ical institutions as structurally unsound and seeking their radical trans­
formation. In that case, they may regard America as grossly inferior to at
least some foreign nations, and they m ay wish to recast US wholesale in
the image of a foreign revolutionary model. The second possible ideo­
logical configuration may be termed "nationalist." From this perspective,
American political institutions are robust, and require no learning or bor­
rowing from foreign systems. Nationalism may come in two forms. In its
muted form, it is tantamount to "exceptionalism," namely the notion that
the American system is excellent but unique, and hence not for export to
others. In its "trium phal" form, nationalism implies not only that Am er­
ica has little to gain from becoming more like the world, but that the
world has much to gain from becoming more like US. Third, between the
"oppositional" and "nationalist" ideological poles, lies the "accommoda-
tionist" perspective. Whereas nationalist and oppositional ideologies are
conservative and radical, respectively, an accommodationist ideological
stance is reformist. From an accommodationist viewpoint the American
political system is structurally sound, yet plagued by significant defects.
Accommodationist reformers m ay search abroad for solutions to the
flaws they identify in America; they m ay seek not to emulate foreign
models in their totality, but to borrow selective features of these models
that might mitigate America's perceived imperfections.
In sum, from a nationalist ideological perspective America has little to
learn from the world; from an oppositional perspective, America must
learn a radical lesson from the world; from an accommodationist per­
spective, America should learn from the world, provided the learning is
done selectively and in moderation.38
Oppositional ideological tempers rarely achieved resonance, let alone
dominance, in political science. Indeed, not a single past president of the
A PSA can be fairly characterized as radical in intellectual orientation (at
least not in the orientation of the work upon which his or her reputation
w as built). The only partial exceptions to the general marginality of op­
positional ideology occurred during the 1930s and 1960s, During the de­
pression, Marxism gained a significant following on American campuses,
and it seized the imagination of young political scientists, Gabriel A l­
mond had many friends who fought with the Lincoln Brigades in the
Spanish civil war; his dissertation, completed in 1938, was extremely crit­
ical of the nation's "plutocratic" class.39 Robert Dahl, D avid Easton,
Seymour Martin Lipset, Herbert Simon, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and other
scholars who rose to prominence after World War II were committed to,
or briefly flirted with, varieties of socialism in the 1930s.40 Similarly, some
senior scholars well known in the profession today espoused radical pol­
itics as graduate students in the 1960s. But in both eras, it w as mostly
graduate students or junior faculty who were swept by the left-radical
wave, and the wave crested and subsided rather rapidly.
Historically, political science discourse has oscillated or been split be­
tween nationalist and accommodationist postures. During the depression
era the discipline swung furthest toward accommodationism. While
some political scientists flirted with radicalism, the dominant tendency in
the discipline was to embrace the reformist mood of the N ew Deal — a
mood that diagnosed America as seriously but not terminally ill and pre­
scribed reformist rather than revolutionary elixirs to cure the malaise.
Against that backdrop, political scientists looked to foreign regimes, in­
cluding Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, for models of administrative
efficiency and social planning.
In the 1950S and early 1960s, the discipline swung toward conserva­
tive nationalism. In its muted form, this nationalism w as evident in
Robert Dahl's judgment, concluding his classic Preface to Democratic The­
ory, that although the American political system w as "not for export to
others," it was a "relatively efficient system f o r . . . maintaining social
peace in a restless and immoderate people operating a gigantic, power­
ful, diversified, and incredibly complex society." In its triumphal form,
the nationalism of the period w as captured by Seymour Lipset's state­
ments that American-style democracy "is the good society itself in oper­
ation," and that "to clarify the operation of Western democracy in the
mid-twentieth century m ay contribute to the political battle in Asia and
Africa." Triumphal nationalism w as also manifest in Gabriel Almond and
Sidney Verba's hugely successful book The Civic Culture, which un­
abashedly celebrated Anglo-American political genius and positioned
other polities lower on the developmental ladder.41
In other periods, disciplinary discourse simultaneously articulated the
nationalist and accommodationist perspectives. For example, the dis­
course of the 1990s included substantial literatures, organized around
tropes such as "democratization" and "democratic peace," that implicitly
posited US as a model for the world.42 But at the same time the discourse
voiced anxiety about the alleged decline of civic spirit in America. This
anxiety found expression in the remarkable success of Robert Putnam's
Making Democracy Work, a book heralded as the heir to The Civic Culture.
In the book and in his subsequent work, Putnam portrayed northern Italy
as a model of civic associability from which Americans should learn. Put­
nam thus articulated an accommodationist stance that contrasted sharply
with the triumphal nationalist bent of The Civic Culture 43
This ideological duality sometimes characterizes political scientists'
perception of a single foreign regime. For example, Henry R. Spencer, the
profession's leading expert on Italy in the interwar period, rationalized
Mussolini's dictatorship on the ground that Anglo-Saxon democracy was
too advanced a system to suit backward Italy (a nationalist stance). At the
same time, as we have seen, other scholars regarded Fascist Italy as a lab­
oratory for experimental techniques that were potentially transferable to
America (an accommodationist stance).44 The two ideological tempers
m ay find expression even in the scholarship of a single individual, as we
shall see in chapter 1 in the case of Woodrow Wilson. In Wilson's eyes
America w as simultaneously superior and flawed, a model for the world
that itself needed some remodeling.
M y argument about the shifting, mutually constituted images of
America and its enemies in American political science can now be re­
stated in terms of these ideological configurations. In all the cases exam­
ined in detail in this book (Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and Stalin's
Soviet Union), political scientists used to view these regimes through
lenses that were at least in part accommodationist. Leading contempora­
neous scholars were attracted to certain aspects of these regimes with an
eye to learning from them how to reform corresponding aspects of Amer­
ican life. In all cases, political scientists' view s of these regimes shifted de­
cisively toward nationalism after the onset of rivalry; they developed
amnesia regarding their past accommodationism and reached a consen­
sus that these regimes were antithetical to American democracy.

Intellectual Connections: Constructivism,

History of Social Science, Sociology of Science
Although this book focuses chiefly on disciplinary history, the ques­
tions raised in it were prompted not by an a priori interest in the annals
of political science but rather b y a critique I developed of the "dem o­
cratic peace," a central idea in the current discourse of m y subfield, in­
ternational relations*45 In the field of international relations, this book fits
within the contours of the "social constructivist" school that has gained
considerable influence since the end of the Cold War. The keystone con­
cept of constructivist analysis is the "identity" of states. Constructivists
"assume that the selves, or identities, of states are a variable; they depend
on historical, cultural, political and social context"; constructivists are in­
terested in how the identity, or cultural self-understanding, of nations is
shaped by the history of their interactions with one another.46 M y focus
on the relationship between U.S. foreign relations and political scientists'
evolving visions of US speaks directly to this agenda.
Constructivists have produced an impressive array of studies docu­
menting the social and historical embeddedness of the ideas of various
political actors. But, like political scientists more generally, they have
shied aw ay from reflecting on the embeddedness of the ideas produced
by their own discipline. One result of this dearth of self-reflection is that
constructivists seem to lack awareness of the historical antecedents of
their own school of thought. Although the term social constructivism is
relatively new in international relations, the concern with the subjective
perception, representation, and social evolution of national images and
identities is not unprecedented. During the 1950s and 1960s, in the con­
text of the ideological struggle for the w orld's hearts and minds, some
political scientists became keenly interested in how national communi­
ties imagined one another (and in how to influence other nations' images
of one's own nation). A s Ted Hopf points out, Karl Deutsch "w as a
constructivist long ahead of his time to the extent that he argued [in his
pathbreaking study of nationalism and social communication] that indi­
viduals could not engage in meaningful action absent some community­
wide subjectivity*"47
Harold Isaacs's study of Americans' images of China and India was
another, especially insightful, constructivist study produced in the con­
text of the Cold War's ideological competition. Isaacs concluded that "the
effect of images on events remains an elusive matter.. . . But the effects of
events on images is a much more visible affair, especially of great events,
like wars, that forcibly intrude upon the private life of a great many peo­
ple." In the twentieth century, Isaacs observed,
changes in the constellations of friend and foe have been taking place
at a hitherto incredible pace of speed---- In a matter of only a few
years, people were called upon to transfer their images of "Oriental
cruelty" from the Chinese to the Japanese and back to the Chinese
again. In a single generation, the dominant images of the German have
moved from the gemütlich bourgeois to the booted militarist, to the
 Nazi mass murderer, and back again to older images of efficient, hard­
working people divided between West (friendly) and East (unfriendly
or captive). In an even shorter space of time, Americans have been
called upon by events to leap from images of the wanton Japanese
murderers of Nanking and the Bataan Death March to new images of
reformed sinners and earnest dem ocrats.. . . In the same period of
time, Americans have also been shuttled from the totalitarian monster
of Stalin in the purge years to "Uncle Joe" of the war years and back to
the crazed megalomaniac.48
The point I try to establish in this book is that just as major wars leave
what Isaacs called "scratches" on the minds of Americans in general, they
leave marks on the knowledge produced by American political scien­
tists.49
M y observation about the dearth of self-examination in American po­
litical science is, in the nature of generalizations, not without exceptions.
In recent years several scholars have produced imaginative critical histo­
ries of various chapters in the development of the discipline.50 M y book
is certainly not the first to place the history of political science in its ex-
tradisciplinary context or to point out the tension between the discipline's
commitments to science and to democracy.51 Nor am I the first to charac­
terize political science in terms of a distinctly American ideology. The
central thesis of Dorothy Ross's magisterial history of American social sci­
ence is that her subject "owes its distinctive character to its involvement
with the national ideology of American exceptionalism, the idea that
America occupies an exceptional place in history."52 These disciplinary
histories inspired and enlightened me to an extent insufficiently recorded
in m y notes.53
But these extant studies are not without shortcomings. Although they
offer rich accounts of the domestic sociohistorical context in which the
American social sciences have evolved, they tend to overlook the influ­
ence of international circumstances upon the orientation of social scien­
tific thought in America.54 The general lack of attention to the international
context of American thought is especially problematic from the stand­
point of the claim that American social science involves an exceptionalist
ideology, for the term exertional is by definition relational: something can
only be an exception to something else. Thus, in the absence of an explicit
examination of the w ays in which American social scientists compared
and related foreign societies to America, the notion of American excep­
tionalism as the master key to the interpretation of social science history
remains an axiomatic claim as much as an established conclusion.
By explicitly placing American political science in its international his­
torical context this book seeks to correct the domestic bias of extant con­
textual accounts of disciplinary history It also revises the exceptionalist
account of political science history by arguing that exceptionalism was
only one strand of a broader nationalism (whose other strand I call tri­
umphalism), and that nationalist disciplinary discourse often coexisted
with, and was sometimes even eclipsed by, accommodationism.
This study, like virtually all studies of intellectual ideas and ideology,
stands on the broad shoulders of the founders of the sociology of knowl­
edge who, from Karl Marx to Karl Mannheim, exposed the relativity of
intellectual thought*55 Mannheim wrote in the highly contentious and
politicized intellectual atmosphere of the Weimar Republic; he hoped that
the political and ideological character of social thought could be miti­
gated by ensconcing thinkers in academic settings, where they would
function as a "socially unattached intelligentsia" insulated from the tur­
moil of society at large. Robert Merton and other American postwar so­
ciologists found this vision of a nonideological, academic, social science
congenial. They shared the Cold War view that ideology w as an "ism "
confined to the other side, and exempted their own social science from in­
trospection to uncover its ideological underpinnings. In the past thirty
years this Mertonian view has been vigorously challenged b y new gen­
erations of scholars of the sociology of scientific knowledge and members
of the multidisciplinary field of science and technology studies, who
(partly under the inspiration of Thomas Kuhn's ideas) have eschewed in­
ternal accounts of scientific progress in favor of realistic, historical, and
sociological analyses of scientific practice.56 It must suffice here to ac­
knowledge the affinity between their general approach to explaining the
making of scientific knowledge and the view, underlying this study, that
social scientific knowledge, contra Mannheim, is political and ideological
even if ensconced in academically free institutions.
 Imperial Germany

Germany w as America's bitterest enemy during the first half of the

twentieth century. The horrors of Nazism and two world wars left deep
marks on American culture and thought, not least on American political
science. In this chapter and the next I explore the influence of these
tremendous historical experiences on the discipline. I begin by compar­
ing the portrayal of the political institutions of Imperial Germany — that
is, the Second Reich (18 7 1-19 18 ) — in present-day American political sci­
ence with contemporaneous portrayals, when German-American wars
still lay in the future. The current view of Imperial Germany is ideologi­
cally nationalistic, depicting Germany's governmental institutions as en­
tirely inferior to their American counterparts. But the political scientists
of the late nineteenth century took a mixed, accommodationist as well as
nationalist, ideological stance, portraying America as a superior yet im­
perfect polity that could learn from the Germans as well as instruct them
in the art of government.

Since World War II, American historians and social scientists have tended
to interpret the German past as a prelude to Nazism and to emphasize the
divergence between the (special) political development of Germany and
the (normal) developmental path taken by Britain, the United States, and,
to a lesser extent, France. Viewed from this perspective, Imperial Ger­
many came to be depicted as a bureaucratic-authoritarian, militaristic so­
ciety whose rapid economic modernization was not accompanied by the
flowering of liberal-democratic political institutions.
Versions of this interpretation of modern German history were articu­
lated by some of the most influential social scientists of the postwar era.
Economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron depicted the Second Reich
as a "semifeudal monarchy" dominated by the aristocratic Junkers. He
blamed the Junkers for delaying the development of a genuine democ­
racy in Germany and characterized their philosophy as "the true fore­
runner of the Nazi ideology."1 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba
presented the political development of Britain as their ideal. They argued
that America had followed the British liberal-democratic path, whereas
in nineteenth-century Germany a "participant" civic culture failed to
strike deep roots, and the seeds of totalitarianism were planted with the
imposition of the Prussian "bureaucratic-authoritarian" pattern on the
entire country Almond and Verba also argued that in the English-speak­
ing world the conception of "liberty" meant the protection of individual
freedoms, whereas in Germany it was historically "identified with the
freedom of the state from external limitations."2 Political sociologist Bar­
rington Moore sharply contrasted the "capitalist-democratic" path to
modernity taken by England, the United States, and France with the "cap­
italist-reactionary" path taken b y Germany and Japan, a path that "cul­
minated" in fascism. According to Moore, in the capitalist-democratic
societies successful bourgeois revolutions paved the w ay toward politi­
cal liberty, but in Germany and Japan the bourgeoisie sold out to the aris­
tocracy, "exchanging the right to rule for the right to make m on ey" Moore
interpreted the parliamentary institutions of Imperial Germany as fa­
cades for a "conservative and even authoritarian government."3
In the 1980s British historians, led by David Blackboum and Geoff
Eley, challenged the "special path" interpretation of the German past for
being overly colored by the events of 1933 -45, for unfairly comparing Im­
perial Germany with an idealized Anglo-American past, and for neglect­
ing to compare the German past with the experience of continental
Europe rather than with Britain's alone.4 It w as time, the critics argued,
to "rescue Imperial Germany from the tyranny of hindsight" by placing
it in its contemporaneous context.5 Blackboum and Eley's critique stirred
a lively debate among historians and stimulated a more balanced repre­
sentation of Imperial Germany.6
But the revised image of Imperial Germany among historians has had
little impact on American political science. Recent college textbooks in
comparative politics continue to reflect the interpretations of Gerschen-
kron, Moore, and Almond and Verba. Alm ond's own popular textbook
describes the Second German Empire as "an authoritarian state, with
only the superficial trappings of a democracy," in which "the citizen's role
was to be a law-abiding subject, obeying the commands of government
officials." Charles Hauss's Comparative Politics depicts Imperial Germany
as a militarized nation and as "one of Europe's most authoritarian coun­
tries." Michael Curtis's text portrays the Second Reich as an "industrial
feudal society" whose "industrialization failed to produce a modern
polity as in Britain and France---- Human rights or other fundamental
guarantees were conspicuously absent in the imperial constitution."7
Other textbooks similarly portray Imperial Germany as an authoritarian
antithesis of Britain and France.8
 Marks of the special path interpretation of German history are as dis­
cernible in current research in comparative politics as in college teaching.
These marks are not readily apparent, for they are mediated by ostensi­
bly objective data sets such as the popular POLITY. POLITY provides de­
scriptive data on the attributes of modern political regimes, including
annual composite scores for "dem ocracy" and "autocracy." Ted Robert
Gurr, the originator of the POLITY project, w as an apprentice of Prince­
ton political scientist Harry Eckstein, a Jewish refugee from Germany
whose theory of democracy inspired the Anglocentric "civic culture"
theory of Almond and Verba.9 According to the POLITY handbook, the
construction of the quantitative scales of "dem ocracy" and "autocracy"
w as partly informed by the notion that the modern expansion of politi­
cal participation "followed one of two paths, toward plural democracy
or mass-party autocracy." In most of Western Europe the process of de­
mocratization "eroded all but a few symbolic vestiges of traditional au­
tocracy." In contrast, "The empires of Central and Eastern Europe —
Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungary — implemented the trappings but
not the substance of effective democratic participation in the late nine­
teenth and early twentieth centuries."10 Not surprisingly, the numerical
democracy scores assigned by POLITY to pre-1914 Germany are signifi­
cantly lower than the scores assigned to England, France, and the United
States for the same period; the scoring criteria were selected to produce
precisely this result (Austria-Hungary and Russia are ranked lower than
Germany; the United States receives the maximum democracy scores for
nearly the entire nineteenth and twentieth centuries).
The case of POLITY illustrates the role played by data sets in objecti­
fying concepts that were originally rooted in a particular interpretation of
political development. POLITY data are used widely today in compara­
tive political research on the causes and effects of democracy, issues that
have no obvious connection to the history of U.S. foreign relations.11
Those using the data set usually take its regime type categories as given;
they display scant awareness of the origins of these categories and of the
historical interpretation embodied in them, an interpretation that hap­
pens to associate the trappings of democracy with America's enemies and
the substance of democracy with America's allies. Thus POLITY is a
mechanism by which, to borrow Antonio Gramsci's terms, "traces" of the
historical process of U.S.-German relations are "deposited" into contem­
porary political research "without leaving an inventory."12
The scholarship of the leading postwar interpreters of modern politi­
cal development was rooted in the formative experience of their genera­
tion, in which the struggle against Nazism was crucial. For Gabriel
Almond and Harry Eckstein, for example, both Jews with firsthand ex­
perience of the horrors of Nazism, it w as almost unavoidable to view Ger­
man political development as the antithesis of America's*

Almost inevitably, then, the representation of Imperial Germany in cur­

rent American political science reveals a nationalist ideological stance.
America and its allies, Britain and France, are depicted as having been lib­
eral and democratic in the late nineteenth century, whereas Germany is
portrayed as an illiberal, militaristic, authoritarian regime. But how w as
Imperial Germany portrayed by its contemporaries? What norms did late
nineteenth-century political scientists use in comparing political systems,
and how did Germany fare relative to America, Britain, and France un­
der these norms?
Two of the leading scholars of American political science in the late
nineteenth century, John W. Burgess and Woodrow Wilson, embody the
view s of two successive generations. Burgess w as the most prominent
member of the German-trained generation that founded professional po­
litical science in America; Wilson belonged to the first American Ph.D. co­
hort. The two scholars also represent two distinct institutional settings.
Burgess founded the graduate school in political science at Columbia
University (1880) — the first, and for many years the leading, political
science graduate program in the country.13 Wilson was trained (1883 -85),
and for several years taught, at Johns Hopkins University, then Colum­
bia's rival for leadership in the discipline.14 Burgess w as a Germanophile,
while Wilson's cultural and sentimental compass was oriented toward
England. Burgess and Wilson thus epitomize different shades of the the­
oretical concerns, political views, and professional experiences of Amer­
ican political scientists in the late nineteenth century.
In one important respect, though, the difference between Burgess and
Wilson is more than a matter of shade or nuance. Whereas Wilson's char­
acterization of Germany in 19 17 — when he declared w ar "to make the
world safe for democracy" — w as significantly darker than his earlier
views, Burgess's positive view of Imperial Germany withstood the wors­
ening of U.S.-German relations and even the anti-German hysteria of
19 17 -18 . To the end of his life in 19 3 1 Burgess regarded the Germ an-
American conflict, which he considered an intra-Teutonic one, as a
calamitous error. The shifting view s of one individual and the steadfast­
ness of the other's demonstrate that the linkage between America's for­
eign rivalries and American political science operates more at the social
level than at the individual level. The contrast between Wilson and
Burgess suggests that a sociology rather than a psychology of political sci­
ence m ay be the key to understanding the process by which the disci­
pline's concepts, norms, and view s of foreign regimes change over time.
Burgess's case demonstrates that individual scholars are not necessarily
puppets in the hands of historical forces, nor do they readily revise their
attitudes to accommodate changing political realities. But it also shows
that the knowledge generated, and clung to, b y such individual scholars
is liable to be forgotten b y future communities of scholars. John Burgess
w as arguably the most important political scientist of his time, yet few to­
day recognize his name, let alone know about his theory. Woodrow Wil­
son's legacy, on the other hand, is well remembered. But even in Wilson's
case, collective memory is only partial. It is the 19 17 image of Wilson de­
ploring German autocracy that is etched in our recollection rather than
the earlier Wilson who detested French "democracy," approved German
constitutionalism, and admired Prussian statism.

The Nationalist Theory of John W. Burgess

Two episodes that critically shaped the life of John Burgess also shaped
the origins of academic political science in America: the Civil War and the
encounter with Germany. The traumatic experience of disunion and civil
war "provided American political science at the moment of its birth with
a compelling raison d'etre and a proximate task: formulating the grounds
for an enduring and cohesive national political unit."15 Of the members
of his generation, John Burgess was the most effective in providing the
nationalist postwar impulse with a "complete and scientific" theoretical
foundation.16
Born in Tennessee in 1844 into a fam ily that adhered firmly to Union­
ist principles, Burgess enlisted in the federal army and observed the hor­
rors of the Civil War firsthand.17 When he graduated from Amherst
College after the war there was virtually no academic institution in Amer­
ica that offered rigorous graduate training in the social sciences. Like
thousands of other young Americans, Burgess was drawn to Germany,
whose universities were then the most advanced in the world.18
Nearly all the founders of academic social science in America, includ­
ing political science, studied in Germany. Burgess earned his doctorate
there in the 1870s, and the three young scholars he recruited in 1880 to
join him at Columbia had also studied there.19 Herbert Baxter Adams,
who w ould lead the program in history and political science at Johns
Hopkins and supervise Woodrow Wilson's studies, trained in Germany,
as did Wilson's two other teachers.20 Upon returning to the United States
these scholars sought to transplant the methods of the German research
university to American ground.21 Holding German scholarship in the
highest esteem, they conducted German-style graduate seminars and re­
quired their students to master the German language.22
But Germ any's appeal encompassed more than academic excellence.
Germany provided a powerful model of national reunion and consolida­
tion. Upon arriving in Berlin in 18 7 1 Burgess witnessed the victory pa­
rade of the troops returning from the Franco-Prussian War and compared
it favorably with "the march of the Grand Arm y of the Republic through
Washington six years before."23 This experience foreshadowed a lifelong
love affair with German institutions and culture.

Nation, State, Liberty, Government

The major theoretical work of John Burgess, Political Science and Com­
parative Constitutional Law (1890), contains four sections: "The Nation,"
"The State," "Liberty," and "Governm ent."24 The first section opens with
a "Germ an" (that is, exact and scientific) definition: "A population of an
ethnic unity, inhabiting a territory of a geographic unity, is a nation."25
Nations were not bom equal, Burgess argued. They had talents latent
in their character, determined largely by the racial composition of their
population. At the bottom of the racial hierarchy were the peoples of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America (who did not even merit "scientific treat­
ment"); the middle ranks were populated by the non-Teutonic European
races. The Greek and the Slavonic races excelled in the arts, philosophy,
and religion, but their form of political organization "manifests a low
order of political genius." The Celts "have never manifested any con­
sciousness of political principles or developed any constancy in political
purpose." The Romans had a gift for building empires. Yet the most ad­
vanced polities were formed b y "those nations that m ay be termed the
political nations par excellence, viz., the Teutonic; and if the peculiar cre­
ations of these nations may be expressed in a single phrase it must be this:
that they are the founders of national states." For Burgess, then, the na­
tion-state w as the highest form of political development, a form that
only the Teutonic nations were capable of approaching.26 Fortunately,
in America "an amalgamated Teutonic race is the dominant factor," al­
though the Teutonic "Anglo-Americans, the Germans, and Scandina­
vians do not yet mingle their blood completely." Also Teutonic were
Germany, England, Holland, Switzerland, the Scandinavian nations, and
France (although French blood w as diluted by Iberian, Celtic, and Roman
elements).27
Burgess subscribed to an idealist conception of "the state," the subject
of the second section of his treatise. The state was not the aggregate prod­
uct of a contract among free individuals, but an organic body that grew
over time toward the ideal. Along the state's evolutionary path, the cre­
ation of a national monarchy signaled "the beginning of the modern
political era." A t that point "a large proportion of the population is awak­
ened to the consciousness of the state, and feels the impulse to participate
in the work of its objective realization," The people "gather about their
king" and "make him but the first servant of the state." Once the king
turned into a mere officeholder, subordinate to popular sovereignty, the
state could be said to be democratic. Democracy was embodied in a rev­
olutionary popular act of constitution-making and was conditional upon
national harmony and cohesion: "the democratic state must be a national
state, and the state whose population has become truly national w ill in­
evitably become democratic."28
On this historical path, Burgess found both Germany and the United
States in the most advanced category of (Teutonic) popular democratic
states. For Burgess, the German process of constitution-making was no
less revolutionary and progressive than its counterpart, a century earlier,
in America. In both cases the people had consciously formed a modem
national state. Burgess identified the Prussian monarch, whether in his
capacity as king of Prussia or as emperor of Germany, as a constitutional
officeholder, a signal of the formation of the modem popular democratic
state.29
Burgess w as a staunch defender of individual liberties, and he re­
garded the constitutional state as the ultimate guarantor of liberty, pro­
tecting individuals both from the incursion of government and from the
tyranny of majorities. Although individuals enjoyed similar freedoms in
all modem nation-states, in the United States these freedoms were pro­
tected best. In America the fundamental principles of freedom "are writ­
ten by the state in the constitution; the power to put the final and
authoritative interpretation upon them is vested by the state in a body of
jurists, holding their offices independently of the political departments of
the government."30
How did the other modern democratic nation-states measure up? "Of
the three chief European constitutions only that of Germany contains, in
any degree, the guarantees of individual liberty which the constitution of
the United States so richly affords." To the same extent that Germany fell
short of the American ideal, its system was superior to that of France,
where "there is not the slightest trace of a constitutional guaranty of in­
dividual liberty," and to that of Britain, where "the whole power of the
state is vested in the government, and . . . no sufficient distinction is made
between the state and the government." In terms of constitutional liberty,
then, Burgess viewed Germany as second only to America and as far su­
perior to Britain and France.31
Burgess went to great lengths to distinguish the state — an abstract
organic concept — from the actual government. In fact the form of the
state and the form of the government need not necessarily be in harmony.
"It is difficult to see w hy the most advantageous political system, for the
present, would not be a democratic state with an aristocratic government,
provided only the aristocracy be that of real merit, and not of artificial
qualities. If this be not the real principle of the republican [read: Ameri­
can] form of government then I must confess that I do not know what its
principle is/'32 In expressing a preference for a democratic state with a
meritocratic government, Burgess anticipated the program of Woodrow
Wilson and his generation — who sought to erect an efficient adminis­
trative state in the service of the nation — but stopped short of fully ar­
ticulating this agenda.
Having elaborated the distinction between state and government,
Burgess assessed the merits of various forms of government. A "repre­
sentative government" was good only if it w as constitutionally limited,
that is, "if the state confers upon the government less than its whole
power, less than sovereignty, either by enumerating the powers of gov­
ernment, or by defining and safeguarding individual liberty against
them." On the other hand, "if the state vests its whole power in the gov­
ernment, and reserves no sphere of autonomy for the individual, the gov­
ernment is unlimited; it is despotism in theory, however liberal and
benevolent it m ay be in practice."33 Burgess's earlier discussion of liberty
rendered the identity of the "good" and "bad" prototypes of representa­
tive government unmistakable. The British system, where "the whole
power of the state is vested in the government," epitomized the bad, un­
limited representative government; it possessed no firm guarantees that
would arrest a slide toward despotism. The United States w as the good,
limited representative state, and from Burgess's earlier discussion of lib­
erty it can be inferred that Germany was closer to this ideal than were ei­
ther Britain or France.
Another distinction in Burgess's taxonomy of governments concerned
"the tenure of the persons holding office or mandate. Viewed from this
standpoint, the government is either hereditary or elective." Burgess made
no normative judgment about the superiority of either system. Discern­
ing four alternative hereditary principles, he concluded that "prim ogen­
iture in the male line appears the most useful and successful."34 That this
was precisely the Prussian principle should come as no surprise.35
Burgess also drew a distinction between presidential and parlia­
mentary government. In presidential systems "the state, the sovereign,
makes the executive independent of the legislature, both in tenure and
prerogative, and furnishes him with sufficient power to prevent the leg­
islature from trenching upon the sphere marked out by the state as ex­
ecutive independence and prerogative." Burgess had high praise for
presidential government: "it is conservative. It fixes the weight of re­
sponsibility upon a single person; and there is nothing like this to pro-
duce caution, deliberation, and an impartial regard for all interests con­
cerned/'36
Imperial Germany was squarely a member of Burgess's "presidential
club/' In his essay "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor," he re­
ferred repeatedly to the kaiser as the president of the German union or
"president of a republic." That the king of Prussia was the president of
Germany w as written in the German constitution, and for Burgess to re­
fer to him as such (accepting the form of the constitution as its substance)
w as entirely uncontroversial in 1888. The kaiser's lack of electoral ap­
proval did not matter to Burgess (the kaiser, after all, had inherited the
crown through the best hereditary principle); and if one "president of a
republic" should emulate another, then it was probably the American ex­
ecutive who could learn from his more powerful German counterpart.
Burgess clearly approved of the emperor's veto power in his capacity as
king of Prussia: "These are very wise provisions under existing condi­
tions. I do not see how the Emperor would be able to discharge his great
duties to the nation without them."37
Burgess regarded parliamentary government as inferior to presiden­
tial government. Conspicuously alluding to Britain, he suggested that the
successful operation of parliamentary government depended upon pe­
culiar conditions: a hereditary kingship "possessing the most sincere de­
votion and loyalty of the masses," a national religion that preserved "the
morality of the masses," and "limited suffrage through which the intelli­
gent, conservative and moderate classes shall be the bearers of the polit­
ical power." The extension of the franchise in Britain was threatening to
undermine the system. For "how with the present degree of popular in­
telligence in even the most advanced states can these qualities [stability,
civility] be secured in a legislature whose members are chosen by an uni­
versal or a w idely extended suffrage?"38 To the extent that Burgess liked
liberal Britain, it was the Britain envisioned by conservative whiggish lib­
erals such as Walter Bagehot rather than the increasingly democratic
Britain of the late nineteenth century.

G erm an y: "E u ro p e's B est G u a ra n ty o f Peace"

In "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor" Burgess discussed the
emperor's powers in foreign affairs. The emperor was constitutionally
empowered to make "alliances with foreign powers, and to declare [de­
fensive] w ar and make peace." But he was "most heavily handicapped in
the exercise of the power of declaring offensive war," since for such an act
"the consent of the Federal Council is necessary." As king of Prussia the
kaiser controlled seventeen seats in the Federal Council, yet in order to
muster the thirty votes necessary to declare war, he needed "an agree-
ment between the princely heads of at least three states besides Prussia/'
The German princes were not only "o ld " and "conservative"; they were
also "hostile to centralization of power in the Imperial government, and
they know that w ar tends to that/' Hence the German constitution pro­
vided the best "safeguards against arbitrary ill-considered, unnecessary
declarations of war/'39
Burgess closed the essay with the following assessment of the German
imperium:

It is full of the spirit of conservatism, and w ell regulated by la w Its con­

stitution guards it well against personal arbitrariness or vacillation on
the part of the Emperor or the princes, or fickleness and violence on
the part of the people. It is Europe's best guaranty of peace through the
power to enforce peace. In a sentence, it is a constitutional presidency;
and if it needs any reform, it is in the direction of more strength rather
than less.40

Britain: "Autocrat of the Sea"

In 1888, when John Burgess depicted Germany as a bulwark of peace,
German foreign policy w as focused largely on European affairs, and
friendship between the United States and "the United States of Germ any"
w as taken as axiomatic. But in the 1890s Germany began laying the foun­
dation for a massive navy, and it launched an assertive Weltpolitik just as
the United States embarked upon its own imperial adventure. Around
the turn of the century diplomatic tensions between the two nations
mounted as their interests dashed in Samoa, the Philippines, China, and
Venezuela.41 Amid the rising tensions, Germany's positive image in
America began to erode, along with the reputation of German scholar­
ship, and anti-German books began to supplant the more sympathetic lit­
erature of years past.42
Burgess, however, remained an unwavering Germanophile. His re­
marks before the Germanic Society of America in 1908 betrayed unease
about the decline of German-American amity.43 In 19 14 Burgess, who
had retired from Columbia in 19 12, was not alone in sympathizing with
the German side. But on balance, when he published The European War of
19 14 , he was swimming against the tide of public opinion.44 Attempting
to avert a German-American conflict, Burgess pulled no punches in vent­
ing his pro-German and vehemently anti-British views. He not only de­
picted England as "despotic" and "navalistic-militaristic," but also drew
a most unflattering comparison between the "autocrat of the sea" and the
"autocrat of the land" (Russia). Germany, however, was Britain's "op­
posing counterpart":
 Its economic system is by far the most efficient, most genuinely dem­
ocratic, which exists at the present moment in the world, or has ever
existed. There is no great state in the world today in which there is so
general and even a distribution of the fruits of civilization as in the
United States of Germ any And there is no state, great or small, in
which the plane of civilization is so high.45
Clearly, Burgess's portrayal of Imperial Germany is radically different
from the one presented by American political scientists today Burgess de­
picted Germany not as an authoritarian, semifeudal monarchy but as a
constitutional-democratic, presidential nation-state whose citizens en­
joyed nearly the same degree of liberty as Americans. In Burgess's eyes,
Germ any's political institutions had developed along the same path as
those of the other Teutonic nations. And within the Teutonic group, he re­
garded Germany as more politically developed, and as far more like US
than either Britain or France was.
Burgess's political theory was nationalist in orientation, portraying the
American political system as the w orld's freest and most advanced. Still,
in Burgess's view Germany was the only foreign nation that could teach
America some lessons in government; it offered a positive model of na­
tional reunion and consolidation, as w ell as a model of a strong, conser­
vative presidency, insulated from the whims of the masses. Thus, in his
views on Germany Burgess's nationalism was tempered by a significant
dose of accommodationism.
The difference between Burgess's view of Imperial Germany and its
current image stems less from the emergence of new facts than from
changing normative judgments and interpretations of the facts. That Ger­
many, in contrast to Britain, had a written constitution is indisputable, but
whereas present-day political scientists attribute no importance to this
fact, for Burgess it indicated that Britain was more prone to despotism
than Germ any Both Burgess and Barrington Moore described the Ger­
man political system as "conservative" in nature, but whereas Moore dis­
approved of this conservatism, Burgess applauded it. In short, there is no
disagreement about the structure of Imperial Germany's political institu­
tions; the disagreement is largely about whether those institutions con­
stituted the "substance" or the "trappings" of the modern democratic
state.

The Statist Theory of Woodrow Wilson

Born in Virginia in 1856, young Woodrow Wilson shared his father's
Confederate sympathies, but as an adult he came to support the Union's
cause.46 The Civil War experience influenced Wilson's thought no less
than it did Burgess's; one theme that recurs throughout Wilson's writings
is the concept of an organic, cohesive nation-state. Yet whereas for
Burgess the state remained an abstract expression of the nation, Wilson
sought to endow the nation with a concrete, efficient, administrative
state.47
Woodrow Wilson was a well-published political scientist, but he never
completed his "philosophy of politics," the treatise he hoped would be­
come his definitive theoretical book. According to the editors of Wilson's
papers, the book would have consisted of a series of essays or addresses
on "the modem democratic state," the historical chapters of his book The
State, and above all, Wilson's notes for his lectures on administration, law,
and jurisprudence.48 Most of these materials were produced in the
decade following Wilson's receipt of his doctorate (1886), during which
he taught at Bryn M awr College, at Wesleyan College, and (from 1890 on­
ward) at Princeton.49 M y analysis focuses primarily on Wilson's writings
and notes from that period because they constitute the core of his never-
completed big book, because the book he did complete during that pe­
riod (The State, 1889) is considered his "greatest scholarly achievement,"
and because that decade marks Wilson's greatest productivity as a polit­
ical scientist.50 (In later years he increasingly turned to popular writing
and speaking and to academic administration.)
Before turning to Wilson's "philosophy of politics," a few comments
are in order with regard to his earlier writings. Woodrow Wilson is rightly
remembered as an Anglophile. His family maintained a strong senti­
mental attachment to their Anglo-Scottish ancestry,51 and the young Wil­
son advocated the adoption of the parliamentary system in the United
States.52 The fascination with Britain, however, did not betoken an anti-
German attitude. Wilson particularly admired Bismarck. The chancellor
w as not above intrigue and deceit, Wilson wrote, but he w as nevertheless
a most "creative," "insightful," and "energetic" statesman. "We can find
on record few instances in which a comparatively small and virtually de­
pendent kingdom has been raised in eight years to the proud place of a
first class power by the genius of a single m an."53
Wilson also displayed extraordinary animus toward France. In his un­
published essay "Self-Government in France" (1879), he argued that the
French people were not ready for self-government; the peasants were
"almost hopelessly ignorant" and "acquiescent," and the bourgeoisie
were "not of the stuff of which trustworthy citizens are m ade."54 Inspired
by Edmund Burke, Wilson described the French as impetuous; they tried
to install methods of self-government through revolution, methods that
could be applied successfully only in Britain and America, where they
had evolved naturally over time.55 "The history of France since the open­
ing of the Revolution has been little more than a record of the alternation
of centralized democracy with centralized monarchy, or imperialism, in
all cases of the sw ay of a virtual despotism/' The parliamentary system
fitted France "as ill as independence of parental authority fits a child"
even though "for more than a century its forms have been observed/'56
In various subtle ways, this derogatory language recurs in Wilson's
later writings, with references to the French polity as "intoxicated," "poi­
sonous," "mechanical," "unstable," and "impetuous."57 The view of the
French political system as dissonant with French national character, of
France as a democracy in form only, and of French administration as in­
ferior to Prussia's is a virtual constant in Wilson's "philosophy of poli­
tics." Unlike social scientists today, who tend to single out Germany as an
aberrant case of political development, Wilson considered France the spe­
cial case. In his political theory Germany was in the proper place in its
natural trajectory of political development; "impetuous" France w as not.
Wilson's "philosophy of politics" w as written in fragments at a time
when he had mastered the German language and when his intellectual
horizon had expanded to encompass foreign polities besides Britain.58
Wilson's scholarship was typical of his generation in combining a histor­
ical account of political development with a current crossnational com­
parison.
Wilson's theory of political development, like Burgess's, was racialist-
hierarchical. To understand the origins of modern government, Wilson
wrote, one should study not the "savage" traditions of "defeated" prim­
itive groups but rather the contributions of the "survived fittest," pri­
marily the groups composing the Aryan race 59 From the infancy of
Slavonic village communities, Wilson traced the Aryan path to political
maturity through the Greeks and Romans, the Germanic tribes, and the
English people. Each group adopted the positive practices of its prede­
cessor and added the ingredients consistent with its own character. The
Teutons "brought about that fusion of German customs with Roman law
and conception which . . . was to produce the conditions of modern po­
litical life." They also bequeathed to Britain "the principle of representa­
tion." In Britain, "out of the freehold and local self-government grew the
constitutional state; out of the constitutional state grew that greatest of
political developments, the free, organic, self-conscious, self-directing na­
tion, with its great organs of popular representation and its constitutional
guarantees of liberty." Finally, the English nation "gave birth to Amer­
ica."60 In sum, the Aryan race left behind the backward races and em­
barked on a slow march toward political progress. A t the pinnacle of
Aryan political development was the organic, free, constitutional nation­
state, and America was its best exemplar.
 Wilson stressed even more emphatically than Burgess the organic na­
ture of the nation-state.61 The state w as "an abiding natural relation­
ship"; it w as the eternal "expression of a higher form of life than the
individual, namely the common life which gives leave to individual
life."62 The embodiment of the most fully evolved, modern nation-state
was the constitutional state: "a self conscious, adult, self-regulated (dem­
ocratic) state."63 This definition suggests that the "democratic state" was
a subtype, the most radical form of the most advanced political form, the
constitutional state. Constitutional states were characterized b y four ele­
ments. First, "the people have some form of representation. It does not
make any difference what the representation is, as long as it be broad
enough."64 Second, administration was subject to the laws; third, there
w as an independent judiciary with independent tenure; and, fourth,
there w as a more or less complete formulation of the rights of individual
liberty.65
Wilson clearly regarded both the German Federation and its chief
member, Prussia, as "constitutional states," along with Britain, the United
States, France, Switzerland, Sweden-Norway, and Austria-Hungary.
These are the subjects of the "country chapters" in The State and are used
most often to illustrate Wilson's arguments on constitutional law and ad­
ministration. The most important in Wilson's eyes appear to have been
Britain, the United States, Prussia/Germany, France, and Switzerland,
whose constitutions Wilson explicitly compares with the U.S. constitution
in his lecture on the modem constitutional state. The constitutions of
these states were not precisely alike; nor should they be, for "they origi­
nated in the circumstances of the time." But their differences notwith­
standing, none was inferior to the others. All these countries possessed
the four elements characteristic of the modem constitutional state, and in
all of them the constitution was supreme; for instance, "The King of Prus­
sia cannot change the constitution made by him: it is held fast in its place
by the feeling that it would be unsafe to play with it. Once given forth, it
cannot be withdrawn."66
Wilson's theory of organic political development stressed the impor­
tance of harmony between actual legal and political institutions and the
readiness of the national "habit" to benefit fully from such institutions.
Consider Wilson's commentary on the (then) new Japanese constitution,
"copied, in the main, [from] the Constitution of Prussia." The chief point
of resemblance between the two w as that "the ministers are responsible
to the Emperor, not to the legislature.. . . Here the model is not one of re­
sponsible government in the English, French, Italian sense." From today's
perspective this sounds like an indictment of the Prussian and Japanese
arrangements, but Wilson says that "considering the stage of develop-
ment in which Japan now finds itself, the Prussian constitution was an ex­
cellent instrument to copy: Her choice of it as a model is but another proof
of the singular sagacity, the singular power to see and learn, which is Ja­
pan's best constitution and promise of success/'67 This is not only a direct
endorsement of the Japanese constitution but also an indirect commen­
dation of the Prussian one. Prussia is praised precisely for not copying the
English constitution m indlessly Prussian legal institutions were properly
consonant with its national "habit." In contrast, the history of France il­
lustrated the perils of copying English arrangements in form only and of
adopting legal institutions "not sustained by habit."68

The Democratic State

In Wilson's thought the "democratic state" was a subcategory of the
"modern constitutional state." Membership in this category was limited
to the United States, Switzerland, Australia, and, to a lesser degree,
Britain, where there remained "some rebellious pulses" and "the drill of
liberty has not extended to all classes" (although fortunately "it was
[Britain's] drilled classes that she sent to America"). France would not be­
come a democracy unless "she shall have . . . few more hard lessons in
self-control."69 To both France and Spain, moreover, democracy was a
"slow poison," and South America suffered from a "maddening drought"
of democratic institutions.70
Although Wilson used democracy with approval, his understanding of
the term w as quite unlike its present meaning. First, the concept of
democracy w as as attached to the notion of organic national development
as the wider category of "constitutional state" was. Democracy and "na­
tion" were inseparable, for democracy w as possible only when the nation
was ripe for it. Thus, Wilson did not denounce the continental states for
not being democratic enough, for he considered them to be disadvan­
taged by their "hazardous" geographic and historical circumstances.71
The English race w as fortunate (like "closeted" Switzerland) to be insu­
lated from the "fierce contests of national rivalries" that characterized the
continental experience. For the continental countries to prematurely
adopt institutions that developed slowly and organically in the English-
speaking world would be worse than to remain less democratic yet in na­
tional habit.72
Second, Wilson greatly downplayed the role of elections as the proper
touchstone of democracy. A democracy w as properly ruled by "the men
of the schools, the trained, instructed, fitted men." As long as these men
got a fair opportunity to govern — through ballot or through civil service
examinations — the requirements of democracy were met. The civil ser­
vice method of selection w as "eminently democratic," since "it draws all
the governing m aterial. . . from such part of the people as w ill fit them­
selves for the function/7Selection b y merit "is but another form of repre­
sentation/'73 In Wilson's eyes, then, democracy was not so much an
electoral process as a meritocracy His papers indicate that Wilson cared
little about electoral equality: "N ot universal suffrage constitutes democ­
racy Universal suffrage may confirm a coup d'état which destroys lib­
erty/'74 He was untroubled by the fact that the U.S. Senate was not
popularly elected or by the disfranchisement of blacks in the South. In The
State he reviewed the details of the unequal three-class voting system of
Prussia in a purely factual manner and explicitly endorsed this voting
scheme for municipal elections in the United States.75 A democracy qua
meritocracy — the rule of the educated and trained — was a bulwark
against the ignorance of the masses. For as much as he championed the
forces of public opinion, his view of the mass public was unflattering. The
average citizen's mind was fickle: "you cannot expect him to have a
'sound conviction' on the silver question, substantial view s on the
Behring Sea controversy, or original ideas on the situation in Brazil."76
Thus it is not surprising that Wilson approved of insulating foreign af­
fairs from the scrutiny of popular assemblies. Noting that the House of
Commons exercised minimal control over the conduct of British foreign
policy, he asserted that some matters are "of too delicate a nature to be
publicly discussed in Parliament; some plans, particularly of foreign pol­
icy, would be simply frustrated by being prematurely disclosed___ A cer­
tain wide discretion must be allowed the Ministers as to the matters they
will make public."77
In short, Wilson is better interpreted as a Burkean conservative than as
a champion of mass electoral democracy. His aim was to purge the con­
cept of democracy of its association with (French) revolution, Jacksonian
populism, and the rule of the unenlightened demos. Electoral equality was
good "only up to the point where all are equal in capacity to judge," but
since that point could at best be only "roughly approximated," govern­
ment must be entrusted to an educated, not necessarily elected, adminis­
trative elite.78 Enter Prussia, a model of rational administration.

Wilson on Administration
A t the turn of the twentieth century public administration — local and
federal — w as at the center of the agenda of American political science.
Woodrow Wilson w as among the pioneers of the academic study of ad­
ministration. In his first essay on the subject, published in 1887, Wilson
lamented "the poisonous atmosphere of city government, the crooked se­
crets of state administration," and federal "corruption," which "forbid us
to believe that any clear conceptions of what constitutes good adminis-
tration are as yet w idely current in the United States." The solution was
to study the science of administration "developed by French and German
professors." In France, administrative machinery had been perfected by
Napoleon. In Prussia an "admirable system " of administration had been
"most studied and most nearly perfected" by great kings and reformers
who "transformed arrogant and perfunctory bureaux into public spirited
instruments of just government." The English race, on the other hand,
"has exercised itself much more in controlling than in energizing gov­
ernment." Americans must learn from continental administrative wis­
dom and "distill aw ay its foreign gases" to suit the American system.79
As Wilson's knowledge of the German language and of the continen­
tal literature improved, he modified his view that the continent was "for­
eign gas." Especially in the area of city government, Wilson determined
that the Prussian system was not so much foreign as "Pan-Teutonic" in
nature, and that it was the highest form of self-government.80 He also
concluded that the French ideas were more noxious than the Prussian.
The administrative state envisioned by Wilson was patterned upon the
statist German model, which performed many tasks that for the govern­
ment in Washington still lay far in the future (some of them still do). These
included "poor relief, insurance (pensions and other); savings banks;
forestry, game and fishing law s"; promoting the "economic and other ac­
tivities of society by means o f . . . posts, telegraphs, telephones etc; Main­
tenance and supervision of railw ay s. . . Establishing of institutions of
credit."81 Wilson also admired the model of the University of Berlin, a
university harnessed in the service of the nation.82 In sum, with regard to
the functions of the state Wilson unambiguously wished that the United
States would become more like Germany than like Britain.83 In this he
was by no means a maverick among American political scientists of the
time.
With regard to governmental structure, Wilson customarily classified
states into three categories based on their "type of headship." In "auto­
cratic" polities such as Russia and Turkey, "there is an entire absence of
any constitutional means of controlling the acts of the head of the state."
In "republican" polities such as the United States, France, and Switzer­
land, "the Head of the State is made subject to complete subordination to
the laws, and is besides held to a personal responsibility for his obser­
vance of them." In the third category — "constitutional" systems — the
head of state was subject to "constitutional control," although "there is no
personal liability on his part to arrest or other punishment." Both Britain
and Prussia exemplified the third category (along with Bavaria, Spain,
and Italy). In constitutional states, royal sovereignty "is nowadays medi­
ate; and mediate sovereignty is no sovereignty at all. The modem
monarch is consequently sovereign only representatively and b y reason
of his participation in the determinations of the highest body of the
State/'84
To explore the status of the head of the "Federal State/' Wilson com­
pared US with Germany, The U.S, head of state was "the executive agent
of the central government," whereas in Germany he was a "member of
the sovereign body [Bundesrath] as head of a presiding member state
[Prussia]/' Yet "in all these cases the head of the State is strictly subject to
the laws, to constitutional rule and procedure; though in some cases the re­
sponsibility is direct and personal, while in others it is only through min­
isterial proxy/'85 The last phrase shows that in 1894 Wilson perceived the
German emperor as an indirectly responsible executive. Overall, Wilson's
lectures and The State present a picture of the kaiser as a hereditary chief
executive who "possesses no slight claim to be regarded as the most pow ­
erful ruler of our time" yet who w as nonetheless bound by a fine consti­
tutional machinery, "There are distinct limits to his power as Emperor,
limits which mark and emphasize the federal character of the Empire and
of it a state governed by law, not by prerogative,"86
Nowhere in Wilson's writings from that period did I find references to
the emperor — whether in his capacity as federal president or as king of
Prussia — as an autocrat. That label was reserved for absolutist czars and
caliphs, and it was not counterposed to democratic rule but rather to re­
publican and constitutional forms of government,
Wilson w as as interested in local as in national government, for the "lo­
cal organs of self government a r e . , , after all, the most important to the
life and vigor of political liberty,"87 American city government lacked
vitality and w as "conspicuous chiefly because of its lack of system ."88
In France, centralized "interference in local affairs. . . more and more
minute and inquisitive, results in the strangulation of local govern­
ment."89 Prussia offered by far the best model of local self-government.
Whereas the highly centralized French system "misses the principle of
life, which is not uniformity but variety," the Prussian model of "concen­
tration" (centralized oversight, but not control of local government) se­
cured "local variety and vitality without loss of vital integration,"90 In a
framework such as Wilson's, which emphasized organic national life, the
term vitality was the ultimate compliment.
Self-government w as not about mass voting, but rather "consists in
taking part in the government: If w e could give, say, to the better middle
class the whole power of government then we should have discovered
self government___ What we should seek is a w ay to harness the people
to the great wagon of state and make them pull it."91 Wilson regarded
Berlin — "the most perfect flower of the Prussian municipal system " —
as the best example of this ideal system, where the "better" citizens (but
not the demos) actively participated in administration, and where rights
were tied to service,92 In Berlin "over 10,000 people [are] associated in the
Government, besides the paid officers of the civil service/' They must
serve without pay "or else lose [their] franchise and have [their] taxes
raised." Berlin's electoral system w as "characteristic of the Prussian sys­
tem. The voters are divided into three classes, according to their contri­
bution to the taxes." Though unequal in size, "each of these classes elects
an equal number to the Board of Alderm an." These facts were recounted
with Wilson's highest stamp of approval, namely with a certification of
English origins. Berlin was not a foreign example but "just as truly an En­
glish example. It is a Pan-Teutonic example of processes that seemed to
inhere in the ancient policy of the people to which we belong . . . so we
shall not find ourselves on unfamiliar ground by going back to Berlin."93
Berlin, in sum, embodied the highest form of self-government: a most
successful blend of popular participation with great administrative effi­
ciency, a shining model to be emulated by American reformers.

Although Wilson championed "dem ocracy" more enthusiastically than

Burgess, Wilson's "philosophy of politics" was no less conservative than
the older m an's political theory. Wilson shared Burgess's fear of the un­
tamed rule of the demos, and by purging the concept of democracy of its
radical French content he sought to make it safe for the world long before
vow ing to do the converse. Wilson's ideal polity was a constitutional
(Aryan) state administered efficiently by selected, not necessarily elected,
educated elites, insulated from the ignorant masses. Relative to Wilson's
ideals circa 1890, Imperial Germany appeared much more "norm al," and
more like US, than it appears relative to present norms, which prize elec­
toral process and executive responsibility as the touchstones of democ­
racy. Indeed, if Wilson criticized any European country for following a
"special path" of political development, it w as France, not Germany.
Wilson's political philosophy of the 1880s and 1890s combined na­
tionalist and accommodationist ideological dispositions. On the nation­
alist side, Wilson portrayed America as the vanguard of the world's most
politically advanced (Aryan) race. On the accommodationist side, Wilson
held that American government, advanced though it might be, still suf­
fered from significant imperfections. In his first book he lamented the
weakness of American congressional government and recommended its
reform along the lines of the British parliamentary system.94 Subse­
quently Wilson became an outspoken critic of the corruption and ineffi­
ciency of American public administration, and he turned to the Prussian
science of administration in search of methods for energizing American
government. In contrast to present accounts of Western political devel­
opment, which lament Imperial Germ any's failure to emulate Am erica's
democratic example, Wilson viewed Germany as a source of ideas for re­
modeling American democracy no less than he regarded American
democracy as a model for Germ any

Wilson's Post-1898 Swing toward Nationalism

In 1898 a German naval force sailed into Manila Bay shortly after A d ­
miral George Dewey had defeated the Spanish fleet there. Although the
Germans quickly withdrew, and although they accepted Am erica's an­
nexation of the Philippines, the incident aroused anti-German opinion in
America and damaged U.S.-Germ an diplomatic relations.95
Before the Spanish-American War Wilson paid little attention to for­
eign policy, and he initially doubted the desirability of annexing the
Philippines. But he soon became persuaded that an assertive foreign pol­
icy w as a key to national greatness.96 After 1898 his writings and speeches
increasingly emphasized America's singularity. Wilson's conversion to
expansionism thus led him toward ideological nationalism and aw ay
from accommodationism.
This ideological swing is discernible in Wilson's essay "Democracy
and Efficiency," published in 1901 by the Atlantic Monthly. In the essay
Wilson expressed support for American imperial expansion and en­
dorsed the occupation of the Philippines: "O ur interest must march for­
ward, altruists though we are; other nations must see to it that they stand
off, and do not seek to stay us." Now, one of the nations that had to "stand
off" if it was to avoid "staying" America was Germany, then engaged in
its own imperial forward-march. At this point, however, Wilson appears
to have been still sufficiently enamored with German statism, adminis­
trative efficiency, and scholarship that he stopped short of declaring Ger­
many an "autocracy," as he would do in 1917. He continued to embrace
German "efficiency" and "self government," though without attribution.
While calling for an activist government, professional civil service, and
reform in city government, Wilson now deemphasized the continental
origins of these concepts. Whereas earlier he had compared the American
and German model as two subtypes of "Federal Government," neither
superior to the other, in "Democracy and Efficiency" he asserted that the
federal states of "Germany, Canada, Australia, Switzerland . . . have built
and strengthened their constitutions in large part upon our m odel." And
although he continued to advocate the principle of "concentration" in ad­
ministrative organization, Wilson now neglected to mention that such
concentration w as based upon the Prussian model.97
Wilson's increasing nationalism eroded not only his admiration for
Germany but also his esteem for Britain.98 Whereas in previous essays on
democracy Wilson had routinely cited Britain as a near-democracy, right
behind the United States and Switzerland, in "Democracy and Efficiency"
he omitted Britain from the list. Acknowledging that Britain had been an
"inspiring example of self-government" throughout the nineteenth cen­
tury, Wilson nonetheless acknowledged that "England did not have what
we should call local self-government until 1888," since "people of the
counties had absolutely no voice" in selecting their governors. The rule
of crown-appointed country gentlemen "w as not democratic in form or
in principle." Thus, b y 1901 Wilson w as seeking to distance America from
its British heritage: "Our own [self-government], meanwhile, though con­
ceived in the same [English] atmosphere and spirit, had been set up upon
a very different pattern, suitable to a different order of society."99

The Impact of the German-American Conflict

Woodrow Wilson's diminishing esteem for Germany w as characteris­
tic of American political science after the turn of the century. Whereas in
the 1890s American students still flocked to Germany to round out their
graduate education in political science, after 1900 these educational so­
journs became less frequent and the reputation of German scholarship
gradually declined. For example, an article published in the newly
launched American Political Science Review (founded in 1907) contended
that although the theories of the great German legal scholars were "inge­
nious" and "subtle," they "w ill not appeal to the more practical minds of
English and American students."100 Indeed, the early volumes of the
A PSR offered the first portrayals of Imperial Germany as an authoritar­
ian antithesis of American democracy.
Still, the older, favorable view of Germany persisted through the out­
break of the Great War. John Burgess never moderated his pro-German
sentiments, and his students were not the only ones taught that Ger­
m any w as democratic. For example, in his Introduction to Political Science
(1910), Raymond Gettell of Amherst College asserted that "the govern­
ments of the United States, England, Germany and France are . . . all dem­
ocratic."101 Admiration for German legal thought, bureaucratic efficiency,
and municipal self-government persisted as well. Frank Goodnow, a
prize student of Burgess who served as the first president of the Ameri­
can Political Science Association, wrote in 1909 that in few other countries
"is the work of city government conducted so fully in the interest of the
people of the city as a whole" as in Prussia.102 And the APSR published
several favorable studies of German government side by side with less
flattering accounts,103
With America's entry into World War I in 19 17, the favorable image of
Germany w as thoroughly discredited, and the dichotomy between "au­
tocratic" Germany and "democratic" America sharpened. Colleges across
the country hastily introduced patriotic "w ar issues" courses presenting
their subject matter "as a clear-cut contest between the forces of light
and the forces of darkness."104 Not only did political scientists bring w ar
propaganda into their classrooms; some also participated in the Wilson
administration's propaganda effort abroad (Charles Merriam of the Uni­
versity of Chicago was the chief American "publicist" in Italy).105 Other
political scientists joined the historians in hastily producing shoddy books
that rationalized the administration's view of the w ar as a Manichaean
struggle between democracy and autocracy106 Even the A PSR became an
instrument of wartime propaganda, dressed up as respectable scholar­
ship. The journal published, for example, an essay that sought to refute
the myth that America's newfound allies, the Russians, were "Asiatic"
(read: inferior), to establish that "Russian Slavs in the early periods of
their national existence were democratic," and to attribute Russian despo­
tism to pervasive German influence.107 The essay thus echoed President
Wilson's dubious wartime claim that Russian autocracy was "not in fact
Russian in origin, character or purpose."108
Those who dared to challenge the anti-German hysteria of 19 17 - 18
risked their jobs and professional reputations. The chairman of the Uni­
versity of Minnesota's department of political science, William Schaper,
w as summarily dismissed by the university regents for arguing that the
blame for the w ar did not rest wholly with Germany.109 Columbia Uni­
versity likewise fired professors who questioned America's w ar aims.110
John Burgess, having retired in 19 12, no longer had a Columbia profes­
sorship to lose, but he did lose his name. The father of the discipline of
political science in America is largely forgotten today in part because of
his unrelenting pro-Germanism.111

World War I not only crystallized the autocratic image of Imperial Ger­
many; it also brought into discredit two major political science theories:
Teutonic/ Aryan nationalist theory and the doctrine of the state.
The central intellectual task of the founders of modem American po­
litical science involved laying intellectual foundations for national cohe­
sion in the aftermath of the Civil War. John Burgess w as by no means
unique in attempting to locate those foundations in the heritage and cul­
ture of Germany. Herbert Baxter Adam s, Burgess's counterpart at Johns
Hopkins University, had imbibed Sir Henry Maine's Aryan theory while
studying in Germany.112 Upon returning to America Adam s adopted Ox­
ford professor Edward Freeman, a thoroughgoing Teutonist, as a mentor
and embarked on a search for "The Germanic Origins of N ew England
Towns/'113 Adam s sought to embed American institutions in a history
older than America's and to establish their links "with the mother coun­
try [England], with the German fatherland, with villages and communi­
ties throughout the Aryan w orld /'114
Although the influence of the Teutonic theory of American political in­
stitutions decreased after the turn of the century, the theory remained
within the bounds of acceptable political science discourse until the Great
War. In 19 10 m any political science students were still being taught that
"the principles of representation and the national state are the work of the
Teutons" and that "of all the nations the Teutons have manifested, per­
haps, the greatest political ability."115 Even Woodrow Wilson, in succes­
sive revisions of The State, as late as 19 18 clung to the notion, imbibed
from Herbert Baxter Adams, that Anglo-American institutions were
Aryan in character.116 After 1918, however, the notion that the United
States w as part of a greater Teutonic (or Aryan) civilization vanished from
American intellectual discourse. Political science journals and textbooks
from the 1920s made no mention of the Germanic origin of American in­
stitutions except to ridicule the idea.117
The doctrine of state sovereignty, the other major theoretical casualty
of the war, conceptualized the state as a natural organism with "absolute,
unlimited power over the individual subject and over all associations of
subjects."118 The doctrine of the state w as central to the political theory of
Burgess, Wilson, and other leading political theorists of the late nine­
teenth century, and it continued to dominate disciplinary discourse
through World War I.119 Arthur Bentley's The Process of Government,
which sharply attacked the theory, had virtually no impact at the time of
its initial publication in 1908. But just a decade later the hegemony of the
doctrine of the state gave w ay to a widespread perception that "the old
landmarks no longer retain their validity" and that "a new and more ad­
equate [pluralist] social theory is rapidly evolving."120 In the early 1920s
the theory of the state was already being described as "antiquated abso­
lutism," and it was rapidly eclipsed by pluralist theories that depicted the
state as "only one of the innumerable group units possessing corporate
personality."121 Only then did Bentley's book begin garnering acco­
lades.122
Critics of the theory of the state attributed its demise to its inability to
account for "the fact that in recent times human society has been becom­
ing infinitely more complex," with new forms of industrial and social
organization asserting themselves at the expense of the state.123 This crit­
icism w as not without merit, but it failed to explain adequately w hy the
widespread dissatisfaction with the old theory crystallized in 1919 and
1920 instead of a decade earlier. Indeed, the hegemony of the theory was
undermined by the w ar against Germany no less than by the theory's an­
alytical flaws. The theory had been popularized in America b y scholars
trained in Germany, some of its framers were German scholars whose
works had been mandatory reading for American graduate students, and
one of its chief defenders, John Burgess, had become notorious for his pro-
German sym pathy The doctrine of the state thus spoke with a German
accent, and its decline was precipitated as much by the changing patterns
of America's foreign relations as by the changing nature of industrial so­
ciety.
World War I, then, severely damaged the theory of the state and de­
stroyed the Aryan theory of American nationalism. It would take a sec­
ond w ar against Germany to wreck another central doctrine of early
American political science: the "efficiency" doctrine of public adminis­
tration.
 Nazi Germany

Most Americans, including political scientists, currently regard Hitler's

Germany as a paradigm case of evil. N o respectable political scientist to­
day would claim that Nazism had any positive lessons to offer Ameri­
cans. Nazi Germany is viewed from an entirely nationalist ideological
perspective. But has this always been the case?
In 1980 Yale political scientist Robert Dahl was interviewed for the oral
history project of the APSA by his former student Nelson Polsby of the
University of California at Berkeley. Dahl recalled that as an undergrad­
uate student at the University of Washington in the early 1930s he had
had an instructor in political science, Frank Jonas, who had "come back
from Germany, and he [Jonas] had been greatly impressed with what the
Nazis were doing in Germany." Polsby reacted with "Oh, my goodness,"
to which Dahl responded: "A nd he [Jonas] was a young instructor there.
Well, I had to sort m y w ay through that.. . . I mean, I was never sympa­
thetic to Nazism, but I had to figure out what was going on there."1
Polsby's reaction aptly illustrates the tendency of today's political sci­
entists to project their hindsight-blessed evaluation of Nazi Germany onto
the past. They find it hard to believe that contemporaneous scholars might
have had less-than-negative views of the Nazi regime. Yet during the
1930s, when American political scientists were still "figurfing] out what
was going on there," not all were hostile toward all aspects of Nazism. In­
deed, a number of scholars expressed positive curiosity about, and even
downright admiration of, certain Nazi policies and practices. Few of those
political scientists were marginal in their profession. Some of the passages
cited below were penned by scholars who, during the 1930s or later, held
professorships in some of the country's most prestigious departments, in­
cluding Harvard, Chicago, Califomia-Berkeley, and Michigan. Five of
them served as president of the APSA,2 as did the editor of the American
Political Science Review (APSR) who published much of the material. Two
other scholars quoted here served as vice-president of the APSA and as
presidents of regional political science associations.
The writings surveyed in this chapter display an accommodationist
stance vis-à-vis Nazi Germany* They advocated not a wholesale installa­
tion of Nazi-style dictatorship in America, but rather the dispassionate
study of the Nazi program in order to distinguish between its unpleasant
excesses and its sounder aspects; only thus could Americans learn from
certain achievements of the Nazi regime notwithstanding its antidemo­
cratic and anti-Semitic nature. Most of the scholars quoted below believed
that the Nazi regime had its "good" points, for which it deserved credit.
A chief good, in their eyes, w as Nazi administrative reform.
Other political scientists either registered unequivocal disapproval of
Nazism or, more typically, wrote nothing about it. The views surveyed here
do not necessarily represent the majority view. What is significant is that
these views were expressed by scholars who were considered important by
their peers; that they were published, in large part, in the profession's flag­
ship journal, the APSR; and that these views thus constituted a respectable
and legitimate voice within the polyphonic discourse of the discipline.
Although, as Robert Dahl later recollected, the "qualities [of Nazism]
were pretty discernible very early on," scholars writing in the 1930s could
not benefit from hindsight on the horrors of World War II and the Holo­
caust.3 There is also the fact that anti-Semitism and admiration for Nazi
Germany were widespread in American culture and politics in the 1930s;
political scientists were not alone in expressing uncritical views of
Nazism. This era makes clear that American political scientists, contrary
to their profession's self-representation, are not insulated from broader
currents in American political and cultural life, good or bad. M y concern
here, though, is not so much to question the ethical integrity of individ­
ual scholars as to understand how it w as possible for political science as
a discipline to accept uncritical portrayals of Nazi Germany as a legitimate
part of its discourse.
Several factors combined to shape the context in which such senti­
ments enjoyed legitimacy. First, Hitler's seizure of power in Germ any oc­
curred during the Great Depression, when m any Americans felt that their
country w as failing in many ways. At such a time of deep domestic cri­
sis, American intellectuals were understandably curious about political
and social forms emerging elsewhere in the world as they earnestly
(though not always critically) searched for remedies to Am erica's crisis.
The second factor that made it permissible to express positive interest
in aspects of Nazism was the w ave of anti-Semitism that swept America
in the interwar period. Although racism w as not the main feature of
Nazism that attracted political scientists, anti-Semitic prejudices latent in
the profession m ay have contributed to a general mood whereby the
plight of the Jews was not deemed sufficient reason to condemn Nazi Ger­
many altogether.
 Third, by 1933 some leading American intellectuals, including politi­
cal scientists, had already adopted an accommodationist stance toward
Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union*4 Both dictatorships were viewed as
originators of valuable social or economic experiments from whose re­
sults Americans might learn. Thus, the notion that dictatorships, their
harsh side notwithstanding, might have positive features was already in
place in 1933, and it did not take a giant mental leap to apply that notion
to Nazi Germany.
Fourth, one of the major weaknesses widely attributed to America in
the 1930s w as its clumsy administrative structure. For political scientists
concerned about this matter the temptation to study Nazi administrative
methods w as great, since Prussian public administration and municipal
government had been admired in the profession long before the rise of
Hitler. These scholars subscribed to the notion that administrative meth­
ods were transferable across borders irrespective of differences in regime
structures and political ends.
Finally, an accommodationist attitude toward Nazi Germany may
have appeared unproblematic to political scientists because scholars in
other fields were currently examining aspects of German life that were
relevant to their own professional interests. For example, some American
eugenic scientists and social work experts regarded Nazi Germany as an
experimental laboratory for their ideas.5 The 1936 volume of the Ameri­
can Sociological Review contained an article reporting a firsthand observa­
tion of N azi sterilization programs, whose author claimed that the "law
is administered in entire fairness and with all consideration for the indi­
vidual to be sterilized and for his family, and that discrimination of class,
race, creed, political, or religious belief does not enter into the matter."
The Nazi sterilization law, the author concluded, "is a great step ahead as
a constructive public health measure, as a method of preventive medi­
cine, and as a contribution to social welfare."6
In sum, in 1933, under the shadow of the depression, a legacy of ad­
miration for Prussian administration and of conceptually distinguishing
between administration and politics interacted with a more recent pro­
clivity in American intellectual life to dissociate the methods of dictator­
ships from their ends, as well as with latent anti-Semitic prejudice, to
produce in American political science an intellectual climate tolerant of
uncritical, accommodationist attitudes toward Nazi Germany.

"The Worst Representatives of the Jewish Race”

After World War I the United States experienced an upsurge of anti-
Semitism. Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent was phenomenally popular
in the 1920S when it prominently featured a series on the "international
Jew ."7 And in the 1930s many highly placed Americans condoned the
Nazis' anti-Jewish policies. For example, President Wilson's former con­
fidant "Colonel" Edward M. House, who became an adviser to President
Roosevelt, asserted that Hitler could "have his w ay " with the Jews, and
that "the Jew s should not be allowed to dominate economic or intellec­
tual life in Berlin as they have done for a long time."8
The academic world was also touched b y the anti-Semitic tide. Lead­
ing universities instituted stringent restrictions on Jewish enrollment,
and Jewish Ph.D. recipients encountered flagrant discrimination in the
academic job market.9 In history and psychology, among other disci­
plines, confidential letters of recommendation for Jewish job-seekers of­
ten contained statements to the effect that the candidate w as "a Jew
though not the kind to which one takes exception," or that he w as "quite
un-Jewish, if one considers the undesirable side of the race."10
There is little reason to believe that in this era political scientists did
not also hold stereotypes concerning the "undesirable side" of the Jewish
people. On his first trip to Europe, in 1923, Harold Lasswell, then a young
political science instructor at the University of Chicago, met a fellow
passenger whom he described, in a letter to his parents, as "a research
investigator in biological chemistry at Harvard. He is one of these abnor­
mally intelligent German Jews, with a beak-like nose and cunning little
eyes and a self satisfied and assertive manner. But he is by no means
disagreeable." Lasswell also encountered "plenty of expawnbrokers on
board. Most of them speak with a Yiddish accent and are Kosher. One
dirty looking little hawk got so tanked up on shoe polish and hair tonic
alcohol that he has been in and out of the hospital."11 From subsequent
trips to Europe, Lasswell reported to his parents that the physical ap­
pearance of Emma Goldman exemplified the "tendency of elderly Jew ­
esses to melt and run down toward the stomach," and that "H ungary is
run by an oligarchy of landlords and Jewish financiers."12
Lasswell did not express such anti-Semitic stereotyping in his pub­
lished writings; many of his students and followers, including Gabriel
Almond, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and Daniel Lemer, were Jewish, and in the
1960s Lasswell w as awarded an honorary doctorate by the Jewish Theo­
logical Seminary.13 M y point here is not to condemn Lasswell personally,
but rather to suggest that anti-Semitic prejudices were latent in the social
milieu from which American political science drew its talent in the 1920s.
This latent anti-Semitism w as bound to lead to insensitivity to the plight
of the Jew s in Germany, and thus it may have played a significant role in
permitting the expression of forgiving sentiments toward Germany.
In some cases anti-Semitic stereotypes found expression in published
books and articles. In these works the connection between anti-Semitism
and uncritical attitudes toward Nazism w as clearer and more direct.
In an article dispatched from Berlin, published in the APSR in 19 31,
Kate Pinsdorf sought to dispel the "contradictory and confused ideas that
are current" about the Nazi Party. Hitler's "extreme dislike of all Jew s"
could be "explained" b y the fact that "in Vienna he came in contact with
the worst representatives of the Jewish race, i.e., Eastern Galician Jew s."
Indeed, "during the past winter the National Socialist writings were di­
rected rather against the Eastern Galician Jew s who had entered Germany
since 19 14 than against the Jew s generally In this fact, we m ay detect a
tendency toward a revision of the sweeping indictment of all Jew s as
such." Pinsdorf thus indirectly condoned the persecution of Jews, so long
as it w as limited to the "w orst" element among them.14
Pinsdorf relied exclusively on Nazi sources and dwelled repeatedly on
the Nazi movement's "idealistic enthusiasm and spirit of sacrifice." She
portrayed Hitler as a centrist, "successful in steering a middle course be­
tween the right wing of his p a rty . . . who are working for a putsch, and
the left wing, which condemns the legal w ay of getting power and works
for a social revolution." Hitler was a "m iddle class man" and a shrewd
politician who "has a talent for organizing heterogeneous elements and
for holding them together." Among those elements was the S.A., which
"satisfies a German craving for marching, sharp commands, group ac­
tion, just as football satisfies similar desires among Americans."15
Kate Pinsdorf was bom in 1901 to German immigrants in Brazil. She
enrolled in the doctoral program in history at Stanford University in 1928
and went to Berlin to study "the German Conservative p arty" Upon her
return she taught history at Vassar College. In 1934 she married an Amer­
ican businessman in Brazil and apparently left the academic profession.16
Thus, the significance of Pinsdorf's article stems less from her own stature
in the political science profession than from the outlet in which it w as
published — the discipline's official journal — and the stature of its edi­
tor. Frederic A. Ogg of the University of Wisconsin, who edited the A PSR
from 1926 to 1949, did not edit out Pinsdorf's reference to "the worst rep­
resentatives of the Jewish race."17
Francis Graham Wilson (1901-1976), unlike Pinsdorf, was far from an
obscure scholar. Wilson received his bachelor's degree from the Univer­
sity of Texas and his doctorate in political science from Stanford Univer­
sity (1928). He was hired as assistant professor of political science at the
University of Washington, where he w as rapidly promoted to associate
and, in 1934, to full professorship.18 By the mid-i93os Wilson was be­
coming prominent in disciplinary discourse about political theory, stak-
ing out a position that was, by his own account, conservative.19 Forty
years later, his obituary would indicate that throughout his career Wilson
"eschewed relativism. A real Catholic from the days of his conversion at
the University of Texas, he believed in an objective moral order which,
because of the distinctly human condition, could only at best be approx­
imated on Earth/'20
If Wilson eschewed ethical relativism, his aversion scarcely came
through in his textbook The Elements of Modem Politics, whose preface
was dated April 1936. In a chapter titled "German National Socialism,"
Wilson extolled the virtue of objectivity toward Nazism. In the conflict
between the "essentially contradictory philosophies of liberalism and
National Socialism," he wrote, "it is easy to permit hate to prevail over
reason---- The only w ay in which the representatives of one world view
can reach the other is to use the fundamental assumptions of the other."
By taking a hostile attitude toward Nazi philosophy, liberals "only con­
firm the German in his belief in the essential correctness of his position."
To illustrate the counterproductivity of condemning Nazi ideology, Wil­
son noted that "the world boycott of the Jews against Germany w as re­
garded by many as a confirmation of the charges that the Germans made
against those of Semitic extraction. Such a boycott was proof of the charge
that the Jew s never become completely assimilated in their country of res­
idence, and a fortiori that the Jew in Germany is not a Germ an."21
Among the elements of Nazi philosophy which, Wilson thought, mer­
ited "careful" and dispassionate examination was "the racial theory of
Germanic civilization." "A n extreme form of this type of thought is offi­
cially orthodox at the moment, but there are many who hold that the rad­
icals of the Nationalist Socialist movement m ay be displaced and that a
more sober racial philosophy m ay come into favor. Most critics would ad­
mit also that, should National Socialism be driven from political life in the
near future, the racial principle would still be important though not sup­
ported in an extreme form ."22
Wilson thus implied that if only Nazi race theory were cleansed of its
"extreme" elements, it would be essentially sound. In fact Wilson hinted
that the Nazis were already making their race theory more "sober." For
example, the Nazis did not espouse the extreme view "that the people of
modem Germany are pure Aryans." Rather, they upheld the more mod­
est claim that in Germany
the Aryan Element is still sufficiently strong to be perceptible. The task
of the state in its racial policy is to give every possible advantage to the
sound racial strains in the community. In the course of generations,
therefore, there w ill be a gradual recuperation of the racial basis of Ger­
 manic civilization. The National Socialists point with approval to the
immigration policies of the United States and Great Britain. Our new
immigration statutes are steps in the right direction, since they indi*
cate the w ill to preserve the Northern European elements of our com­
munity. These laws will act toward the ends of race hygiene because
they cut out the influx of inferior Eastern people which brought about
the decay of ancient civilizations and which have impaired the force of
some of the Northern European culture.23
Wilson concluded the chapter with a defense of Nazi foreign policy.
"There are few serious students who doubt the inherent peaceful dispo­
sition of the average G erm an.. . . Some truth may perhaps be attached to
the assertions of the German leadership that what Germany wants is
peace, security, freedom, equality, and respect among the states of the
w orld."24
In 1939 Francis Wilson was appointed to a professorship at the Uni­
versity of Illinois's department of political science, then ranked among
the six or seven most prestigious departments in the profession.25 He re­
tired in 1967, having served a term as department chairman. According
to his obituary, "throughout his career Professor Wilson w as active in var­
ious official capacities in the affairs of the national, Western, Midwestern,
and National Capital Area political science associations."26 Most notably,
Wilson served on the Executive Council of the APSA from 1937 to 1940,
and in 19 41 he was president of the Midwest Conference of Political Sci­
entists. His extra-academic honors included membership in the Task
Force on Human Rights and Responsibilities and chairmanship of the
Committee on Constitutional Integrity.27
William Bennett Munro (1875-1957) was another prominent political
scientist whose depiction of Nazism betrayed an anti-Semitic sentiment.
Munro held the Trumbull Chair of the History of Government at Harvard
University in the 1920s and served as president of the A PSA in 1927. He
w as among the founders of the California Institute of Technology, which
he joined in 1929.28 Munro's comparative government textbook, origi­
nally published in 1925, sold 5,000 copies per year, with revised editions
appearing in 19 3 1 and 1938.29
In the 1938 edition of his textbook, Munro expressed disapproval of
Nazi dictatorship and sharply condemned the stamping-out of individ­
ual freedom in Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, the freedom of Germany's
Jew s appeared to concern him less than the freedom of other Germans. In
a section titled "The Nazis and the Jew s," Munro explained that one of
the reasons for the N azis' success in seizing power was their "capitaliz­
ing on anti-Semitic prejudice." By his account, "Members of the Jewish
race accumulated a good deal of economic power in pre-war [Wilhel-
mine] Germany through their control of banking and credit as w ell as
through the ownership of large industries, department stores, and news­
papers/' In the Weimar era, "the Jews began to play an enlarged part in
German public life. It was quite natural that this should happen with the
incoming of the new regime, for in a democratic republic it is the lawyers,
bankers, merchants, and newspaper men rather than members of the no­
bility or large landowners who generally take the reins into their hands."
In the course of the great inflation, Munro continued, "bankers, industri­
alists and merchants naturally fared better than persons with fixed in­
comes," and "it happened that many of these bankers, industrialists and
merchants were Jews. Leading Jewish bankers and traders had foreign af­
filiations, as all bankers and large traders have. For this reason, they were
alleged to be in a conspiracy with Germ any's neighbors to enforce the
payment of reparations and keep the nation poor."30
Following these repeated uncritical references to the economic might
of the Jews, Munro posed the question w hy "o f all the races in history the
Jewish race is the one that has been more frequently persecuted." One an­
swer, he proposed, w as "the envy of others":
Something may be attributed to the inherent capacity of the Jewish
race, especially in the fields of trade and finance. The Jew, as a rule, is
hard working, shrewd, thrifty, saves his money, invests it profitably,
and makes two or three shekels grow where one grew before. In com­
petition with races which do not possess these qualities the Jew s are
bound to win, but on their w ay to the top they often leave a trail of
envy and resentment behind. Much of the animosity towards the Jews,
at all times in modern history, has not been because of their Judaism
but because of their economic competence.31
There were other reasons for anti-Semitic hostility:
The Jews, in the main, do not spread themselves uniformly into all the
vocations and professions but tend to concentrate into a few of them.
They do not intermarry freely with other races but keep their racial in­
tegrity well guarded. Scattered over the face of the earth for more than
a thousand years, without a homeland, it is amazing that this race
should have so well preserved its solidarity. By so doing, however, it has
rendered its members easy to distinguish from the mass of the people
when any movement for discrimination arises. The Jew, moreover, tends
to be an individualist and an internationalist. As a rule he is not intel­
lectually docile, as the rank and file of most other races are; he inclines
to think for himself rather than to let somebody else do it for him. While
 he performs his civic duties with reasonable fidelity, the Jew's patriotism
is not of the aggressive type. And quite naturally he has never reconciled
himself to the idea that Germans, Russians, Spaniards, or any of the
other people among whom he has lived are the salt of the earth.32
Finally, "mention may also be made of the fact that when economic dis­
asters overtake any country . . . the Jew s seem to fare better than most
other people. This is . . . due in part to the long schooling which the race
has had in the art of finding a safe haven when trouble impends." Munro
concluded, referring to Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda, that "some of
these charges were without foundation, but they were widely believed
and gained adherents to the Nazi cause."33
William B. Munro thus implied that some Nazi charges against the
Jew s were justified. He essentially suggested that the Jewish problem
stemmed as much from the stubborn nature of the Jews themselves as
from the depravity of their persecutors. And in a roundabout w ay he in­
sinuated that although Nazi anti-Semitic policies were excessive, cutting
the Jew s down to their economic size might be justified if implemented
in less brutal fashion.

The Appeal of German Administration

American political scientists' interest in Nazi administrative practices
had been shaped by a convergence of several intellectual currents: the
legacy of admiration of German bureaucratic efficiency dating back to the
late nineteenth century, the common belief that administrative techniques
were separate from political ends, and the prevalence of accommoda-
tionist attitudes toward Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union before 1933.

"If I See a Murderous Fellow..

In his pioneering article on public administration (discussed in chap­
ter 1), Woodrow Wilson, the sixth president of the APSA, lamented the
administrative backwardness of the United States and praised the "ad ­
mirable system " of public administration perfected by Prussian reform­
ers.34 Such views were w idely shared among the founders of the APSA
(founded in 1903).35
The first president of the association, Frank Goodnow (1859-1939), was
typical of his professional generation in that he devoted much of his ca­
reer to the study of administration. Goodnow was especially critical of the
conditions of American municipal government; he sought to curtail the
power of urban political machines — which he and fellow scholars and
reformers loathed for their corruption and inefficiency — by depoliticiz-
ing and professionalizing city government. He clearly viewed the cities of
Prussia, "where administrative force is probably more efficient than else­
where," as a model, if not the model, from which American municipal re­
formers could profitably learn. In few other countries, Goodnow wrote,
"is the work of city government conducted so fully in the interest of the
people of the city as a whole" as in Prussia.36 The APSA's second presi­
dent, Wilson's friend Albert Shaw, was also a keen student of municipal
government. Shaw was most impressed with the relative speed and ease
of Germany's transformation from a rural to an advanced industrial soci­
ety. He observed that the secret of Germany's success was its possession
of a "system of public administration more economical and more infalli­
bly effective than could have been found elsewhere." The art and science
of "municipal housekeeping," Shaw believed, "can for various reasons be
observed to better advantage in Germany than in any other country."37
In sum, for the leaders of the profession during the early twentieth cen­
tury, Prussian administration represented an enviable model of govern­
mental professionalism and efficiency. Prussia was not the only foreign
model they examined; Goodnow, Shaw, Wilson, and their peers were also
interested in the administrative practices of other European countries,
most notably France. Still, Prussia was regarded as a very important ad­
ministrative model, often as the best one.
These political scientists did not wish to recast the whole American po­
litical system in the image of any other. Rather, their view w as that ad­
ministration w as a technical sphere, and that political or ideological
dissimilarities need not hinder the importation of administrative tech­
niques. In the words of Woodrow Wilson,
It is the distinction. . . between administration and politics, which
makes the comparative method so safe in the field of administration.
When w e study the administrative systems of France and Germany,
knowing that we are not in search of political principles, we need not
care a peppercorn for the constitutional or political reasons which
Frenchmen or Germans give for their practices when explaining them
to us. If I see a murderous fellow sharpening a knife cleverly, I can bor­
row his w ay of sharpening the knife without borrowing his probable
intention to commit murder with it; and so if I see a monarchist dyed
in the wool managing a public bureau well, I can learn his business
methods without changing one of m y republican spots. He m ay serve
his king; I will continue to serve the people; but I should like to serve
m y sovereign as well as he serves his.38
In speaking of a "murderous fellow," Wilson clearly w as not making a
direct reference to France or Germany of his time. It w as an inflated
metaphor, a rhetorical device designed to amplify his distinction between
polities and administration. But for Wilson's successors the abstraction
would materialize as a concrete moral dilemma.

Italy and the Soviet Union: "Striking Experiments"

World War I brought about the demise of the Germanic theories of
American national identity and the precipitous decline of the German-ac­
cented doctrine of the state. The war also damaged the reputation of Ger­
man administration. In the early 1920s few, if any, American scholars
traveled to Germany to study its administration, and some former ad­
mirers of the Prussian bureaucracy turned into critics.39 For example,
whereas in 1909 William Bennett Munro had unconditionally praised
Prussian city government for its efficiency, in the 1927 edition of the same
book he criticized the Prussian system for stressing efficiency at the ex­
pense of democracy.40
The reputation of German administration, however, was theoretically
less vulnerable to the shock of war, since it did not hinge on an assump­
tion of cultural or political affinity. Thus, as the war experience receded
and as the thesis that Germany was not solely responsible for the conflict
gained respectability, American students of public administration re­
sumed their pilgrimages to Germany. The most notable product of these
research trips, The Government and Administration of Germany (1928), by
Brookings Institution researchers Frederick Blachly and Miriam Oatman,
was arguably more comprehensive than any of the prewar studies of Ger­
man administration. And it was no less complimentary, concluding that
the German administrative system was "so efficient, so vigorous, and so
free from corruption, as to offer many useful lessons alike to the states­
man, the administrator, and the citizen."41 Thus, as the Weimar era was
drawing to a close, German public administration regained much of the
luster it had enjoyed in America before the Great War.
But would the resurgent reputation of the German bureaucracy sur­
vive the Nazification of Germany? Would American political scientists
continue to be attracted to "clever" administrative techniques after the
obliteration of Weimar democracy? It would be difficult to answer these
questions on the basis of studies of German administration from the late
1920s. Blachly and Oatman encountered Germany at a moment when one
could happily praise the Weimar regime for its democracy as well as for
its efficiency. Perhaps a more telling indication that American political sci­
entists might remain interested in German techniques even after the
death of Weimar democracy m ay be found in their attitudes toward Italy
and the Soviet Union, which by the late 1920s had already become dicta­
torships and would later be lumped with Nazi Germany under the label
"totalitarian."42
 During the 1920s and 1930s some leading American intellectuals took
an accommodationist stance toward Fascist Italy an d /o r Soviet Russia,
depicting them favorably as laboratories in which valuable social, politi­
cal, and economic experiments were being performed. These intellectu­
als did not necessarily wish to subject America to a proletarian revolution,
much less to a nationalistic dictatorship, nor were they unaware of these
regimes' unpleasant features, but they were willing to recommend that
America emulate what they regarded as the more positive aspects of
the Fascist or Communist states.43 This accommodationist sentiment is
clearly evident in the scholarship of, among others, Charles Merriam.44
Merriam (1874-1953) was the most influential political scientist of the era.
He chaired the University of Chicago's department of political science
during the interwar years, building it into one of the profession's two
most prestigious departments.45 An astonishing proportion of the schol­
ars who would later preside over the APSA received their graduate train­
ing in Merriam's department or, in some cases, wished they had 46
What made Chicago's intellectual climate special w as the scientism
promoted by Merriam. Graduates of Merriam's department remember it
fondly as an intellectually exciting place, where students were strongly
encouraged to engage in field research and to immerse themselves in the
concepts and methods emanating from allied sciences; Merriam's former
students (as well as other chroniclers of disciplinary history) commonly
portray him as the progenitor of the scientific revolution that would
sweep the discipline in the 1950s.47 Now, the view of Chicago as an early
bastion of scientism is correct, but the presumption of a linear intellectual
progression leading from Merriam's conception of science to that preva­
lent in the discipline today is overly simplistic. For where political scien­
tists' aspirations are now confined largely to the modest realm of building
and testing theories, Merriam aspired to create no less than "a new world
made over by modern science."48 And where today's scientific studies of
politics are often motivated by empirical "knowledge gaps" and theoret­
ical puzzles, Merriam was motivated by a Progressive impulse to harness
science — eugenic, psychological, sociological — as a means to "control"
practical problems.49 Thus, although it is true that the profession has
grown methodologically more sophisticated over the years, insofar as
Merriam's heady scientistic vision of the 1920s has been abandoned, the
story of the development of political science is one of regression as much
as progression.
The major practical problem that preoccupied Merriam from approxi­
mately 1925 to 19 3 1 was the problem of nation-building (or "civic educa­
tion," as he preferred to label it). This had also been the central problem
preoccupying John Burgess's generation. But the context in which the
problem reemerged w as inevitably different: Burgess's nationalist im­
pulse had been sparked by his Civil War experience; Merriam (who had
attended Burgess's classes at Columbia in the late 1890s) had been pro­
foundly influenced by the experience of the Great War,50 Internationally;
the w ar gave rise to the principle of national self-determination, while
domestically the drumbeat of "one hundred percent Americanism," or­
chestrated by the Wilson administration, reawakened the nativist im­
pulse.51 Merriam, along with many other social scientists and historians,
worked in 19 17 and 1918 for the administration's main propaganda or­
gan, the Committee on Public Information.52 He w as put in charge of
"Am erican publicity in Italy," where he used films, public speakers, and
leaflets in an attempt to shore up the sagging morale of the Italian peo­
ple and to w in their hearts to the American war cause.53 As Dorothy
Ross observed, Merriam returned from Italy with a clear sense that such
"publicity" techniques "m ight be extremely effective if applied to civic
education."54 In the mid-i920S Merriam awoke to the challenge of fos­
tering in America a communal sentiment that would be am ply patriotic,
yet tamer than the nativist attitudes that were being loudly propagated
by such popular organizations as the American Legion and the Ku Klux
Klan.
In contrast to Burgess, who sought to anchor American nationalism in
history and culture, Merriam characteristically framed patriotism as a
technical "control problem."55 He launched a massive crossnational re­
search project on "comparative civic training" and instructed its partici­
pants to assess the effectiveness of various "mechanisms or devices for
the purpose of inculcating civic interest and loyalty."56 Imagine, Merriam
wrote to one of his prospective collaborators in an attempt to explain the
nature of the project, that the Chinese government invited us "to develop
patriotic sentiment in China. How would we go about it; what mecha­
nisms or devices would we consider most effective and recommend for
utilization?" . . . It puts the question differently from one who asks, what
is the history of Chinese patriotism or theories of nationalism."57 Mer­
riam thus extended to the field of comparative civic training the same
value-neutral standard that Woodrow Wilson had applied to compara­
tive administration forty years earlier. Foreign techniques of nation­
building, Merriam believed, could be copied without endorsing the
political ends served by the foreign technician.
The foreign countries that Merriam chose to study included "tw o of
the more modern systems, the Fascist in Italy and the Soviet system in
Russia."58 The Italian and Soviet "striking experiments," as Merriam re­
ferred to them,59 appeared to him to be "the most interesting [attempts]
now in process" to create "de novo a type of political loyalty to, and in­
terest in, a new order of things. The revolution in Russia was, of course,
much more fundam ental. . . but the Italian situation is equally remark­
able/'60
In 1926 Merriam traveled to the Soviet Union with the scholar he had
enlisted to do the study of Soviet civic training: Samuel Harper of the Uni­
versity of Chicago.61 Harper w as one of America's leading experts on
Russia, but although he was fully aware of the harsh side of Bolshevik
rule, he focused his research on what he regarded as the regime's brighter
side: its "frank experimenting" in various areas, "which is the essence of
the revolution, [and which] makes the Soviet Union an interesting field
for the study of civic training methods. It has become a commonplace to
speak of Soviet Russia as a vast laboratory."62 In the resulting book, pub­
lished as part of M eniam 's series of "studies in the making of citizens,"
Harper described in detail the role of the Soviet press, schools, youth
movements, civic organizations, campaigns, and celebrations in stimu­
lating a civic interest among Russia's citizens. The book earned a favor­
able review in Izvestia.63
The volume Making Fascists, also part of the comparative civic training
series edited by Merriam, was written by Herbert Schneider, a former stu­
dent of John Dewey, and by historian Shepard Clough, both of Columbia
University.64 Schneider had earlier published an article on Fascist Italy in
Political Science Quarterly, and a book, Making the Fascist State, in which he
played down Fascist violence and applauded Italy's transition to a "cor­
porate state."65 A s John Diggins astutely observed, Schneider essentially
interpreted Mussolini's corporate state as a pioneering bid to realize the
Durkheimian dream of social solidarity.66 Schneider's field research in
Italy in 1926-27, which resulted in Making the Fascist State, w as funded
by the Social Science Research Council, then chaired by Charles Merriam.
Merriam showed a "kindly interest" in Schneider's project and wrote to
Schneider that he "found [Making the Fascist State] extremely useful and
stimulative."67 He also reviewed the book favorably in the Journal of Po­
litical Economy,68 Merriam then sent Schneider to Italy again, this time to
study Fascist civic training; Schneider recruited Shepard Clough to assist
him.
Schneider and Clough found that "the Fascist regime has made an
enormous advance over its immediate predecessors in appealing to the
religious imagination of the people, and in providing the nation with con­
crete symbols and forms for the expression of its political faith." Fascist
"rites and rituals" such as "the black uniforms, the black pennant, the Ro­
man salu te. . . may seem artificial and even unreal to a foreigner," but
"even a casual acquaintance with the spirit and inner life of a fascio is
enough to reveal the emotional appeal and imaginative force which all
this exerts on the youth of the nation---- There is a considerable and un­
deniable element of religious conviction and devotion in most Fascists,
which transcends the limits of political strife and party tactics." The book
concluded with the suggestion that the "methods and ideals of civic train­
ing," employed by the Fascists to meet Italy's postwar emergency, "m ay
serve to instruct those peoples who have as yet evaded such emergen­
cies."69 Merriam wrote to the authors that he was "greatly pleased" with
their "ground-breaking" study.70
In his book The Making of Citizens, Charles Merriam summarized and
synthesized the findings of his collaborators. In summarizing the Soviet
case, Merriam ignored the suppression of civil rights in the Soviet Union,
noting with satisfaction that the revolution had produced "a form of dem­
ocratic nationalism." He concluded that "this is the w orld's most inter­
esting and suggestive experiment in civic education, rich in materials for
the student of civic processes." A s for Italy, Merriam acknowledged that
Mussolini ruled with "an iron hand," but he nonetheless characterized
Fascist methods as "full of meaning for the student of civic training" and
as constituting "the most systematic and complete attempt to develop
civic feeling outside of Russia."71
Merriam w as fascinated by the great skill with which the Bolsheviks
and Fascists were manipulating popular emotions for the purpose of
stimulating civic loyalty. In the Soviet Union, "the Red flag, the 'interna­
tionale,' great mass meetings, parades, demonstrations, festivals, holi­
days, and revolutionary art symbolize the new order, and fill the abstract
theories with vivid color and rhythm." In Italy, the "uniforms and rituals,
the salute, the cry eia, eia, a-laAa, and the popular song 'Giovanezza'" were
"parts of the vigorous effort to build up a Fascist symbolism to typify the
new spirit of the new political entity and furnish an emotional color for
the picture of the new loyalty." In both countries the educational poten­
tial of new symbolisms "is seen with especial brilliance." It was "easily
possible," wrote Merriam, that features like "the brilliant devices of the
Reds and the Black Shirts, with their array of colorful and inspiring cults
and ceremonies .. .w ill be woven into the civic education of the future."72
In sum, in the early 1930s, the era's most renowned American political
scientist clearly believed that Fascist Italy and Stalin's Soviet Union of­
fered useful lessons to Americans, notwithstanding their different ide­
ologies and political institutions. In principle, there was no reason w hy
Merriam would not take a similar accommodationist stance vis-à-vis
another regime that excelled in symbolization and mass mobilization:
Adolf Hitler's.
Charles Merriam spent the summer of 1932 at the Bristol Hotel in
Berlin, where he closely watched the Reichstag election campaign. He
was joined there by his protégé Harold Lasswell, and by Samuel Harper,
who w as en route to Moscow. In his autobiography Harper recalled go­
ing with Merriam to several election meetings, including an "alarm ing"
Hitler rally:
Ivy Lee sat just behind us, and he and Merriam, both of whom had at­
tended Moscow Red Square celebrations, suggested to me that the
Communists had been outstripped as technicians of propaganda by
the Nazis. The enormous stadium crowd w as gradually prepared for
the speakers by marching athletes, torchbearing youths, and the sim­
ple, repetitious, martial music of bugles and drums---- At last Hitler
drove in, with Goebbels. At that moment Goebbels w as Berlin's fa­
vorite. Hitler gauged his words to allow the echo to pass, so that his
speech was a series of explosive sounds. A s we left, Merriam charac­
terized the meeting as a combination of Ku Klux Klan, Negro revival
meeting, and Billy Sunday harangue.73
Ivy Lee w as a successful American publicity agent who helped polish
Mussolini's image among American business leaders and who would
soon become a paid Nazi propagandist.74 From H arper's account, it ap­
pears that in 1932 Merriam regarded Hitler primarily as the embodiment
of the ideal propagandist: a gifted orator, a clever manipulator of sym­
bols, and an effective spiritual healer. Merriam apparently w as as at­
tracted by Hitler's artful delivery of his message as he w as repelled b y
the hateful content.
This attraction is evident in Political Power, a book Merriam began writ­
ing in Berlin while Hitler was campaigning for the Reichstag, and fin­
ished in Chicago several months after Hitler burned the building.75 On
one level, the book constituted a handbook for the maintenance of polit­
ical authority. If leaders of the world were assembled for the purpose of
preparing a "manual of power," Merriam inquired,
would they conclude that special situations were more important than
any possible generalizations? Or, would Stalin, and MacDonald, and
Gandhi, and Herriot, and Hitler, and Roosevelt discover some inner
groups of rules, maxims, principles which might be useful to know
and follow? Would they agree upon what constituted a great law ­
maker or a "good" administrator, or a "good" judge, or a "good"
leader, or a "good" general? . . . Would they find in the other's group
types of personnel, of arrangements, of techniques which they would
like to bring over into their own . . . ?76
Merriam's answer to these questions was an emphatic yes. He laid out
some principles of power, which applied "throughout a w ide variety of
systems externally different in the type of organization and in their func­
tions* They are equally applicable to democracy or monarchy, to the rule
of the elite [read: Fascism], or the government of the Soviets, and they
m ay be found useful in the employment of a considerable variety of
power techniques*" Once the "rancor of partisanship is laid aside," Mer-
riam argued, one found a "striking similarity" in the problems faced by
various governments* For example, "the problem of adequate commod­
ity production runs through all of the power systems, whether of one eco­
nomic complexion or another, or of one nationalistic group or another*
Germany, the United States, Russia, are interested in large-scale, quantity
production while France employs another system and Italy and England
another* When the experts of these various units come together they
speak much the same technical language with variations in dialect." Sim­
ilarly, "London, Berlin, Moscow, Rome, and Washington" all faced the
problem of the "selection and succession of control personnel": as far as
the selection of political leaders w as concerned, "there is the greatest dif­
ficulty in agreement among the representatives of the several power
systems of the world. But in the somewhat narrower field of public
administration, the various power holders are more easily able to under­
stand each other and to discuss the differential advantage of the compet­
ing plans." And all power holders must also face the challenge of
"balancing] between the three groups which may be characterized as
the expert or technician, the ruler, and the consumer-producer":
In a w ay the nominal rulers m ay be regarded as brokers, operating be­
tween the mass on the one side and the experts on the other, and in­
terpreting one to the other. What voice finally decides or in what
situations? The voice of authority, or expertness, or of mass determi­
nation? The Soviet Union must consider this question as carefully as
the government of England, or as the Catholic church, or the govern­
ments of Germany or Japan.77
Thus, writing several months after Hitler's seizure of power, Merriam
casually mentioned the Führer's name in the company of Roosevelt and
Gandhi; and he held on to the view that in administration and in a vari­
ety of other fields, governmental techniques were interchangeable across
ideological and political boundaries.
But Political Power was more than a manual. On a deeper level, it of­
fered insight into Merriam's interpretation of the history of political de­
velopment and his vision of its future course. In the past, Merriam
argued, political authority had been largely based on coercion and vio­
lence, and typically sanctioned by the myth of the divine authority of ab­
solute rulers. In the late eighteenth century, the absolutist Macht Staat, the
power state, began to give w ay to the Recht Staat, the legal state. Unfor­
tunately, along the w ay the impulse to obliterate absolutist government
degenerated into a more sweeping tendency to depreciate government al­
together. On the right, "the capitalists attacked the state as a menace to
their vigorous and successful conduct of business and sought in many
ways to curb its activities___ In a sense there w as set up a boycott of gov­
ernment, especially in the United States."78 On the left, M arx brilliantly
exposed the concept of laissez-faire as an ideological mask for capitalist
material interests, but, sadly, Marx joined his capitalist foes in wishing
government away. Subsequently there arose other challenges to extant
political authority, notably from Fascism, whose intellectual defenders
exposed the oligarchic reality lurking behind the democratic facade of the
constitutional liberal state.
Merriam, then, was comfortable with the realist, antiformalistic inter­
pretations of the constitutional state promulgated by the Marxists and the
elite theorists. The constitution and the legal system, he suggested (echo­
ing the contemporaneous views of progressive historians such as Charles
Beard and of legal realists such as Thurman Arnold), were the product of
hegemonic interests, not the embodiment of absolute principles. Yet no
sooner did Merriam endorse the critiques of the ideological nature of cap­
italism and constitutionalism than he turned the critical weapon upon the
critics themselves: Marxist and Fascist utopias, too, were merely ideolo­
gies in the service of parochial, class or national, interests.79
If the constitutional laissez-faire state was a cover for business inter­
ests, and if the chief ideas that arose to challenge it were themselves but
partisan ideologies, where, then, w as utopia? The future would be made
brighter, Merriam was confident, by the only force that was truly objec­
tive, b y the only force that "is no respecter either of law or of morals or of
political systems if they cross its path": science. The future belonged to
intelligent rulers who would welcome the advice of experts, armed with
the latest fruits of natural and social scientific research. Extant move­
ments and ideologies

are overshadowed in ultimate significance by the coming evolution of

human behavior control in terms which w ill perhaps destroy the
meaning of present-day politics. Much of the political distress of the
present time is based upon personality maladjustments which are pre­
ventable in large measure through the employment of the known in­
strumentalities of science.. . . The lot of the human race m ay be
basically altered by readjustments in physical psychic equilibrium and
in civic education.
The sciences of education, preventive medicine, psychology, psychiatry,
psychoanalysis and psychobiology were
evolving gradually new forms of emancipation and control which en­
ter deep into the heart of the modern power problem. The future can­
not be studied without them .. . . A s modern machine technology has
upset the categories and plans of economics, the new social technolo­
gies are upsetting the basic patterns of authority.. . . If [these controls]
revolutionize civic education, or undermine court procedure, or relegate
capitalism or communism or fascism to the dust heap, or reorganize
representation and responsibility, or make democracy or aristocracy or
dictators useless; so it is.80
Although Merriam was concerned that existing ideological move­
ments might clash violently with one another in the short run, he was
highly optimistic that in the longer run his postpolitical vision of "a new
world made over by modern science" would materialize. In 1934 he still
entertained the hope, naive though it m ay sound today, that scientifically
developed methods of therapeutic control would eliminate power poli­
tics.
Where did Hitler fit into this picture? Merriam was no Nazi, and he by
no means endorsed Hitler's ideology, but he did see in Hitler's leader­
ship skills a glimpse of the "new instrumentations of pow er" that would
be essential to rulers in the postpolitical era. Throughout the book, Mer­
riam portrayed Hitler variously as a gifted orator ("Roosevelt, Mussolini,
Hitler, Bismarck, Clemenceau rank as masters in this [oratory] field"), an
impartial facilitator of social unity ("Hitler, an Austrian in Germany,
Lloyd George, a Welshman in England — these illustrate the possibilities
of group reconciliation"), an effective mass organizer ("An interesting
contemporary illustration of this inner organization is seen in Germany,
where the Hitler army was composed of enrolled volunteers at one time
reaching the estimated figure of 400,000"), and a master propagandist
("the symbolisms of the Soviets, of the Fascists, of the Nazi, are brilliant
examples of the newer forms of symbolic interpretation of mass desires
or potentialities in varying forms").81
In the future, these "instrumentations of power" would be supple­
mented by "the more scientific devices in what may be called 'constitu­
tionalism/ the knowledge of the physical-psychological basis of the
personality, and on the other hand the knowledge of symbolism in its re­
lation to individuals and masses." Power, Merriam predicted approv­
ingly, would be held "b y those who understand the action of masses of
persons and the inner secrets of the human personality, whether know­
ing these data scientifically or artistically/' Hitler was no scientist, to be
sure, but his intuitive grasp of mass therapy anticipated scientific devel­
opments in that field:
There m ay occur indeed something not so far removed from a miracle
in the proceedings of a mass demonstration, an incredible transition
from one attitude to another, leading to a fundamental change in be­
havior on the part of individuals-----Maladjustments in social and po­
litical attitudes, emotional fixations, m ay be "cured" b y exposure to the
rays of the vast assembly and to the waves of sound emanating from
the orator or from the crowd itself. The art of Trotzky [sic] or of Hitler
is not so unlike that of Peter the Hermit or of Savonarola.. . . In these
mass demonstrations___ What is called a physical "cure" of a spiri­
tual "conversion" has its analogue in the reorientation of the political
attitude and conduct from that time forth.
The devices of mental "constitutionalism" and symbolism, Merriam
added, "have long been known and employed, but the more recent use
of them is based on a wider mass participation, or a deeper knowledge of
mass psychology and organization, and upon a more thorough under­
standing of mass advertising and appeal if not of artistic symbolism. One
needs only to consider Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Gandhi to observe the ef­
fect of the new techniques in the power setting, and glimpse something
of their meaning for modem political life."82
In sum, in Political Power, published in 1934, Merriam profiled Hitler
as a clever underdog cast in the mold of Gandhi and Savonarola (the spir­
itual reformer who led Florence b y dint of his gift as a preacher) rather
than in the mold of Machiavelli's Prince, whose rule w as ultimately based
on physical force.83 Merriam implied that Hitler's intuitive understand­
ing of the human personality and his grasp of the therapeutic potential of
mass dynamics offered valuable lessons to the social engineers of the fu­
ture.
Merriam apparently sent an early draft of Political Power to Luther
Gulick, a leading expert on administration who directed the Institute of
Public Administration in N ew York and who would later serve as presi­
dent of the APSA. Gulick wrote to Merriam with two comments on the
manuscript, which were provoked b y "the Hitler pogrom in Germany."
First, Hitler w as using the Jews "partly as a scapegoat — I do not re­
member that you elaborated the scapegoat technique" in the book. Sec­
ond, Hitler's "shifting of economic positions from the Jews to [his] own
followers" w as not a novel technique of economic patronage. "It is just
what William the Conqueror did in England with the Nobles, and it is not
so different from what Roosevelt m ay do through the N .R .A ." Merriam
responded that "the German situation is very fascinating and I think I
shall make more use of it as you [Gulick] suggest."84

Weimar "Winter/' Nazi "Sun"

On August 16 ,19 34 , American newspapers reported that professor A l­
bert Lepaw sky of the University of Chicago had been assaulted by a Nazi
storm trooper. Lepawsky had attended a rally at Neukoeln Stadium in
Berlin, at which the chief speaker had been Nazi minister of propaganda
Joseph Goebbels. According to the New York Times, "A s he [Lepawsky]
was watching a column of storm troopers enter the stadium with their
flags, one of the Brown Shirts stepped out of the ranks and struck him in
the face, evidently because he had failed to raise his arm in the Hitler
salute." The Chicago Tribune added that
Professor Lepawsky, 26 years old, received his Ph.D. degree from the
University of Chicago in 1932. Since that time he has been connected
with the political science department as a research associate. He con­
ducted a study of judicial organization in the Chicago region which
w as published in book form and was well received in educational cir­
cles. He continued his researches under the supervision of Dr. Charles
Merriam, head of the political science department, until last summer
when he was awarded a social science research scholarship which per­
mitted him to study abroad. His leave of absence at the University of
Chicago ends this fall.
University of Chicago history professor William Dodd, who was ap­
pointed ambassador to Germany in 1933, wrote in his diary on August
14, 1934, that Lepawsky came to the embassy after the incident; Lep­
aw sky w as not seriously hurt, but he requested that an apology be de­
manded from the German foreign office. Dodd instructed him to report
the incident to the American consul general.85 Lepawsky did so, and the
consul w as told by Wilhelmstrasse that the assailant would be pun­
ished.86
Shortly after the incident, Charles Merriam wrote from Paris to Dodd,
a close friend, that he was "much distressed to read the newspaper re­
ports of the beating of Dr. Albert Lepawsky, who is m y chief assistant in
the University of Chicago." He trusted that Lepawsky would enjoy the
protection he deserved as an American citizen, Merriam wrote, then
added: "I spoke with Dr. Jeserich, head of the Gemeindetag, and with his
assistant, Dr. Goertsch, in Paris only a few weeks ago, and they expressed
great interest in Lepaw sky's work and their desire to aid him in every
w ay possible."87
What w as Lepawsky studying in Nazi Germany? Why would he care
to witness a hateful speech by Goebbels? What was Merriam doing in
Paris? Who was Dr. Jeserich, and w hy would he be interested in Lep-
aw sky's research?
The research project in which Lepawsky served as Merriam's chief as­
sistant in the early 1930s resulted in a jointly authored study of the mu­
nicipal administration of the Chicago area. Typical of the "efficiency"
approach to public administration dominant at the time, the book criti­
cized the organizational structure of the Chicago region for its "confu­
sion" and recommended reforms aimed at centralizing the government
of the region.88
Although the book was Merriam's first and only scholarly study of ad­
ministration, his interest in the field was far from new. A s a graduate stu­
dent in Berlin in 1899, Merriam organized a discussion group in German
municipal administration, and came to admire Hugo Preuss, a professor
who served on the Berlin d ty council and who would later draft the
Weimar constitution. After joining the University of Chicago faculty in
1901, Merriam became active in the municipal reform movement and, like
Preuss, was elected to the city council. In 19 1 1 and 1919 Merriam ran, un­
successfully, for mayor of Chicago on a pro-reform Republican ticket. A f­
ter his second defeat he retired from electoral politics and directed his
considerable organizational skills to the institutionalization of social sci­
entific research at the University of Chicago and beyond.89 One of the
important organizations that Merriam "fathered] " w as the Public A d ­
ministration Clearing House (PACH). PACH w as bom in 19 3 1, when the
deepening depression was giving new urgency to the old reform impulse
to streamline America's clumsy administrative structure and profession­
alize its public service. PACH w as designed as an umbrella organization
under which various professional organizations, all committed to the
goal of improving the techniques of government, would be "brought to­
gether to gain the advantages of immediate interchange of information
and experience." The organization w as purposely established on the Uni­
versity of Chicago campus, and it enjoyed an intimate relationship with
the university's department of political science. During the depression,
about one-third of the graduate students in the department specialized in
public administration, and the clearing house played a major role in their
training: some of its officials were appointed to teaching positions in the
department, and it also offered students and fresh Ph.D.'s salaried job op­
portunities, a scarce commodity during that era.90
The head of PACH was Louis Brownlow, a former journalist turned
professional municipal administrator. Brownlow enjoyed associating
with the University of Chicago's mandarins, and he developed an espe­
cially close friendship with Merriam (one highlight of their association
w as their membership in President Roosevelt's committee on adminis­
trative management in 19 36 -37, along with Luther Gulick). The two
shared a conviction that the aims of government must not be confused
with its methods. Brownlow fully assimilated Merriam's commitment to
comparative international research in governmental methods. By his own
account, he "indulged the notion that administrative techniques were
transferable from one language to another, from one country to another,
and from one form of political organization to another."91
In July 1934 Brownlow organized an international conference in Paris
to promote exchange of information and research findings in public ad­
ministration. At that time, Brownlow would recall, he and Merriam —
who also attended the conference — "were still holding to the theory that
administrative methods and practices were transferable despite radical
differences in political controls." Thus, Brownlow included two Germans
among the thirty-seven delegates invited to the conference. One of them
w as Kurt Jeserich, head of the Municipal Science Institute at the Univer­
sity of Berlin and executive president of the Nazified German Union of
Local Authorities (Gemeindetag). In his memoirs, Brownlow wrote that
the conduct of Jeserich, whose application to join the Nazi Party was then
pending, "hung a grave shadow" over the conference.92 But in his con­
temporaneous report on the conference, Brownlow asserted that despite
the heightened political tensions created by the assassination of Austria's
chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss — which occurred during the meeting —
"the conference continued calmly and equably to discuss methods of
working toward more scientific administration, thus dramatically indi­
cating the essential unity of the science and art of administration despite
the widest and deepest differences in politics."93
Furthermore, in his memoirs Brownlow acknowledged that after the
Paris meeting he continued to believe in the transferability of adminis­
trative techniques.94 From Paris he traveled to Berlin, where he called
upon his acquaintance from Chicago, Ambassador Dodd (Merriam
stayed in Paris, where he read about the Lepawsky incident). On August
23 Dodd recorded in his diary that "Brownlow knows American urban
problems as well as anyone in the country. He is talking with officials of
German cities to see if the Nazi regime is neglecting the city housing proj­
ects, where administration was particularly efficient, which had pre­
vailed here for half a century or m ore."95 One of the German officials
Brownlow talked to w as Jeserich.96
Other American students of administration also continued to collabo­
rate with Jeserich and praise his scholarship notwithstanding his becom­
ing a Nazi official. Political scientist Roger Wells described the first
volume of the Jahrbuch fü r Kommunalwissenschaft, edited in 1934 b y Je-
serich, as "indispensable" for Americans who wished to keep abreast of
developments in German municipal government.97 The Jahrbuch's sec­
ond volume, published in 1935 in Berlin, contained articles b y English
and American experts, including the director of the American Municipal
Association, a PACH constituent. The yearbook received an extremely
complimentary review from Rowland Egger, a young University of Vir­
ginia political scientist who had been chosen by Brownlow to serve as his
liaison official in Brussels, site of the leading international organizations
in the field.98 Egger wrote that "students of local government the world
over are deeply in the debt of Dr, Jeserich and his collaborators for this
splendid and aggressive attack on the problem of keeping local govern­
ment information up-to-date."99 Egger remained in Brussels until 1936
and established there an International Public Administration Center,
whose staff included "Belgian, English, and German nationals." On one
front at least, he wrote in 1937, "international cooperation can m ove for­
w ard ."100 Egger returned to the University of Virginia, where he taught
public administration and chaired (from 1957) the department of politi­
cal science. In 1964 he accepted a professorship in politics and public af­
fairs at Princeton University. He died in 1979.101
We now know, then, what brought Charles Merriam to Paris in the
summer of 1934, and how he got to meet the head of the Nazi municipal
union, Kurt Jeserich. And from the fact that Jeserich, to repeat Merriam's
words, "expressed great interest in Lepawsky's w ork," w e can further in­
fer that Lepawsky's official research assignment in Germany w as in the
area of municipal administration. Indeed, the project for which Albert
Lepawsky w as awarded a Social Science Research Council fellowship, al­
lowing him to travel to Europe, involved the comparative study of the ad­
ministrative structure of metropolitan regions.
The fellowship was granted to Lepawsky around the time that Hitler
assumed power. When he arrived in Hamburg, Lepawsky realized that
Nazi rule w as already making itself felt to an extent that "m y specific
work on Metropolitan Regions cannot be divorced from the general fas­
cist movement." He thus decided to observe the Nazi revolution more
generally before throwing himself into the intensive study of city admin­
istration. On August 6 ,19 33, Lepawsky wrote to a friend in Chicago that
Germany holds little, just yet in the w ay of matured fascist theory, but
it w ill come, I'm sure. Just now, there is more volk philosophy, the fire­
work, pyrotechnic, demonstration, speech-making, editorial type. I'm
having a gay time, learning the German mind as an introduction to
German political society. At least it has enough new twists to it, so that
it can make possible experimentation with a form of political appeal
 and organization that Americans neither sympathize with nor under­
stand, A s for myself, I'm all ears, though it's not easy to learn in Ger­
many o f today, and have already met some very interesting Nazi
Sympathizers.102
The next day Lepawsky wrote a long letter to Charles Merriam, in
which he reported:
Everything is being "gleichgeschalten" [coordinated, concentrated] in
Germany today. Preaching to public works expresses a narrow range
for this official process of equalization and direction. The Nazi Party is
seriously trying to construct the corporate one-party national state.
Every trade, every economic enterprise, sports, music, law, almost
every significant grouping — all have their party commissars, and
personnel as well as policy are being affected accordingly. This is one
type of civic consciousness of the kind you've been referring to in your
studies on civic education and even metropolitan government.
Lepawsky proceeded to describe Hitler's "am azing" popularity, then
turned to the issue of propaganda:
The propaganda, though sometimes naive, is generally good. Young
Goebbels would make an interesting professor of propaganda at the
University [of Chicago] during the Summer quarter 4 years hence. The
press, the poster, the moving picture, the radio are all well harnessed.
But his demonstrations are really crackerjack sometimes. Speeches
can't be heard, and the Nazi salute and uncovered head are not so
prevalent as the American newspapers pretend, but tens of thousands
of people do turn out, the music and marching calls forth the desired
visceral reactions and the fireworks and bombardments result in the
most deafening applause.103
In this letter Lepawsky said virtually nothing about the content of
Goebbels's propaganda, assigning an evaluative adjective — "generally
good" — to the technical aspects of the propaganda alone. Interestingly,
Albert Lepaw sky w as Jewish.104
In his letter Lepawsky also briefed Merriam about his research plans:
he intended to spend another ten to twelve weeks in Hamburg, then go
to Berlin for about four months, then depart to England for half a year. In
actuality, it appears that Lepawsky did not stick to the letter of this plan,
and that if he indeed went to England he may have cut his stay there
short. What is clear from newspaper reports is that he was in Berlin long
after he originally planned to leave Germany. What exactly attracted Lep­
aw sky to Neukoeln Stadium in August 1934 we m ay never know. But in
light of our knowledge of his letter to Merriam and the fact that Lep-
aw sky's mentor also attended a Nazi rally in a Berlin stadium, perhaps
the same stadium, w e might infer that Lepawsky m ay have been impelled
b y fascination with propaganda as a tool of social control, a fascination
which he apparently had absorbed from Charles Merriam«
Although Lepawsky came to be interested in the whole gamut of Nazi
Gleichgeschaltung policies, he did not neglect his study of public adminis­
tration« He held visiting appointments at the universities of Hamburg
and Berlin, and although it is not clear that he worked with Jeserich per­
sonally, he may have interacted with Jeserich's staff at the University of
Berlin's Institute of Municipal Science. Upon returning to Chicago Lep­
aw sky contributed an article, titled "The Nazis Reform the Reich," to the
April 1936 issue of the A PSR. From the references in the footnotes it is ap­
parent that the final version of this essay was submitted in or after Sep­
tember 1935 (the Nuremberg laws were issued in mid-September).105
Lepaw sky opened the essay with the statement that "revolutions shift
power not only from one economic class to another, but also from one
government level to another." Revolutionary regimes, regardless of their
ideology, often left a lasting administrative legacy:
Was not the effacement of some 40 French provinces in 1790 and the
substitution of 83 administrative districts or departments a relatively
lasting creation of the French Revolution, even though at the time these
governmental reforms were overtopped b y the ringing cry for Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity? Is not the union of seven constituent Russian
republics, not to speak of two dozen autonomous regions and re­
publics in the USSR, a significant experiment in national coexistence,
though again the foreground is dominated b y the stirring slogans of
the proletarian dictatorship? . . . And, at present, in the United States,
despite restricting Supreme Court decisions, is there not already some
shift in the balance of power between Washington and the state capi­
tals, between the state house and the city hall?
Lepawsky went on to assert that "the process of the internal balance of
power m ay be fruitfully examined in Nazi Germany today," essentially
proposing that American New Dealers could learn a lesson from the ad­
ministrative centralization under w ay in the Third Reich. He assured his
readers that Reichsreform was not a novel Nazi idea: after all, a centralized
state w as demanded "even b y the Jew, Professor Preuss himself, at the
'traitorous' Weimar Convention"; yet "the Nazis have acted where oth­
ers have merely planned and studied. They have converted Germany
from a federal to a centralized unitary state." Lepawsky acknowledged
that thousands of Jews had been purged from the German bureaucracy
early in the Nazi revolution, but he also stated reassuringly that "after an
initial w ave of politicization . . . the powers of the German bureaucracy
are being to some extent reestablished." The "N azis themselves may pass
on," he concluded, but "they certainly will have made some contributions
to the historic process of reforming the German Reich,"
The essay included a review of recent developments in German mu­
nicipal administration. Lepawsky wrote that although the Nazis had
acted "vigorously" to shore up ailing municipal finances, "the political
coordination of cities may prove a harder task than is anticipated," largely
because urban centers were "the home of the German proletariat."
The Germans realize the difficulties and are straining every effort to
curtail urban proletarianism, using a wide range of devices. In a for­
merly Communist center like Hamburg, exhaustive research is now go­
ing on for the purpose of isolating what is termed the "kernels of asocial
behavior" by the spotting and delimitation of areas where delinquency,
sub-normality and Communist votes overlap. As a sample of the ur­
gency of the problem, it is interesting to see German students and pro­
fessors in their studies of urban political life applying the techniques of
American social scientists — in fact the very spot maps of the Chicago
ecological studies. Nazi scholars, and Nazi politicians too, thus realize
that city proletarianism, as well as city particularism, may make mu­
nicipal coordination more difficult than state liquidation.106
Indeed, this Nazi social research project, as described by Lepawsky,
sounded not unlike a project that was being contemporaneously piloted
by Chicago political scientist Harold Lasswell: a sociopsychological field
study of the determinants of communist propaganda effectiveness among
the Chicago masses.107
Albert Lepawsky was among the graduates of the Chicago department
of political science who were favored with jobs at PACH. In 19 36-38 he
served as its assistant director, then as director of the Federation of Tax
Administrators at the same address; he was also a part-time lecturer in
political science. After Pearl Harbor Lepawsky volunteered to serve in the
U.S. Air Force, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1945. He subsequently
landed a job as professor of public administration and director of a pub­
lic service training program at the University of Alabama. In 1953 Lep­
aw sky joined the department of political science at the University of
California at Berkeley, from which he retired in 1976. The professional
honors conferred upon Lepawsky included membership in the Executive
Council of the APSA (1949), the vice-presidency of the APSA (1956-57),
and the presidency of the Western Political Science Association (1963-
64). He died in 1992.108
Clarence Ridley (b. 1891), a former city manager who earned a doctorate
from Syracuse University (1927), w as brought to Chicago in 1929 b y Louis
Brownlow to head the International City Managers' Association, soon to
become a constituent of PACH. At Brownlow's request, Charles Merriam
gave Ridley an office and an associate professorship in the department of
political science. A s a member of the department, Ridley took an active
part in the training of graduate students in public administration during
the 1930s and 1940s, most notably (from 1936) future Nobel laureate Her­
bert Simon.109
In the summer of 1933 Ridley visited several German cities with a del­
egation of American experts in municipal administration. He reported his
findings in the April 1934 issue of the National Municipal Review.110 Rid­
ley focused on the "municipal information bureau which is found in prac­
tically all of the larger German cities," whose function w as the public
dissemination of information about municipal affairs. He reported that
"a private interview of the representatives of eight newspapers in Hano­
ver disclosed that there was absolutely no feeling that the slightest cen­
sorship was being exercised over city hall news nor that the reporting
bureau w as attempting in any w ay to maintain the present regime in of­
fice b y 'coloring' the releases." On the whole, Ridley w as very impressed
with the effectiveness of the bureaus, and he attributed the bureaus' suc­
cess to the "high calibre" of their heads: "It is refreshingly true that the
prestige of the position has attracted to the office a group of exceptionally
well-qualified men." Ridley did not mention that in the preceding months
thousands of German administrators, conceivably even some municipal
information officers, had been literally thrown out of their offices. In the
article's closing paragraph, Ridley wrote "that the American public offi­
cial, generally indifferent toward reporting to the public he serves, has
much to learn from the techniques employed b y the German municipal
information bureaus.. . . I am sure the need for more adequate public re­
porting will some day be as w idely appreciated in this country as it is in
Germany, and m ay this day be hastened."
In the 1953 edition of the biographical directory of the APSA, Ridley was
still listed as a member of the University of Chicago's department of politi­
cal science and as a director of the International City Managers' Association;
but there was no mention of him in the directory's 1961 edition. Ridley's
tenure in Chicago probably ended with the demise of PACH in 1956.111

Louis Brownlow, as we have seen, acknowledged in his memoirs that in

1934 he and Charles Merriam "still" held to the theory of the political
neutrality of administrative technique. A t least two of their junior asso­
ciates, Albert Lepaw sky and Rowland Egger, evidently shared this view
in late 1935, if not later. When did Brownlow and Merriam abandon this
attitude?
It seems that 1936 was the watershed year. Several American organi­
zations faced dilemmas concerning attendance in events held on German
soil. The American Olympic Committee had to decide whether American
athletes would participate in the Berlin games; major American universi­
ties were invited to send representatives to the celebration marking the
University of Heidelberg's 550th anniversary; and Louis Brownlow and
his associates had to decide whether to participate in the meeting of the
International Union of Local Authorities, scheduled for the early summer
in Berlin and Munich. In the end, a full contingent of American athletes
went to Berlin; leading American universities— including Harvard, Co­
lumbia, Yale, and Johns Hopkins— accepted Heidelberg's invitation;112
and Louis Brownlow, too, after the German hosts provided assurances
that the meetings would not be "interfered with" by Nazi officials, led a
delegation to Germany of some twenty Americans, funded at least in part
by PACH. Am ong the members of the delegation were Charles Merriam;
Leonard White, the senior public administration scholar at the University
of Chicago; and Beardsley Ruml, dean of the social sciences at Chicago.
The Germans, however, violated their promise to avoid politicizing the
conference, and invited the leaders of the visiting delegations, including
Brownlow, to a meeting with Hitler. Near the end of the conference, Kurt
Jeserich moved that he be appointed to direct the international head­
quarters of the organization in Brussels; the motion was voted down, yet
the conference ended in "an atmosphere of strain."113
A short time later, in July 1936, Brownlow, White, Merriam, and other
members of the American delegation to Berlin attended the sixth inter­
national congress of administrative science in Warsaw. There, delegates
from the fascist dictatorships denounced elected legislatures as mere de­
bating societies; they subverted parliamentary floor procedure in an at­
tempt to ram through a resolution that sanctioned the supreme authority
of executive power and described the state bureaucracy as a veritable ex­
tension of the chief executive's personality. The resolution was eventually
defeated, prompting Jeserich to depart abruptly for Berlin. Yet the fascist
insistence upon dissolving the distinction between the professional bu­
reaucracy and the political chief executive appears finally to have dis­
abused Brownlow and Merriam of the notion that Nazi administrative
methods might be applicable to democratic regimes. The politicization of
the Berlin conference, the brazen conduct of the fascist delegates in War­
saw, and their aggressive attack on democracy seem to have stimulated
some soul-searching, driving home the point that democracy and consti­
tutional freedom were important values, worthy of protecting. Thus, this
unpleasant experience—happening while Brownlow and Merriam were
drafting the report of the President's Commission on Administrative
Management— prompted them to insert into the report an explicit affir­
mation of the democratic character of the executive office.114 The events
of the summer of 1936 also coincided with a discernible shift in Charles
Merriam's scholarship. Whereas before 1936 he had treated constitutional
rights as ideological masks, and envisioned a world in which scientific
techniques of social control might supplant democratic politics, from that
year onward he rallied to defend freedom and democracy as normative
ideals.115

Some associates of Merriam and Brownlow clung to a belief in the trans­

ferability of Nazi methods even after 1936. G. Lyle Belsley came to
Chicago in 1935 to direct the Civil Service Assem bly of the United States
and Canada, an organization whose headquarters had just been estab­
lished at PACH. Like other senior members of the PACH community, Bel­
sley served as an adjunct member of the political science department. The
mission of his organization was to fight that inefficient legacy of Jack­
sonian democracy, the "spoils system," and to promote in its stead a
merit-based system of administrative personnel.116 In 1938 the assembly
sponsored the publication of the text of the 1937 German Civil Service
Act, translated by James Pollock, a University of Michigan political sci­
entist, and his graduate student Alfred Boerner.117
James Pollock (b. 1898) graduated from the University of Michigan in
19 21 and earned a Ph.D. in government from Harvard in 1925. He then
returned to the University of Michigan, where he rose quickly to a full
professorship in 1934. Pollock rapidly became one of the leading Am eri­
can scholars of German politics. Surprised by the electoral success of the
Nazis in 1930, he initially referred to their program as "blithering non­
sense." But distasteful though he found Nazi racism, Pollock w as also
becoming disenchanted with the ideological polarization of Weimar pol­
itics. In an unpublished manuscript, dated February 1933, Pollock essen­
tially approved of Hitler's assumption of the chancellorship, partly
because he believed that since 1930 Weimar democracy had been a farce
anyway. Pollock saw the Führer as a traditional, if extreme, German re­
actionary more than as a uniquely dangerous person. He expected the
non-Nazi members of the cabinet to restrain Hitler, and expected Hitler
to become more responsible after easing into his office; Jew s would not
starve and Versailles would not be overturned, he predicted.118
Pollock followed events in the Third Reich with great interest. In the
summer of 1934 he toured Germany with a group of American academics,
cosponsored by the Carl Schurz Verein, which by then had become a Nazi
propaganda front.119 Upon his return he wrote to a colleague that he "had
a grand time" in Germany.120 Pollock chose to maintain a stance of ob­
jectivity toward the Nazi regime and avoid grappling with Nazism from
an ethical perspective. In his German government textbook, published in
1938, the emphasis was, as a reviewer put it, "not so much on political
forces, ideological motivations and the social and moral implications of
the regime's methods and achievements, but rather on the governmental
machinery that makes up the Third Reich."121
Pollock's value-neutral stance toward Nazi Germany w as most evi­
dent in a book review published in the February 1939 issue of the A PSR.
The author of the book Pollock reviewed, French historian Henri Licht-
enberger, argued that although Nazism surely deserved some criticism,
important aspects of the "German experiment" were admirable— for ex­
ample, the camaraderie, the discipline, and the goodwill fostered by Ger­
man labor camps.122 Pollock wrote that even though the French historian
occasionally attacked Nazi methods, "bitterness and recrimination are
never present" in his book. Overall, "in contrast to many other flaming
indictments or defenses of Hitlerism, Professor Lichtenberger has given
us a balanced interpretation" of Nazism; one could not but "concur with
[Columbia University's] President [political scientist Nicholas M.] But­
ler's foreword that 'the author has written an objective and dispassionate
review '" of recent German history. In short, in 1938 Pollock was still con­
vinced that "flaming indictments" and "defenses" of Hitler's Germany
were equally undesirable.123
Throughout the 1930s Pollock was also active in the cause of civil ser­
vice reform in Michigan. He chaired the Michigan Civil Service Study
Commission and cofounded the Michigan Merit System Association. In
appearances before local civic groups, he tirelessly preached, to quote one
press report, that "the elimination of the spoils system is the most essen­
tial problem in striving for more efficient government." According to this
report,
Dr. Pollock also cited the difficulties attendant upon "that ancient doc­
trine of the separation of power." . . . "Carried to its logical extreme this
[doctrine] simply means stopping action," he said. "One thing we can
leam from the dictatorships which are springing up all over Europe is
that there are times and emergencies when we must have action. We
have reached a stage in our government when we need a system a lit­
tle more conducive to the development of leadership."124
The promulgation of the Nazi Civil Service Act of 1937 gave Pollock
an opportunity to combine his interest in Germany with his interest in
personnel reform. In June 1937 he wrote to G. Lyle Belsley that he was
translating the act with the assistance of a graduate student. He proposed
to "write a foreword for it, pointing out its significance/' and urged Bel-
sley to publish the translation: "Because of the antiquity of the German
Civil Service, this code is of more than usual interest, and I think could be
of wide use." He then briefed Belsley about the progress of civil service
reform in Michigan. Belsley promptly agreed to publish the code.125
In their preface to the text, the translators, Pollock and Boemer, praised
the Nazis for completing the two-centuries'-old project of perfecting Ger­
man administration. By drafting "the most complete and thorough code
of personnel matters to be found anywhere in the w orld," the Nazis had
accomplished what even the Weimar constitution had failed to achieve—
establishing uniform provisions for all civil servants. Not only in sub­
stance but also "in clarity and comprehensive of expression, in logical or­
ganization, and in the meticulous care with which vital provisions are
presented, the code has no superiors"; "its value to students of personnel
problems w ill be apparent even after a very cursory study." It was true,
Pollock and Boemer conceded, that Nazi enforcement of "political relia­
bility" had created "some demoralization" among German civil servants,
but, thankfully, "nothing approaching the American spoils system has
been developed."126 In the same vein, in his textbook on German gov­
ernment Pollock acknowledged that the Nazis had "cleansed" the civil
service of Jews and other "antagonistic" elements, but he noted that "in
the technical departments and in the Foreign Office changes were few."
Furthermore, "on the w h o le. . . the great mass of civil servants remains
as before, and a complete purge, à la Américaine, did not take place. In fact,
most of the civil servants who were dismissed were given pensions."127
Thus, Nazi purges, unpleasant though they m ay have been, were on bal­
ance less deplorable than the dismissal of administrators that accompa­
nied American electoral change.
The monograph on the civil service code w as reviewed in the October
1938 issue of the APSR by Roger Wells of Bryn M awr College, who ap­
plauded Pollock and Boemer for "calling attention to the salient features
of the most complete personnel code to be found anywhere." Earlier Pol­
lock had written to Wells that the monograph "has been well received,"
and its success "leads me to believe that a similar service could be ren­
dered by issuing a similar monograph or pamphlet entitled 'The German
Municipal C ode.'" Pollock had already translated this code, and he asked
Wells to write a prefatory note so that he could negotiate its publication
with the National Municipal League, another PACH organization.128
Wells responded that although the idea was "good," he was unable to as­
sist Pollock because of other pressing obligations.129
In the meantime Alfred Boemer, Pollock's graduate student, wrote an
article on Nazi administrative reform, published in the October 1939 is­
sue of the APSR. Boemer expressed disappointment that "thus far the tra­
ditional forces of German separatism and the opposition of powerful
local party bosses have prevented the redistricting of Germany along
more rational economic and geographic lines." Fortunately, though, the
Nazis could now use the "'returned provinces' of Austria and the Sude­
tenland" for the purpose of experimenting with new administrative
"m odels" which could potentially "be applied to the remainder of Ger­
many." Whether the experiment w ould succeed "remains to be seen,"
noted Boerner. But for the moment, he concluded, it was reassuring to
know that the new laws were "not aimed merely at the accomplishment
of local administrative reform; in the words of Dr. Wilhelm Frick, the
Reichsminister of the interior, they are intended to be 'important build­
ing stones for the future definitive reconstruction of the Reich.'"130 (Frick
was a drafter of the laws of Nuremberg, where he was later sentenced to
death.)131
Boerner soon dropped out of the political science profession, but the
career of his mentor flourished.132 In 1945-46 James Pollock served as a
special adviser to General Lucius Clay, governor of the U.S. occupation
zone in Germany, and later he returned to Germany several times on ad­
visory missions to U.S. occupation authorities. For his service he received
the Medal of Merit, the nation's highest civilian award. In the 1950s he
w as an active campaigner for U.S.-Germ an understanding, earning a
decoration from the West German government. At the University of
Michigan, Pollock held the Murfin chair from 1948 to 1968 and chaired
the political science department from 1947 to 1961. In 1950 he served as
president of the APSA, and in 19 55-58 as president of the International
Political Science Association. Pollock died in 1968, shortly after his re­
tirement.133
Pollock asked Roger Wells to write a preface to the German municipal
code because of Wells's reputation as an authority on German city ad­
ministration. His German Cities, published in 1932, was praised by Row­
land Egger as a "grand book."134 In it Wells lamented the economic
hardships imposed upon German cities because of the depression and
their resultant loss of autonomy. He argued that a Communist takeover
of power in Germany, though unlikely, would destroy municipal self-
government; in the more likely event that a Third Reich was established
in Germany, local institutions would not be altered greatly, "since the Hit­
lerites appeal to the past and since the self-government of cities was one
of the most valued features of the Second Reich."135
Thus, it appears that on the eve of Nazi rule, Roger Wells, not unlike
James Pollock, regarded Hitler as a German conservative who could
do Germany some good by stabilizing the economy and restoring mu­
nicipal administration to its past glory A tour of Nazi Germ any in the
summer of 1934 apparently reinforced his confidence in Hitler.136 This
confidence w as conspicuous in a book review he wrote for the A PSR in
1935. The book — a critical analysis of Nazism by political scientist Fred­
erick Schuman — was "brilliantly written," acknowledged Wells, but
"occasionally, the author indulges in gross exaggeration, as when he says
that the party is 'the instrumentality through which Hitler governs the
Reich more autocratically than the most arbitrary of ancient Oriental
despots/ . . . Finally, one does not have to be a 'Friend of New Germany'
to hold that Professor Schuman has unduly minimized the positive (as
opposed to the 'psychic') achievements of Hitlerism. The resulting pic­
ture is, therefore, blacker than it needs to be."137
In an article published in the A PSR in August 1935, Wells commended
the Nazis for rescuing German municipal government from the "ex­
tremely critical condition" into which it had fallen as a result of "the . . .
excesses of the multi-party [Weimar] system." He concluded that there
w as "some justification. . . for the National Socialist contention that the
Deutsche Gemeindeordnung [municipal code] does not destroy local self-
government, but, on the contrary, aims to build it anew upon more secure
foundations so that it m ay once again recover and bloom as in the nine­
teenth century." Although Wells acknowledged that Germ any's "munic­
ipal administration was purged of Jewish, republican, socialist, and other
'unreliable' elements," he balanced this fact by reporting that "an en­
deavor was made to fill the vacancies with properly qualified men." The
immorality of the purge apparently concerned Wells less than its effect on
the retention of "the professional character of the municipal civil ser­
vice."138
Wells subsequently submitted to the APSR a report on the centraliza­
tion of Germany's administrative structure. The editor, Frederick Ogg,
paired it with Lepawsky's above-cited article and explained in a footnote
that the two articles, taken together, "furnish a very complete and up-to-
date survey of the political and politico-geographical development of the
Third Reich."139 Wells reported that "the liquidation of the German states
(Länder) is now substantially complete. A few traces of old snow from the
Weimar winter still remain, but these are rapidly melting aw ay under the
sun of National Socialism." Wells then reviewed Nazi administrative re­
form in detailed, and uncritical, fashion. For example, although he noted
the "rapid progress" made by the Nazis in centralizing the "administra­
tion of justice," he did not touch on the substance of Nazi justice.140
According to his obituary, Roger Wells "w as noted for his contribution
to the restoration of Germany as a democracy after World War II, when
he w as Deputy Director of Civil Administration in the U.S. Military G ov­
ernment from 19 4 5-4 7 ___ For his work in Germany he was awarded the
U.S. Medal of Freedom."141 (If the cases of Pollock and Wells are any in­
dication, the postwar redemocratization of Germany was, ironically,
guided in part by individuals who had previously wished American
democracy to learn from German dictatorship as much as the other w ay
around.) After completing his service in Germany, Wells returned to Bryn
M awr College and continued to contribute articles to the APSR, includ­
ing one in which he lamented that local self-government had been "de­
stroyed by Nazi rule."142 At Bryn M awr Wells served a term as chair of
the political science department, and he was also president of the Penn­
sylvania Political Science Association. He died in 1994.143

Whereas Albert Lepawsky belongs to the cohort that entered the study of
administration in the 1930s, and Clarence Ridley represents the "m iddle"
generation — those who reached the peak of their career at that time —
William F. Willoughby (b. 1867), a member of the founding generation of
the field, w as at the twilight of his career, having retired from the Brook­
ings Institution in 1933. Willoughby, brother of the political theorist Wes-
tel W. Willoughby, graduated from Johns Hopkins University and was a
federal public servant during the 1890s, before becoming professor of po­
litical science at Princeton University under Woodrow Wilson. Willoughby,
like Wilson, w as ambivalent toward majoritarian democracy. Throughout
his life he essentially sought to insulate wide areas of decisionmaking
from the vagaries of partisan politics by entrusting those areas to edu­
cated, impartial, efficiency-minded specialists. In 19 10 - 12 Willoughby
pursued this agenda as a member — along with Frank Goodnow — of
the Taft Commission, whose report called emphatically for efficiency in
government; in 1916 Goodnow became chairman of the newly estab­
lished Institute for Government Research (IGR), a precursor of the Brook­
ings Institution, and he brought Willoughby to direct the organization.
Willoughby spent his first few years at the IGR campaigning for the Bud­
get and Accounting Act of 1921, then turned his energy to producing re­
search monographs on the organization of various federal agencies. The
monographs were so sanitized of any "political" content and so focused
on "efficiency" that they struck a historian of the Brookings Institution as
"incredibly d ull."144 Willoughby was honored with the presidency of the
A PSA in 1932.
In light of W. F. Willoughby's lifelong crusade for administrative effi­
ciency and staunch commitment to the separation of politics from ad­
ministration, it should not be surprising that in the 1936 edition of his
book The Government of Modern States, Willoughby urged Americans to
"make a searching examination" of the revolutionary institutions erected
in Italy Germ any and Russia, "apart from the abuses as m ay be practiced
under them/' with an eye toward "the possible incorporation in popular
government of the advantages of autocracy" Americans had much to
learn, for example, from the N azis' recognition of "the superior advan­
tages of the unitary over the multiple [that is, federal] form of govern­
ment" and from their move, "at a stroke," to dismantle the constituent
states of the Reich,
More than this, it is the avowed intention of the Hitler government to
re-subdivide the Reich into a system of administrative areas which w ill
ignore existing boundaries and be based upon geographic, demo­
graphic, administrative and individual needs, rather than historical
traditions---- There can be no question that this revolutionary action
by the Nazis w ill have the result of enormously strengthening the
power of the government, of greatly simplifying the governmental
structure and of bringing about a corresponding increase in the effi­
ciency and economy with which public affairs can be conducted.145
Thus, like Lepawksy and Wells, the older Willoughby apparently saw the
centralization of power in Germany as a potential model for shifting the
balance of power in America from the states toward Washington.

M any of the scholars discussed here were connected, directly or indi­

rectly, with the University of Chicago's department of political science
and its institutional adjunct, the PACH. Because of the vision and entre­
preneurial skills of Charles Merriam, Chicago entered the N ew Deal era
in an excellent position to benefit from the heightened demand for ad­
ministrative reform by government agencies and business leaders. But
other universities were also quick to respond to the rising demand. Har­
vard University, for example, established its Graduate School of Public
Administration in 1936 through a gift from alumnus Lucius Littauer.146
The new school drew its faculty in large part from Harvard's department
of government, then Chicago's rival for the discipline's top ranking. Carl
Friedrich (1901-1984), who immigrated from Germany in 1922 and
joined Harvard in 1926, was among the government faculty drawn into
the study of administration in the 1930s, and he became involved in the
establishment of the Littauer school. Friedrich was a rising star in the pro­
fession then, and his prominence w as reinforced in the postwar era,
partly on the strength of Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, coau­
thored with Zbigniew Brzezinski (Friedrich served as A PSA president in
the early 1960s). In this book Friedrich held that the Fascist, Nazi, and
Soviet dictatorships were "historically unique and sui generis." These
regimes were so "ghastly" that one must not "flatter" them by analogiz­
ing them to the dictatorships of the past.147
But twenty to thirty years earlier Carl Friedrich had accepted the rise
of fascist dictatorships with far less alarm. Whereas in 1956 he argued that
relentless foreign expansionism w as one of the inherent characteristics of
totalitarian regimes, in 1928 Friedrich expressed sympathy toward Fas­
cist Italy's desire "to conquer the place which is due her in view of her
culture and intellectual attainment."148 And in the February 1933 issue of
the APSR, Friedrich criticized a journalistic portrait of Hitler for being too
harsh on the Nazi leader: "The book produces a decidedly real impres­
sion of the man's character and personality, although a comparison with
other popular leaders would perhaps have led the author to a kinder
judgment."149
To the following issue of the APSR, Friedrich contributed an essay that
appears to have gone to press on the eve of Hitler's accession to power.
In it Friedrich passionately defended President Paul von Hindenburg's
assumption of temporary dictatorial powers under Article 48 of the
Weimar constitution. His defense w as based on two interrelated argu­
ments: first, that the emergency powers formally established by Article
48 provided an appropriate procedural mechanism for checking the ex­
cesses of popular government, and second, that the venerable civil ser­
vice of Germany would serve as a check against the abuse of the
emergency dictatorial power ("If it were not for the bureaucracy, the pro­
fessional civil service, the grant of dictatorial powers to the president
would be of rather limited practical avail"). Partly because of his trust in
the German bureaucracy, Friedrich remained sanguine about the prospects
of democracy in Germany at the very time its grave was being dug. In­
deed, he concluded the essay by predicting that "Germany will remain a
constitutional, democratic state with strong socializing tendencies whose
backbone w ill continue to be its professional civil service."150 To his
credit, in 1937 Friedrich confessed, ostensibly referring to this prediction,
that the Nazis had made him "look like a fool."151
Friedrich, like other students of administration, supported the expan­
sion of the American state under the N ew Deal, including the enlarge­
ment and professionalization of the federal bureaucracy. One of his major
writings from that period was a monograph published in 1935 under the
auspices of the Social Science Research Council's Commission of Inquiry
on Public Service Personnel. In the monograph's conclusion, Friedrich
urged American administrators to learn from the achievements of foreign
regimes, without losing sight of the "inherent limitations which the
American constitution imposes upon administrative work." The well-
trained American civil servant "w ill understand that both communism
and fascism are extremist views bom of the failure of the actual govern­
ments to meet the needs of their peoples, and he will therefore help in
realizing what is sound in their outlook without destroying the funda­
mental law of the land/'152 Thus, it is clear that whereas Friedrich cher­
ished constitutional liberty and did not wish to recast America in the
image of fascist dictatorship, his Manichaean conceptualization of fas­
cism as the polar opposite of constitutional democracy w as yet to crys­
tallize, for in the mid-i930S he still found some "sound" elements in the
fascist programs (presumably their commitment to bureaucratic effi­
ciency, rationalization of the economy, and mercantilist trade policy).

Hitler’s "Most Enlightened Comments”

Although administrative reform was the main aspect of the Nazi pro­
gram that attracted favorable attention from American political scientists,
the A PSR also published some uncritical evaluations of other aspects of
Nazism.
Karl F. Geiser (b. 1869) was a member, and for many years the chair­
man, of the political science department at Oberlin College. During World
War I he contributed to the administration's propaganda effort b y hastily
producing a monograph defending democracy against its autocratic en­
emies.153 But Geiser's antiautocratic sentiment apparently waned over
the years, as indicated by his review of the abridged English translation
of Mein Kampf, published in the February 1934 issue of the A P SR .
According to historian Robert Herzstein, in 1933 President Franklin
Roosevelt wrote in his copy of Mein Kampf: "This translation is so expur­
gated as to give a wholly false view of what Hitler really says." Herzstein
determined that "Roosevelt w as right. The abridged work gave no real
sense of Hitler's Jewish obsession, nor of his frightening foreign policy
goals."154 Geiser, however, claimed in the A PSR that the translator
has given a very fair picture of Hitler in all of his ranges; he has in­
cluded his worst characteristics, among them his inordinate intoler­
ance of the Jews, and also his most enlightened comments on the
theory of the state and the nature of government, such as "human
rights are above state rights" and "the best form of state is that which,
with natural sureness of hand, raises the best brains of the community
to a position of leadership and predominant influence."155
In the same review Geiser also praised a book which portrayed the Nazis
as "idealists" engaged in "an experiment in national planning" and which
suggested that if "Germany should succeed in establishing a new type of
social and economic order which may help to overcome the present state
of poverty in the midst of plenty, the end might justify the m eans."156
 Geiser w as one of the most fruitful American contacts of Rolf Hoff­
mann, deputy foreign press chief of the Nazi Party. A copy of a letter from
Geiser to Hoffman, signed with "German greetings" (the Nazi salute),
w as forwarded to Rudolf Hess's office as testimony to the success of Nazi
propaganda in the United States.157 In the June 1937 issue of the APSR, it
w as reported that Geiser, having recently retired, was residing in Berlin
and lecturing at the Hochschule für Politik and other universities.
For some reason, Henri Lichtenberger's book on the Third Reich was
reviewed in the A PSR twice. James Pollock's praise for the book was
shared by the other reviewer, Johannes Mattern of Johns Hopkins Uni­
versity. Like Pollock, Mattern commended the author for avoiding "the
popular subjective approach [which] leads to a distorted presentation of
the subject, giving a picture either too favorable or too damaging to the
systems presented." "H aving chosen the moderate middle course," wrote
Mattern, "Lichtenberger has been forced to blunt the sharp edges of his
subject-matter in both directions. He admits the inevitableness of the N a­
tional Socialist regime without extolling the extremes of its ideology. On
the other hand, he avoids giving details of the excesses in practice. Per­
haps he is conscious of the difference between the ideals of the French rev­
olution and the excesses practiced by the revolutionists seeking to realize
their ideals."158 Mattern thus implicitly likened Nazi ideals to those of the
French revolution, and implied ttiat only the "extremes" of Nazi ideology
were deplorable. Johannes Mattern had served as assistant librarian at
Johns Hopkins University since 19 11. He earned a Ph.D. in political sci­
ence there in 1922; from 1938 until his retirement from Hopkins in 1949
he held an associate professorship of political science in addition to his li­
brary position.159
The A PSR also published an account of the Hitler-Jugend movement
written by James Miller, a graduate student at the University of Min­
nesota. The structure of this organization, led by the "young and enthu­
siastic" Baldur von Schirach, was "not unlike our own Boy Scout move­
ment," Miller wrote. Although he disapproved of the extreme German
nationalism fostered by the Jugend, Miller also stated that the movement

has aimed to remove whatever stigma attaches to manual labor, to

break down class barriers, and to destroy the dominance of intellectu-
alism. However distasteful such a movement may be to one bom and
bred in a democracy A . one cannot help recognize the complete suc­
cess with which the youthful Nazis are being molded into party ad­
herents. Youths of Germany today are much less class conscious than
their predecessors, much fitter physically, and much more anxious to
see their country take its place in the sun.160
 Miller taught political science at Michigan State University from 1946
through 1954. He then served as comptroller of the state of Michigan be­
fore assuming the presidency of Western Michigan University in 19 6 1.161
Finally, another dimension of Nazi Germany that elicited the curiosity
of some political scientists w as its ''constitutional order" — subject of the
lead article of the December 1938 issue of the APSR. The author of the
piece, Alfred Boerner (Pollock's graduate student), acknowledged that
Nazi public law was designed to rationalize "unrestricted public author­
ity," but he also praised "the complicated machinery" erected b y Nazi
jurists to regulate the relationship between party and state. Boerner ana­
lyzed "the constitutional theory of the Third Reich" at great length, using
antiseptic language. For example, he wrote that in late 1933, "b y the 'law
for safeguarding the unity of party and state,' the party was made a cor­
poration of public la w .. . . From a purely juristic point of view, this act
represented an advance for the party. But for a movement that had just
completed a successful revolution, its new status seemed hardly ade­
quate to the dignity of its actual authority." To solve the problem, Nazi ju­
rists enacted ingenious legislation that guaranteed the special status of
the Nazi "corporation of public law " (for example, unlike other corpora­
tions, the "uniforms, emblems, insignia, and symbols of the N SD AP . . .
m ay not be used, worn, bought, sold, or fabricated without previous per­
mission of the Party Treasurer"). The Nuremberg laws were not even
mentioned in the article.162
In the February 1936 issue of the A PSR, a young political scientist at
Oberlin College, John D. Lewis, reviewed "the first comprehensive state­
ment of the public law of the Third Reich."163 The book under review, he
noted, w as written by two "reputable" jurists who, "having served the
governments of the Empire and the Republic, now find it possible to
adapt themselves to the service of the Third Reich." The present work of
one of the authors in particular, Dr. Meissner, might yet exert influence
on the future development of German constitutional law. Lewis w as ap­
parently pleased with the authors' placing of Nazi legal changes "in his­
torical and ideological settings which invest them with the dignity and
consistency of necessary steps in the reconstruction of a truly German
state"; furthermore, he praised the authors for their "objective" presen­
tation, "m ade with a minimum of ideological ballyhoo." Lewis remained
a member of the department of political science at Oberlin College until
his retirement in 1972, and served as its chair for nineteen years. High­
lights of his career included the editorship of the A PSR's book review
section (1948-52), the vice-presidency of the ASPA (1962-63), and the
presidency of the Midwest Political Science Association (1967-68). He
died in 1988.164
 Another Nazi legal treatise w as reviewed in the December 1938 issue
of the APSR by Gerhard Krebs, a teaching fellow at the University of Cal­
ifornia at Berkeley.165 Most of Krebs's review consisted of a detailed pre­
sentation of the Nazi constitutional doctrine explicated by the German
author; the sole criticism he leveled at the book was that "the author fails
to show exactly how the leader is able to develop the objective Volk's will
from its talents, energies, and tasks except through his own volition. He
assures us, however, that the 'national Reich is neither absolutism nor dic­
tatorship.'" Concluding his review, Krebs wrote that because of "the au­
thor's high standing as a member of the Akademie fü r Deutsches Recht and
coeditor of an outstanding German public law journal [his views] m ay be
taken as expressions of the official constitutional theories of present-day
Germany. A s such w e have to take note of them, regardless of whether we
can accept them or whether some of the concepts m ay appear to us as
mere rationalizations and justifications of the status quo." By writing that
"som e" Nazi concepts might appear as subjective rationalizations, Krebs
implied that other Nazi ideas were objectively sound. After wartime mil­
itary service Krebs taught briefly at Western Reserve University and then
went to work for the U.S. Department of Labor.166

The Impact of the Encounter with Nazism

An accommodationist stance vis-à-vis Nazi Germany was well within
the bounds of legitimate disciplinary discourse in the 1930s. A number of
American political scientists, including some very important figures, ex­
tolled the "virtues" of Nazism, criticized only its "excesses," and in some
cases rationalized Nazi anti-Semitism. These political scientists were not
ardent pro-Nazis. They typically took the attitude that Nazi Germany
should be studied in value-neutral fashion, that a distinction could be
made between the unpleasant aspects of the Nazi program and its
sounder parts, and that Americans could learn from certain achievements
of the Nazi regime (especially in the field of public administration),
notwithstanding the antidemocratic and hateful content of Nazi ideology.
Essays and reviews displaying an accommodationist attitude toward
Nazi Germany were published in the APSR as late as October 1939, shortly
after the Nazi invasion of Poland, without prompting protests.167 Only
after the outbreak of World War II, when the Roosevelt administration
clearly lent its support to the anti-German side, did the profession's flag­
ship journal stop featuring such items. Only then did accommodationist,
uncritical discourse on Nazism give w ay to the nationalist, uncondition­
ally critical view that prevails to this day. So powerful is the grip of the
taboo on accommodationism that even seasoned political scientists today
find it hard to believe that there was a time when the taboo did not exist.
 The impact of World War II on American political science w as not lim­
ited to a shift in the image of Nazi Germany* The experience of the w ar
and the Holocaust left deep marks on the field of public administration,
greatly undermining its status*
A s w e have seen, public administration had been among the most
prestigious and popular fields of American political science. A t the time
of the formation of the APSA, public administration w as considered one
of the discipline's five subfields, and five of the first eleven presidents of
the association were scholars of public administration* During the de­
pression years, public administration bucked the trend of austerity in the
American academy, as its members were able to attract funds and build
new institutions. The status of the field reached new heights with the
selection of Louis Brownlow, Charles Merriam, and Luther Gulick to
lead the President's Committee on Administrative Management, whose
recommendations were implemented by President Roosevelt* By 1940
one-fifth of all political science doctoral degrees were in public adminis­
tration.168
To a large extent, the prestige of public administration stemmed from
the doctrinal consensus that unified its members and gave the field a
sense of purpose. The touchstones of the doctrine were that the principles
of administration were much the same in any system of government and
that "efficiency" was the hallmark of good administration. From the birth
of the field in the late nineteenth century through World War II, public
administration experts unanimously regarded centralized, hierarchical
bureaucracies as inherently efficient* They thus strove to rationalize gov­
ernment by lodging power in a single center, from which authority would
flow downward through rigidly hierarchical organizational structures.169
And, believing as they did in the benevolence and impartiality of profes­
sional administrators, public administration experts sought to entrust un­
elected bureaucrats with control over wide areas of public life, so as to
save the public from the corruption and inefficiency engendered b y pol­
itics — the machines, the "spoils," and patronage.
After World War II the field of public administration entered a pro­
longed period of institutional decline and estrangement from political sci­
ence* The Public Administration Clearing House, the field's nerve center
during the 1930s, shut its doors in 1956 for lack of financing.170 A t Har­
vard's School of Public Administration, instruction in the traditional prin­
ciples of the field continued in the 1950s on the strength of the demand to
educate leaders from developing countries, but in the 1960s these princi­
ples were abandoned in favor of a "public policy" curriculum (the school
later evolved into the Kennedy School of Government).171 By the early
1960s, A PSA publications no longer listed public administration as a core
field of the discipline. Political scientists began questioning whether pub­
lic administration belonged within the discipline, while public adminis­
tration scholars complained that "w e are now hardly welcome in the
house of our youth/'172
Just as the tremendous prestige enjoyed by public administration be­
fore the w ar derived in part from the field's doctrinal consensus, so did
its precipitous postwar decline involve the shattering of this consensus.
In the 1940s the doctrine of efficient administration came under attack not
only from the outside (for example, by political scientists who criticized
it for neglecting to focus on individual behavior) but also from within. In
1947 Herbert Simon struck a "devastating blow " to the venerable princi­
ples of efficient administration he had imbibed at the University of
Chicago, depicting them as "proverbs" that logically contradicted one an­
other.173 TTie efficiency doctrine lost its primacy, and the field plunged
into a prolonged "critical self-examination," which failed to produce an
alternative orthodoxy. In 1967 Dwight Waldo, a prominent public ad­
ministration scholar, lamented the "crisis of identity" that had gripped
the field since the war, and in 1974 Vincent Ostrom affirmed that the field
w as still in the throes of "an intellectual crisis."174 More recently Donald
Kettl acknowledged that public administration remained "in crisis";
"since World War I I . . . public administration has lurched from one fad
to another, stumbled among several policy disappointments, and found
itself fragmenting."175
What w as the source of the "crisis"? Public administration's own in­
ternal histories trace the origins of the crisis primarily to the personal ex­
periences of the numerous academics who flocked to Washington to staff
the government's wartime agencies. "M any public administrationists,"
Kettl noted, "returned to their universities from Washington with a fresh
sense of realism ."176 Public administration in the real world, these public
administrationists found, "appeared to involve greater measures of un­
principled expediency than of principled action. .. .The gap between the­
ory and practice became increasingly difficult to bridge."177
This explanation of the postwar crisis in public administration is con­
sistent with the central theme of this book, which identifies international
wars as turning points in the development of American political science.
But m y analysis suggests, without discounting the importance of public
administrationists' personal wartime experiences, that the crisis was also
instigated by the fact that the w ar was fought against an enemy that had
historically embodied an exemplary model of administrative efficiency.
The decline of the efficiency paradigm was triggered in part by the chill­
ing realization that the German bureaucracy — the subject of so much ad­
miration in American political science — was as efficient in carrying out
the worst " excesses" of the Nazi program as it w as in managing munici­
pal finances or sewer systems. The notion that a rational, efficient bu­
reaucracy w as invariably an agent for progress and welfare, and that
"politics" alone produced irrational, pathological outcomes, w as among
the casualties of Nazism. Thus, whereas in the 1930s American political
scientists were far more familiar with the writings of Kurt Jeserich than
with the ideas of Max Weber, after the w ar they discovered Weber and
warmed up to his skeptical view of bureaucratic rationality.178 The fads
that would periodically sweep the dwindling field of public administra­
tion after the w ar would no longer include the idea that administration is
apolitical, or that a rational bureaucracy guarantees substantively ratio­
nal outcomes.
 Stalin's Soviet Union

In the early 1930s the United States, after initially refusing to recognize
the Soviet Union, moved to establish diplomatic relations with Moscow
that, though never cordial, were far from Cold War-like. In this chapter
I compare the mutually constituted images of the Soviet Union and US as
they evolved in political science discourse from the interwar years to the
height of the Cold War. I begin by exploring the "totalitarian" consensus
that emerged in Soviet studies in the 1950s, and the concomitant emer­
gence of an "antitotalitarian program" in the study of American politics.1
Together these research programs reflected a nationalist ideological ori­
entation, delineating the identity of US as the superior antithesis of the
totalitarian Other. In the interwar years, however, some members of the
profession's two top-ranked departments were reluctant to characterize
Stalin's regime as a totalitarian dictatorship. They welcomed what they
regarded as the Soviet Union's move toward greater liberty and hoped
that America would learn a lesson in economic equality from Russia.
Other members of these leading departments, though they harbored no
illusions about Stalin's democratic potential, believed that the Soviet ex­
periment in central planning might offer valuable lessons for depression-
stricken America. Thus, in the interwar years political scientists viewed
Russia/A m erica through accommodationist as much as nationalist
lenses.

Totalitarianism and American Political Science in the 1950$

The 1950s witnessed the consolidation of the "national security state."
The nation's military and intelligence agencies grew extensively, and the
national security state drew into its orbit ostensibly private organizations,
including the nation's leading academic institutions. Major research uni­
versities came to depend on federal patronage for substantial shares —
in some cases, over 50 percent — of their operating budgets.2 Academic
social science benefited handsomely from the state's largesse, and some
of its leading figures developed close ties to the state's national security
agencies.3
 The Totalitarian Consensus in Soviet Studies
Few branches of the social sciences enjoyed greater intimacy with the
national security state than the field of Soviet studies. During the first two
decades of the Cold War, the prestige of Soviet studies was boosted by
high government demand for its services, as well as by the emergence of
a unifying consensus, built on the idea of "totalitarianism."
The term totalitarianism came into existence in the 1920s in Italy, where
the Fascists adopted it to indicate their intent to form a "total state," ab­
sorbing every sphere of human life into itself.4 A s historian Abbott Glea­
son has shown, totalitarianism entered American public discourse in the
1930s, and toward the end of the decade the term came to be used with
increasing frequency, though without precision or rigor, for both the Nazi
and Soviet dictatorships. But most members of the American left, includ­
ing left-leaning liberals, strongly resisted the comparison between Ger­
many and Russia until the N azi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939.5
Thus, the resonance of the N azi-Soviet analogy in America tended to
vary with the contours of international politics. A s one of the analogy's
chief defenders observed, "About 1936 . . . the difference [between Ger­
m any and the Soviet Union] w as strongly emphasized; in 19 39 -40 it was
gainsaid; in 1943-45 it w as considered very marked indeed; since 1947 it
has been obliterated."6
In his famous speech of March 12,19 4 7, which marked the birth of the
"Truman Doctrine," President H arry Truman committed the United
States to help the world's "democracies" in their struggle against the "to­
talitarian" enemy. Truman's explicit usage of totalitarianism conferred the
ultimate legitimacy upon the term and prompted an upsurge in its pop­
ularity.7 Before long totalitarianism became a hot subject of scholarly in­
quiry. While historians and public intellectuals such as Hannah Arendt
began exploring the ideological origins of totalitarianism, the task of an­
alyzing current totalitarian reality was left to social scientists, especially
those associated with Soviet studies. As Gleason wrote,
The appropriation and development of the idea of totalitarianism by
the American scholarly community was intimately connected to the
development of Soviet studies or Russian studies after 1945. Substan­
tially aided by various branches of the government and b y such foun­
dations as Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller, major centers of Soviet area
studies were established at Columbia, Harvard [and other universi­
ties]. . . . The Cold War was a major spur to investment in Soviet stud­
ies by both foundations and such government agencies as the U.S. Air
Force... .There was open and at least some secret collaboration among
foundations, universities, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal
 Bureau of Investigation, and the State Department to develop Soviet
studies and keep it free of pro-Soviet personnel.8
The two arguably most important books on totalitarianism to have
come out of this military-philanthropic-academic complex were written
by Harvard University political scientists: How Russia Is Ruled, by Merle
Fainsod, and Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, by Carl Friedrich and
Zbigniew Brzezinski.9
Fainsod w as a principal member of Harvard's Russian Research Cen­
ter and w as involved in establishing close ties between the center and the
U.S. military. At the time he wrote How Russia Is Ruled, Fainsod partici­
pated in a classified government-sponsored project on Soviet vulnerabil­
ity to covert political warfare. The book, like other publications produced
at the Russian Research Center, drew significantly on interviews with So­
viet escapees, facilitated and funded by the Air Force (whose interest in
the interviews stemmed from the need for improved target selection and
psychological warfare capabilities).10 Still, Fainsod's book bears out his­
torian Norman Naimark's claim that the close relationship of the totali­
tarian school with the emergence of the Cold War did not detract from the
quality of the scholarship it produced.11 How Russia Is Ruled was a model
of erudition; it w as thorough, well-written, and meticulously footnoted.
Published shortly after Stalin's death, the book remained the leading col­
lege and graduate school text on Soviet politics for at least two decades.12
Fainsod wrote that a "totalitarian embryo" was inherent in Bolshe­
vism, and that under Stalin it matured into "a full-blown totalitarian
regime which ruthlessly crushed any trace of political dissent and subor­
dinated every form of social organization to its own purposes." Soviet
society appeared in Fainsod's account mainly as an object of control.
The emphasis w as on how the Communist Party subjugated society
through indoctrination, propaganda, bureaucratic controls, and mass ter­
ror. Fainsod described the terror as "the linchpin of modern totalitarian­
ism " and depicted Russia as a "huge reformatory in which the primary
difference between the forced labor camps and the rest of the Soviet
Union is that inside the camps the regimen is much more brutal and hu­
m iliating."13
Although Fainsod explicitly referred to the fascist and Nazi regimes as
"imitators" of Soviet totalitarianism, he did not develop the comparison,
nor did he offer a precise definition of totalitarianism.14 The tasks of re­
fining the idea into a "general model" and of succinctly stating the simi­
larities between the Soviet Union and Germany were undertaken by Carl
Friedrich, Fainsod's colleague at the Harvard government department.
Friedrich worked for the U.S. occupation authorities in Germany after the
war, and his interest in totalitarianism w as stimulated in part by his ob­
servation that "the constitutional dictatorship of Western military gov­
ernment [in Germany] provided an interesting contrast to the totalitarian
pattern/'15 In 1953 Friedrich organized an academic conference on total­
itarianism, and his conference paper constituted his first published at­
tempt to refine the concept. Following the conference, Friedrich, who w as
more familiar with the German case than with the Soviet one, joined
forces with a young staff member of the Russian Research Center, his
former student Zbigniew Brzezinski. The product of their collaboration,
Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (1956), "w as for a time the most in­
fluential and 'authoritative' treatment of totalitarianism ever written."16
Friedrich and Brzezinski stressed that the totalitarian dictatorships of
the twentieth century were "historically unique": "The autocratic regimes
of the past were not nearly as ghastly as the totalitarian dictatorships of
our time," they insisted: "these regimes could have arisen only within the
context of mass democracy and modem technology." They also empha­
sized that "the struggle for world conquest. . . is the totalitarians' natural
bent"; therefore, "A n y relaxation of the vigilance required to face such
ideological imperialists as the totalitarians is likely to result in disasters
such as the Second World War, or w orse/'17
Friedrich and Brzezinski identified six traits shared by the Soviet,
Nazi, and Fascist regimes, notwithstanding their ideological differences.
These traits, which combined into a totalitarian "syndrom e," were "an of­
ficial id eology. . . characteristically focused and projected toward a per­
fect final state of mankind"; "a single mass party led typically by one
m an"; "a system of terroristic police control"; a "near-complete mo­
nopoly" of party control of all means of mass communication; a "near-
complete monopoly" of party control of "all means of effective armed
combat"; and "central control and direction of the entire economy."18 The
bulk of the book consisted of an analysis of Nazi and Soviet politics in
terms of these traits.
In the 1950s the totalitarian interpretation of Soviet politics had no ri­
vals, partly because the Soviet Union was virtually closed to American
scholars, and partly because putative dissenters were denied funding, de­
nied access to leading journals, or removed from jobs, or prudently kept
their thoughts to themselves.19 A s the Vietnam War began to undermine
the Cold War consensus in American society, the totalitarian school came
under a series of attacks by "revisionists," including political scientists
who began to analyze Soviet politics in terms of "interest groups" and
"institutional pluralism ."20 The revisionists successfully shattered the to­
talitarian consensus, but, as revisionist Alfred Meyer w ryly noted, the fact
that they had to kill the totalitarian beast m any times testified to its con-
tinued vitality, if not hegemony.2 1 1 w ill not reprise the debates here, not
only because they have already been ably covered elsewhere, but also be­
cause many of the revisionists conceded that the totalitarian model re­
mained applicable to Stalin's Soviet Union and focused instead on the
post-Stalin period.22

The Antitotalitarian Program in American Politics

The field of American politics was touched by the Cold War in a less
direct and less transparent, but no less significant, fashion than Soviet
politics. A s Ira Katznelson argued, the Cold War acted upon the field as
a "conditioning element," giving it "a source of anxiety" and a sense of
purpose.23 Indeed, only by recovering the pervasive antitotalitarianism
of the era can one make sense of the otherwise puzzling elision of "the
state" from theoretical discourse on American politics at a time when, in
reality, the American state had become more powerful than ever, and
when the American academy had become integrated with the state as
never before.24
"The state," of course, had already lost its status as the discipline's cen­
tral theoretical concept in the aftermath of World War I. During the inter­
war period, however, political scientists accepted the alternative political
doctrine of "pluralism " as an accurate descriptive account of political life
rather than as a normative thesis. Concerned that unfettered competition
among social groups would degenerate into chaos in the absence of an ef­
fective centralized authority, they were reluctant to abandon the notion of
a public interest that transcended the parochial interests of groups.25 For
example, Charles Merriam took the proliferation of ethnic, religious, and
class groups in America as given, but the central presupposition of his
civic training project was that this social reality constituted a pathology; it
was a problem that could be ameliorated by an expert-led, autonomous
central authority, which would meld diverse groups into a national whole.
The significance of the classic studies of American politics published
in the 1950s, most notably David Truman's The Governmental Process and
Robert Dahl's A Preface to Democratic Theory, derived in large part from
their unqualified acceptance of interest-group pluralism as a normative
thesis.26 Their rejection of the state w as more thoroughgoing than their
predecessors' in that they did not seek to fill the doctrinal void left by "the
state" with substitute notions of autonomous government an d /or pub­
lic interest. Truman announced that American governmental institutions
were but "a reflection of the activities and claims of [interest] groups." He
dismissed as outmoded "dogm a" the idea that "there is an interest of the
nation as a whole . . . standing apart from and superior to those of the var­
ious groups included within it." Truman's declaration that "w e do not
need to account for a totally inclusive [national] interest, because one
does not exist" would have been anathema to most interwar-era political
scientists, even those most favorably disposed to pluralist ideas.27
Why w as pluralism transformed from a descriptive account to a nor­
mative thesis after World War II? How was it that the intellectual project
of jettisoning "the state," even to the extent of denying the existence of a
unified public interest, was consummated at the very time that the Am er­
ican public was unified in an anti-Soviet consensus, and at the very time
that realist theorists of international relations were promoting the "na­
tional interest" as the lodestar of U.S. Cold War policy?28
To answer these questions adequately we must recognize that the field
of American politics was affected by totalitarian anxieties no less than
other branches of American political and intellectual life. A s John Gun­
nell remarked, the normative revaluation of pluralism among students of
American politics was intertwined with "the growing sense [from the late
1930s onward] that American politics was the outpost of democracy in a
political universe where totalitarian centralism and statism were becom­
ing increasingly prominent."29 In the same vein, Ira Katznelson charac­
terized the intellectual project of the principal postwar interpreters of
American politics — David Truman, Robert Dahl, and V. O. K ey — as an
"antitotalitarian program."30 Katznelson stressed that the work of these
theorists, notwithstanding its detached tone and realist orientation, was
animated by a moral sense of purpose which later generations of schol­
ars lost sight of. In The Governmental Process Truman explicitly sought to
build bulwarks against what he called "morbific" — that is, revolution­
ary, totalitarian — politics.31 And Robert Dahl retrospectively acknowl­
edged the great extent to which the fear of totalitarian dictatorship
affected his generation. Responding to N ew Left critics, who charged that
political science emphasized stability at the expense of mass participa­
tion, Dahl wrote that
while we m ay have recently emphasized the conditions of democratic
"stability" too m u ch . . . I doubt that anyone who remembers the fail­
ure of "stable" democracies to emerge in the USSR, Italy, Germ any and
Spain will ever find it in himself to scoff at writers who focus on the
conditions of democratic stability. What such writers are likely to have
in mind when they think of democratic "instability" is not cabinet
changes nor even piddling differences in regime but the possibility of
democratic failures eventuating in brutal dictatorships in comparison
to which even the worst polyarchy w ill seem like the promised land.32
There are several other, more specific w ays in which the scholarship of
Truman and Dahl can be seen to have been conditioned by the Cold War
and the antitotalitarian impulse of the time. Truman must have had Marx­
ism in mind when he disdainfully rejected objective, "categorical" defi­
nitions of social groups (for example, social class), insisting instead on a
behavioral definition (based on "a minimum frequency of interaction"
among members). Likewise, Truman eschewed the view that interests
were rooted in an objective location in the social structure, defining them
instead in terms of shared attitudes.33 Robert Dahl's emphasis on the pro­
cedural, as opposed to substantive, nature of democracy was expressly
indebted to the analysis of Joseph Schumpeter, who in the early 1940s
sought to salvage a minimal form of democracy in a world he thought
w as m oving inexorably toward dictatorial state socialism.34 Dahl's defi­
nition of "polyarchal democracy" centered on electoral process and was
explicitly crafted in a w ay that sharpened the distinction between West­
ern elections and the plebiscite-style elections practiced in the Soviet
Union 35 The procedural concept of democracy, originally inspired by
Schumpeter's fear of state socialism, remains predominant (if not uncon­
tested) in American political science to this day. As Robert Putnam noted,
"Our contemporary conception of democracy owes more than most ob­
servers recognize to economic historian Joseph Schumpeter."36
Thus, the image of America portrayed by the most influential postwar
theories of American politics was intertwined with the image of Russia.
The totalitarian Soviet Union basically constituted the implicit "Other" to
which the identity of US was counterposed.37 Whereas the Soviet Union
was all state and no society, America w as all society and no state, notwith­
standing the actual emergence of the national security state. Whereas to-
talitarians were guided by ideology, Americans pragmatically followed
their interests. Whereas communist ideology stressed the struggle of
objectively constituted classes, in America there w as benign competi­
tion among behaviorally defined groups. Whereas the Communist Party
claimed to rule in the name of "the people," in America "the people"
was broken down into groups, and the interest of the public as a whole
w as defined out of existence. Finally, whereas the Soviet rhetoric of "de­
mocracy" associated the term with the substance of economic equality,
democracy in America w as defined in political and procedural terms
alone.

The totalitarian image of the Soviet Union and the "antitotalitarian pro­
gram " in American politics were articulated by groups of scholars who
did not necessarily maintain close ties. Still, in light of the fact that both
Soviet studies and American political theory were shaped in significant,
if different, w ays by the Cold War, it is not surprising that these research
programs mutually produced a portrait of a world sharply divided be­
tween "democratic" and "totalitarian" poles, reflecting and reproducing
the political bipolarity of the Cold Wan
This bipolar representation w as nationalist in its ideological orienta­
tion. To be sure, this nationalism lacked the triumphal tone that would
characterize later classics such as Seymour Martin Lipset's Political Man
(i960) and Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba's The Civic Culture (1963),
for the works of Dahl, Truman, Friedrich, and Fainsod were hatched dur­
ing the most tense period of the Cold War, when an American triumph
was not easily imaginable. Thus, Fainsod and Friedrich entertained lit­
tle hope that the Soviet Union would become more like America in the
foreseeable future. Dahl clearly expressed an exceptionalist variant of
nationalism when he cautioned that probably "the normal American po­
litical system is not for export to others."38 Truman, too, concentrated
more on defending American democracy from "m orbific" predators
than on teaching it to others. But these scholars implied that, though the
world had little to learn from America, the American system also had lit­
tle to learn from the world, and nothing at all from its totalitarian an­
tithesis.

Accommodationist Images in the Interwar Years

In the late 1920s and the 1930s some leading American political scien­
tists viewed the Soviet Union through an accommodationist lens. In these
years it was not uncommon for scholars to portray Stalin's Russia in pos­
itive terms and to recommend that America learn certain lessons from the
Soviet Union. Those who held a substantive vision of American democ­
racy and stressed economic equality as a prerequisite of democracy por­
trayed Russia as evolving in a "democratic" direction and envisaged an
eventual integration of American liberty and Soviet equality. Such a view
was articulated by Frederick Schuman of the University of Chicago, and
was also implicit in a textbook coauthored by Merle Fainsod in 1934.
Other scholars, concerned more with America's sagging economic output
than with the equitable distribution of this output, regarded the Soviet
Union as a model of state-guided industrial rationalization and intelli­
gent economic planning. Among those expressing the latter view w as
Bruce Hopper, Harvard's senior Soviet expert in the 1930s. Either way,
political scientists in the 1930s tended to envision convergence no less
than divergence between the American and Soviet systems. The portrayal
of Soviet "totalitarianism" and American "dem ocracy" as irreconcilable
antitheses did not muster disciplinary consensus until the onset of the
Cold War.
To document the legitimacy and acceptability of accommodationist at­
titudes toward the Soviet Union in the interwar years, I focus on the views
of several scholars who were then associated with the government de­
partment at Harvard University and the political science department at
the University of Chicago* These departments had become the profes­
sion's most prestigious programs in the aftermath of World War L A
formal study of departmental reputation, conducted in 1925, ranked Har­
vard and Chicago first and second respectively, well ahead of Columbia,
the preeminent department in the prewar era*39 Chicago's reputation
soared on the strength of Charles Merriam's leadership and the intellec­
tual experimentation he actively encouraged. Harvard was intellectually
less adventurous, yet it counted among its faculty such luminaries as
William Bennett Munro (in the 1920s) and Arthur Holcombe. Harvard's
government department also included two rising stars, Merle Fainsod
and Carl Friedrich, who would produce the definitive statements of the
totalitarian image of Russia*
Three caveats are in order before turning to the evidence* First, I do not
claim that the view s surveyed below were universal in the discipline or
even in its elite departments* But the scholars who held them were highly
regarded b y their colleagues; besides teaching in the nation's most rep­
utable departments, some also served as president of the APSA. Thus,
their view s can be said to represent significant, if not hegemonic, voices
in the disciplinary discourse of their time.
Second, in the 1920s and 1930s accommodationist attitudes toward the
Soviet Union were widespread among American and European intellec­
tuals* Uncritical and even downright sympathetic portrayals of Russia
appeared frequently in self-styled liberal magazines such as The Nation
and the New Republic, as well as in the more conservative New York Times,
whose Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, was among Stalin's chief
Western apologists.40 Political science discourse was a part of the cultural
discourse surrounding it, for better or worse.
Finally, m y argument that the changing ideological orientation of
American political scientists was shaped by shifts in international poli­
tics may be countered by the argument that political scientists' views
changed primarily as a result of a rational learning process. Indeed, there
is no denying that, to some degree, the adoption of a dimmer view of the
Soviet Union resulted from the intensification of Stalinist repression dur­
ing the 1930s, as well as from the availability of more reliable information
about the brutal nature of Stalin's regime. For example, Bruce Hopper,
Harvard's senior Soviet expert, frequently spoke favorably about the So­
viet experiment until a visit to Moscow in 1938 turned him against Stal­
inism.41
Still, the "learning" account has two significant limits. First, the sym ­
pathetic or uncritical attitudes of some important scholars toward Stalin's
Soviet Union survived not only the brutal collectivization and industri­
alization of the early 1930s but also the intensifying terror and the infa­
mous Moscow show trials of 1936-38. In November 1938 the University
of Chicago's Samuel Harper, arguably the country's foremost Soviet ex­
pert, threatened to sue his publisher to prevent inclusion of Harper's
book in a series titled "European Dictatorships." Harper continued to
hold that the Soviet Union was "democratist," if not fully democratic in
the American sense of the term.42 Also in 1938, Political Science Quarterly
published a detailed technical evaluation of the Soviet "experiment in
large scale socialist farming," which utterly ignored the mass starvation
and liquidation entailed by this experiment.43
The second limit of the "learning" counterargument is that even if the
availability of new facts partly explains political scientists' shifting image
of the Soviet Union, it does not adequately explain their concurrent shift­
ing image of America. Can the shift from a substantive understanding of
American democracy in the 1930s to a procedural understanding in the
1950S be attributed to change in the American political system or to
change in political scientists' interpretation of the system? Similarly, can
the dramatic improvement in political scientists' view of American city
government in the 1950s be attributed to a commensurate improvement
in the quality of urban life? In both cases, changing interpretations of
American politics cannot be properly understood outside the context of
World War II and the Cold War, which prompted American intellectuals,
including political scientists, to look more favorably upon the social and
political institutions of their homeland.

Scholars Associated with Harvard University

William Bennett Munro was the first member of Harvard's govern­
ment department to be elected to the presidency of the A PSA (1926-27).
His election — following the presidencies of Charles Merriam and
Charles Beard — reflected the rising stature of the department within the
profession. A s we saw in chapter 2, Munro (who left Harvard for the Cal­
ifornia Institute of Technology in 1929) authored a popular comparative
government textbook in 1925, which he revised in 19 3 1 and 1938. In the
1938 edition, which presented his account of Nazi anti-Semitism, Munro
wrote:
Americans should have no difficulty in understanding the relationship
between government and [Communist] party.. . . We have had exactly
the same situation, time and again, in our own state and municipal
governments. Repeatedly Americans have seen governors and m ay­
ors, legislatures and city councils merely ratifying decisions already
 reached by party leaders in secret conclaves. They are not unac­
quainted with the spectacle of a party leader telling public officials
how to do it. Whole books have been written about the Tweeds and
Crokers, the Vares and Ruefs, the Hynicas and Hinky Dinks of Amer­
ican politics. Stalin and his Politburo are merely the Russian counter­
part of the American party boss and his inner ring of lieutenants who
do his bidding. Like the latter, the Russian political bureau meets be­
hind closed doors, and publishes no record of its deliberations, so that
the first intimation of its decisions is brought to the people by official
decrees issued under the signature of the regular governmental au­
thorities.44
Munro was no friend of Bolshevism, and his portrayal of the Soviet
Union was decidedly critical. Nevertheless, his account illustrates the sort
of trap into which accommodationist thought occasionally falls, namely
a tendency to bolster criticism of one's own political system b y glossing
over the faults of a foreign one. So intense was Munro's dislike of U.S.
party machines (a dislike that had been shared w idely in the profession
since the days of Woodrow Wilson) that it led him to trivialize Stalinist
despotism. Critical though it was of Stalin's Russia, Munro's account,
with its analogy between the Kremlin and Tammany Hall, can hardly be
reconciled with Carl Friedrich's later contention that the Stalinist tyranny
was unique and far more "ghastly" than any autocracy of the past.45 And
if an anti-Bolshevik like Munro could thus conflate his image of the So­
viet Union with his diagnosis of America's political malaise, it is not sur­
prising that the same sort of obfuscation affected the thinking of those
whose basic political instincts were more progressive.
Just as the contrast between Munro's 1938 portrait of Stalin's dictator­
ship and Friedrich's 1956 portrait attests to the changing image of Russia,
the contrast between Munro's intensely negative view of American city
politics and Robert Dahl's extraordinarily influential portrayal of New
Haven's pluralistic politics (1961) nicely illustrates political scientists'
shifting image of America.46 Few developments in American intellectual
history were as astonishing as the transformation of the image of Ameri­
can local government that occurred in American political science roughly
between 1940 and i960. Oddly, Dahl celebrated the self-government of
N ew Haven at the very time that the city's ethnic white population, in­
cluding members of Yale's political science faculty, was fleeing to the sub­
urbs.

Merle Fainsod was not the only Sovietologist at Harvard's government

department. In fact, in the 1930s Fainsod devoted much of his energy to
the study of American government, allowing Bruce Campbell Hopper
(1892-1973) to establish himself as Harvard's senior authority on the So­
viet Union. Although Hopper is largely forgotten today, in the 1930s he
appears to have been better known than Fainsod on the strength of his
popularity as a speaker, author, and government consultant on Soviet af­
fairs.47
From his days as an undergraduate student at Harvard during World
War I, Hopper's career straddled the line between academic and national
security work (thus suggesting that the intimate relationship between the
U.S. government and Soviet studies during the Cold War w as new in
scope more than in principle). Hopper received officer training at Har­
vard before going to France to serve as a flight leader in the 96th Day Bom­
bardment Squadron.48 In the early 1920s Hopper traveled extensively
throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and in 1926 he w as ap­
pointed an instructor at his alma mater. Hopper spent 1927-29 in Mos­
cow as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, established by
Charles R. Crane, a Russophile industrialist from Chicago (who also sup­
ported Samuel Harper). Hopper wrote his doctoral dissertation on "So­
viet Economic Statecraft," and in 1930 was promoted b y Harvard to
assistant professor of government.49
Hopper enjoyed a close relationship with Harvard's president, politi­
cal scientist A. Lawrence Lowell, who encouraged him to engage in pub­
lic speaking.50 In 19 31 Hopper laid out his ideas on contemporary Russia
in a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston. A book based on
the lectures was published simultaneously in Britain and the United
States.51
The lectures indicated that Hopper had traveled extensively through­
out the Soviet Union, reaching such remote areas as "the Khirgiz Steppe"
and the "Kola Peninsula along the arctic." His view of the Russians w as
at once patronizingly racialist and amorally realistic. A s a self-styled ad­
herent of the "new [realist] school of international relations," Hopper be­
lieved that rational political analysis need not be hampered b y "passing
judgments, based on outraged ethics"; rather, he understood the world in
terms of a great power struggle. He admired the great strides Russia was
making in its industrialization program, but he was also fearful of it, for
"the arena [of great power competition] is shifting to the new economic
centers of the Pacific . . . [where] capitalism and socialism, America and
Pan-Sovietism, w ill meet in conflict."52
To Hopper, the explanation of Russia's rapid industrialization was
rooted in the Russian national character, shaped by racial, linguistic, ge­
ographic, and historical circumstances. The Slavs were of Aryan stock,
but in Russia they had "mixed freely," first with the "Asiatic" [read: infe-
rior] Finns, and then with the Tartars, who were "Mongols in the upper
crust, and Turks in the rank and file ... . The high cheek bones and flat
faces, seen so often [in Russia], are attributed to the Finnish mixture." The
Russian language w as "closest to the soul. And Russian poetry is a prim­
itive yearning which takes us right back to the morning of the race." Ge­
ography, specifically Russia's "unity and immensity explain much about
the Tsarist autocracy and the centralized control of the Communist
Party." The long winter nights
probably account for Russian loquacity No people in the world talk so
much as the R ussians.. . . Russian friends have kept me up all night to
convince me on some point in metaphysics, and when I, in weariness,
would be convinced, they would switch positions and attack me with
the very arguments I had used ten hours before. That is w hy so many
Russians are political prisoners on the island of Solovetsky in the
White Sea. They just must talk.
The extremes of cold and hot weather, Hopper continued in his dis­
cussion of the Russian character, "bring on lassitude and passivity of
body and spirit." The "oppression of climate has prepared the Russian for
the oppression of man" and material deprivation: "Foreigners are sur­
prised at the number of Russians who can live in one room. They do not
share our view s of privacy. There has always been a kind of primitive
communism among peasants. Russians, huddling together in the midst
of a cold immensity, have long been accustomed to doing things collec­
tively, as groups rather than as individuals. That is one reason w hy they
m ay accept a socialism which would be rejected elsewhere."53
The harsh effect of the climate on the Russian character was reinforced
by the weight of Russian history. The Russian people "have no real tra­
dition of self-government. They know neither freedom nor the intoxica­
tion of liberty.. . . They are peasants, or ex-peasants with their roots in the
village, until recently dark in their illiteracy."54
Paradoxically, it was the racial inferiority and cultural backwardness
of the Russian people that accounted for the Soviet Union's impressive
modernization. Scenes of "liquidation" and "starvation" might be "too
harrowing to the Anglo-Saxon mind," but the Russian people "have long
been accustomed to the sacrifice of their welfare without even the
promise of earthly paradise." So passive and malleable were the Russian
masses that they were "unaware of the historical significance of what is
happening to them. It means that a whole people . . . are being repoured
into a collective m o u ld .. . . The result seems to be an athletic, healthy, en­
ergetic, creative, but unromantic, moral but utilitarian and Godless, new
creature in the social cosmos of man. Human kind has never produced a
creature like this impersonal man, the synthetic beehive, destined to rule
Russia in the years immediately to come/'55
How w as America to cope with this "new creature"? H ow w as it to
compete with Russia in the emergent Pacific arena? At this point the ac-
commodationist dimension of Hopper's thinking comes through most
clearly Hopper argued that although collectivism "destroys m any of the
things that we hold dear," Americans ignored collectivism's impressive
"economic results" at their own peril. Americans must "learn from Rus­
sia" without emulating its collectivist excesses. They must install "suffi­
cient state planning, based on private property, to permit co-ordination
of production and consumption, the lack of which has produced the
present world crisis.. . . Americans must have some measure of plan­
ning to overcome the technological unemployment, and to give the high­
est possible wage to labor, along with the security of employment and
provision for retirement. The ruthless competition of Laissez Faire must be
curbed."56
In sum, Hopper's shaken confidence in America's economic vitality
combined with his admiration and fear of Russia's rapid economic
growth to produce an accommodationist desire to "learn" from Russia.
Hopper's case suggests that one did not have to be a left-leaning, pro­
masses, progressive to rationalize Stalinism. Elitist, patronizing attitudes
toward the "Asiatic" Russian masses, coupled with a "romance of eco­
nomic development," were also important sources of uncritical view s of
Stalin's dictatorship.57
Hopper paid six visits to the Soviet Union between 1930 and 1938, and
after each visit he reported his observations to the Russian desk o f the
State Department, with which he developed close ties.58 After each visit
Hopper also, in his words, "spill[ed] the beans to the war colleges, which
would reproduce the lectures as classified."59 In his numerous classified
briefings and public lectures Hopper continued to display a sympathetic
attitude toward Stalin's industrialization efforts. In March 1933, for ex­
ample, he told the brass of the N aval War College that the Bolsheviks had
made great progress in raising the cultural level of the Russian masses,
and that although Russia's first five-year plan had failed to improve the
welfare of Soviet citizens, it had been "eminently successful" in trans­
forming a backward country into an industrial power. In a 19 37 lecture
Hopper contended that the "Soviet solution of capitalist evils offers even­
tually greater freedom to the individual than any other successor to
democracy."60 Not until his last visit to Moscow, in 1938, did Hopper con­
clude that "virtue [had] departed from the leaders in Russia."61
In 1942 Hopper was posted in Sweden to monitor the Baltic area for
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the predecessor of the CIA). Subse-
quently he served as chief historian of the U.S. Strategic Air Force, estab­
lished a friendship with General Carl Spaatz, and became special consul­
tant to Spaatz when the general was appointed Chief of Staff of the U.S.
Air Force. When Hopper returned to Cambridge in 1947, he found him­
self passed over for promotion by junior colleagues, who had returned to
their faculty posts immediately after the war. The fact that much of Hop­
per's research output was classified, hence unpublished, also hurt his
case for promotion. Hopper hatched a plan whereby General Spaatz
would use political connections to influence the Harvard authorities to
establish a new professorship in air power politics, but the plan must
have failed, for Hopper remained an associate professor until his retire­
ment in 1961. Hopper's teaching interests shifted in the direction of his
old passion, air power, and he did not become significantly involved in
the work of the new Russian Research Center.62
In a book review published in 1949, Hopper applauded the author's
claim that the reconciliation between political liberty and economic
democracy would depend on the readiness of the Soviets to "revise some
of their most important ideological conceptions."63 Hopper thus clearly
reversed his earlier position that the United States must revise its ideol­
ogy of laissez-faire and move toward the Soviet collectivist model. But he
does not seem to have reversed his low opinion of the political capacities
of "A siatic" people. In a lecture delivered after his retirement, Hopper
claimed that "in spite of all the nonsense about colonialism in the in­
creasing virulent propaganda of our [communist] enemies, the truth is
that colonial government and training throughout the ages has civilized
the w o rld .. . . There never was a more dedicated or splendid lot of men
than those of the British civil service who went to all parts of the world
bringing justice, mercy, and enlightenment to primitive people."64

Merle Fainsod (1907-1972) received his doctorate from Harvard in 1932

and remained on its government faculty as an instructor. His 1935 book,
International Socialism and the World War, apparently based on the disser­
tation, was a lucid historical study that demonstrated intimate familiar­
ity with Russian sources as well as with Marx's thought and its various
interpretations.65 The reviewer of the book in the American Political Sci­
ence Review (APSR) presciently remarked that Fainsod's future books
were "destined" to occupy a prominent place in a scholar's library.66
Clearly, Fainsod had already mastered the historical knowledge and lan­
guage skills that would enable him to become America's leading Sovi­
etologist. But the historical narrative in the book ended abruptly in 1919,
and thus contained neither factual material nor value judgments relating
to the contemporaneous Soviet Union. In the preface Fainsod indicated
that he planned to write a follow-up study of the Third International, but
he did not do so. Instead, he seems temporarily to have shifted his main
area of concern to the American government and economy.67
Insight into Fainsod's view of the Soviet Union (as w ell as his vision
for America at the height of the depression) can nevertheless be gained
from The American People and Their Government, a textbook he coauthored
in 1934 with Arnold Lien, a public law scholar from Washington Univer­
sity (with whom Fainsod had studied as an undergraduate).68 Although
Fainsod w as the book's secondary author, his collaborator w as not an ex­
pert on Soviet communism, and it is hard to believe that the passages
dealing with the Soviet Union were written without Fainsod's approval.
Furthermore, a 1937 book review by Fainsod suggests that the L ien -
Fainsod diagnosis of America's problems and challenges w as consistent
with Fainsod's own perspective.69
The title of the book by Lien and Fainsod is instructive of its underly­
ing perspective: that the study of a democratic system "should begin with
an analysis of the population itself and include somewhere a compre­
hensive survey of the powers of the people."70 The people-oriented, bot-
tom-up tone of the book contrasted with the conservative, top-down,
political outlook reflected in established textbooks such as William B.
Munro's The Government of the United States.71 The text evinced consider­
able sympathy with the plight of the poor, an acute concern for the con­
ditions of ordinary Americans beset by the depression, and steadfast
support for narrowing the income gap between rich and poor (though not
for "idealistic" perfect equality). In their discussion of democracy, Lien
and Fainsod placed little emphasis on electoral process. Rather, they
stressed active mass participation and the inextricable link between po­
litical liberty and economic welfare:
A ll human activity is closely interwoven and interdependent. If per­
sons are denied the opportunity to earn an adequate living and social
barriers are raised against them on all sides, the phrase that all men are
created equal and are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi­
ness becomes little more than a mockery. The existence of antagonism
between rich and poor and of rigid social stratification is a standing
challenge to a democratic regime in politics___ Popular government
has not always lived up to the expectations which it has awakened. But
with all its disappointments, democratic government continues to
make progress. For it combines a faith in the innate good and capacity
of mankind with a promise of a happier life, created by themselves, for
all the people. It is this dream of a better community and this faith in
the nobility of the common man which gives democracy a vitality that
 survives disillusionments and a drawing power that attracts the op­
pressed and disinherited in every comer of the w o rld /2
The advancement of political democracy and liberty, Lien and Fainsod
continued, w as a nineteenth-century project. At present, they believed,
political democracy must be augmented b y economic, or "industrial"
democracy:
Democracy is as much concerned with the eradication of poverty, with
the guarantee of a living wage, and with the alleviation of unemploy­
ment as it is with universal suffrage.. . . The weak need to be protected
against the strong, by law if necessary Only when individuals have
enough to eat, decent clothing, adequate shelter, the sense of security
which comes from savings, and a little leisure can they begin to
demonstrate a civic spirit, a sense of civic obligation, and that interest
in self-development through education which is the mark of the intel­
ligent citizen. Industrial democracy is the indispensable complement
of political democracy The history of the nineteenth century is largely
the record of the progress of political democracy The history of the
twentieth century seems clearly destined to be largely a record of the
progress of industrial democracy/3
The progressive character of The American People and Their Government
involved not only a pro-masses orientation but also a deep internation­
alist, antiethnocentric commitment: "Two governmental policies wide
apart in method may both help to raise the material well-being of the
masses of the people. That there are different w ays of achieving the same
end appears clearly even from a cursory study of the achievements of
other citizenries.. . . Each state is a laboratory for creative research in the
advancement of human welfare. The discoveries and achievements of
each are of vital interest and concern to all the others."74
Lien and Fainsod went on to describe some of the foreign "laborato­
ries" whose experiments were of interest to the American people. They
clearly considered the Soviet Union one of those laboratories. For exam­
ple, in seeking to lessen class conflict, Americans could consider the "co­
operative m ovem ent. . . [whose] greatest strength is displayed in Great
Britain, Russia, Sweden, Germany and especially in Denmark." From the
viewpoint of education, Americans might be blessed by a high literacy
rate, but they should nonetheless be touched by the "spectacular cam­
paigns which have been instituted to eradicate illiteracy in Russia, Siam,
Turkey, Mexico and China. The w ay is being opened for a fuller partici­
pation of the masses in the determination of their own destinies." Rus­
sian agricultural reform, by "abolishing the large estates and vesting title
in the state/' w as a step in the direction of greater democracy. And in the
industrial area, Russia was performing
perhaps the most arresting experiment in planned econom y.. . . State
planning as typified b y the Five Year Plan has captured the imagina­
tion of the world. The Five Year Plan and its projected extensions en­
visage a program of industrialization intended to overcome the
technical backwardness of Russia, render the Soviet Union virtually
independent of foreign manufacturers, raise the standard of living of
the Soviet worker, and lay the foundations of a successful Socialist
order.. . . The program of the future contemplates a workingman's
Utopia with stabilized employment for all, protection against the
hazards of old age, sickness, and accident, improvements in living con­
ditions, and an increase in available cultural, educational, and recre­
ational facilities. Whether these goals will be realized remains for the
future to demonstrate. In any case the Russian experiment has served
to arouse considerable interest in the possibilities of a planned national
and even international economy.75
Finally, Lien and Fainsod praised the Soviet Union for its pioneering
role in the fight against racial prejudice:
France and Russia furnish two examples of countries where racial prej­
udice is reduced to a minimum. The success of France in handling its
colonial problem has been due in part to the fact that the colored citi­
zen finds himself virtually on a plane of civic and social equality with
the white. Russia makes no distinctions either in theory or practice
among its numerous races and nationalities. The result in both the So­
viet Union and France has been to create a more closely knit commu­
nity than would have been the case if racial prejudice had continued
to operate as a disruptive force.76
Lien and Fainsod refrained from identifying the Soviet Union as a dic­
tatorship. They mentioned the "overthrow of absolutism" in Russia as a
manifestation of the global "flood of democratic sentiment" unleashed b y
World War I, and left the Soviet Union out of a long list of countries in
which democracy had given w ay to a dictatorial "iron hand" after the war.
Furthermore, they concluded their chapter on "universal objectives and
ideals" with the statement that "on the ultimate objectives mankind is es­
sentially at one, and whether one system of governmental, economic, and
social organization is better or worse than another can only be judged by
its achievements in terms of individual character and general w elfare."77
In sum, The American People and Their Government featured an accom-
modationist critique of the economic inequality and poverty widespread
in American society. It articulated a substantive vision stressing that
"industrial democracy was an indispensable complement of political
democracy." Viewed from this perspective, the Soviet Union appeared
more democratic, or at least less dictatorial, than it might have appeared
had the authors adopted the procedural, exclusively political, vision of
democracy that would gain disciplinary hegemony during the Cold War.

As we saw earlier, in 1956 Carl Friedrich insisted that the totalitarian dic­
tatorships of the twentieth century were "historically unique and sui
g e n e r is and that one must not "flatter" them by analogizing them to dic­
tatorships of the past, such as "the absolutist monarchies of Europe."
Rather than being merely a new form of old-fashioned absolutism, "to­
talitarian dictatorship is a logical extension of certain traits of our mod­
em industrial society (oftentimes called 'capitalism')/'78 Friedrich thus
regarded totalitarianism as a postindustrial developmental form, one in
which modem technology perversely facilitated total social control b y a
narrow bureaucratic elite. In the West, Friedrich implied, industrializa­
tion took its normal course, whereas in totalitarian countries it took a de­
viant path.
In the mid-1950s, however, Friedrich appears not to have seen Soviet
development as unique. His earlier view of Stalin's Soviet Union is best
revealed in "Some Thoughts on the Politics of Government Control," a
defense of the N ew Deal which Friedrich originally delivered as a lecture
in 1935 at Johns Hopkins University. Unlike other supporters of the N ew
Deal, who defended it as a welcome departure from the historical norm
of laissez-faire capitalism, Friedrich sought to demonstrate the historical
continuity of the N ew Deal by showing that laissez-faire capitalism had
never been more than a myth. "History shows . . . that our modem in­
dustrial life has grown up under and has been maintained by a govern­
ment holding an undisputed monopoly of legitimate power. In breaking
down the feudal privileges, the great monarchs and their ministers, the
founders of modem territorial states, like Elizabeth and Burghley in En­
gland, Henry IV and Sully in France, broke the ground for modem indus­
trialism and capitalism." These modernizers wisely pursued mercantilist
policies: they unified national economies, broadened national markets,
supported emergent industries and centralized national government.
Adam Smith and his followers failed to appreciate that it was the great
successes of these early mercantilist policies that made Britain's later
prosperity possible. Furthermore, defenders of laissez-faire failed to real­
ize the degree to which the doctrine's ostensible success derived from im­
perial domination: "Adam Smith's doctrine of the natural harmony of
interests w as the political myth of imperial exploiters, both in England
and elsewhere. A m erica. . . could not be expected to overlook this fea­
ture of the doctrine. Hamilton's famous report on Manufacturers (1791)
started from the assumption that the government must remedy the situ­
ation which colonial legislation has engendered."79
Karl Marx, Friedrich proceeded, was "just as blind to the politics of
government control as his more orthodox antagonists." Marx appreciated
more than Smith "the powerful role of the government in maintaining or­
der in the community in the past," but his philosophy "touch[ed]" that of
Smith "in the belief that the free development of individuals and groups
joined in the common enterprise of production partakes of a 'natural' har­
mony once the antagonism of classes engendered b y the existence of pri­
vate property is eliminated." Indeed, Stalin's rule, which "consists in a
new bureaucracy," proved the fallacy of the Marxists' anticipation of the
withering aw ay of the state. The future belonged, Friedrich argued, nei­
ther to laissez-faire capitalism nor to utopian socialism — both of which
wished the state aw ay — but rather to bureaucratic-industrial statism.80
The Soviet Union, like the West, was moving toward bureaucratic in­
dustrialism, but its semifeudal recent past and the "corrupt to the core"
nature of the czarist regime compelled it to move faster. Russia's com­
munists had the example of "modern industrialism right before their
eyes."

There opened before them vistas of industrial development which

were truly gigantic.. . . The Five-Year-Plan w as fundamentally a plan
for the industrialization of Russia; it was a matter of increasing pro­
duction in every sphere of the national economy. If the spirit of capi­
talism consists, as [Werner] Sombart has told us, in a "predilection for
long range planning, for the strict adaptation of means to ends, for ex­
act calculation," surely the Five-Year-Plan is capitalist in spirit. It may,
however, be well to extricate oneself from this confusion of words b y
calling the attitude described b y Sombart "industrialist" rather than
capitalist. For capitalist and socialist spirit have in common this in­
dustrialist passion for production and rationalization, though they dif­
fer in what they consider the ultimate objective of such rationalized
conduct, the capitalist seeking the expansion of his particular business
enterprise, while the socialist pursues the expansion of the national
economy as a whole---- Once w e put the contrast into these terms, it
becomes apparent that Stalin is a brother of Burghley and Sully, who,
as w e have seen, have regulated, rationalized, and stimulated existing
industries and facilitated commerce, and endeavored . . . to "treat the
whole realm as a unit for economic purposes and to organize and stim­
ulate the economic activities of the nation."81
 This passage shows dearly that in the mid-i93os Carl Friedrich did not
regard Stalin's Soviet Union as historically unique. In fact he engaged in
precisely the practice that he would find so objectionable two decades
later, namely flattering Stalin by comparing him to dictators of the past.
And not only did Friedrich compare Stalin to specific historical figures,
but those figures were the enlightened state-builders whose reputation he
sought to resurrect in order to legitimate the N ew Deal: Alexander Hamil­
ton and, more explicitly, Burghley and Sully.
This is not to say that Friedrich wished America to emulate Soviet
planning. He recognized that because the United States was already in­
dustrialized — because its problem was "not one of stimulating produc­
tion but of curtailing it, not of adding to production but of finding better
w ays and means of distributing the existing or potential produce" — So­
viet five-year planning was inappropriate for America. Still, he regarded
the difference between Russia and America as one of means rather than
of fundamental ends. The two countries were using different methods to
realize the shared ideal of "extending the 'industrialist' spirit of rational­
ization to the whole economy."82

S ch o lars A sso ciated w ith the U n iversity o f C hicago

In 1900 the founding president of the University of Chicago, William
Rainey Harper, joined university trustee Charles Crane on a business trip
to Russia. Harper's glowing stories about the trip made such a strong im­
pression on his son, Samuel N. Harper (1882-1943), that he became the
first American academic to devote his entire career to the study of Rus­
sia. After the elder Harper's death in 1904, Crane became the son's bene­
factor. Crane funded Samuel H arper's frequent trips to Russia and
endowed the academic chair in Russian studies that Harper occupied for
twenty-nine years. In the 1930s Samuel Harper was arguably America's
leading academic Sovietologist.83
Harper did substantial graduate study in Paris, Moscow, and at Co­
lumbia University. Although he never earned a doctorate, the University
of Chicago hired him as assistant professor in 19 12 and eventually pro­
moted him to full professor in 19 31. Harper was assigned to the depart­
ments of languages and history, but he was always more interested in
contemporary Russian politics than in the Russian past.84 Thus, Harper
was, in his own words, "draw n more toward political science, as opposed
to history."85 A s a graduate student at Columbia (19 0 9 -11) Harper held
a fellowship in the political science department. In the late 1920s and
1930s he participated regularly in meetings of the APS A and the Acad­
emy of Political Science. At the University of Chicago Harper maintained
close ties with Charles Merriam and other political science colleagues.86
In 1926 Merriam invited him to offer a political science course on Russian
government informing him that the political scientists "should like to
have you feel yourself an integral part of our department/'87 In sum,
notwithstanding his formal affiliation with history Harper maintained a
close association with the discipline of political science.
Harper visited Russia many times between 1904 and 19 17, He be­
friended leading Russian liberals and was confident that czarism would
eventually give w ay to a Western-style constitutional regime. The Men­
shevik-led government formed in March 19 17 appeared to validate his
optimism, but his enthusiasm for the Mensheviks blinded him to the or­
ganizational power and popular appeal of the Bolsheviks, Surprised and
dismayed by the October revolution, Harper eagerly lent his scholarly ex­
pertise to the anti-Bolshevik campaign of the Wilson administration.88 He
warned that a "Jewish gang" w as steering the United States toward a
more pro-Bolshevik line.89 In September 19 18 he was a key member of a
scholarly panel, sponsored by the government's Committee on Public In­
formation, that certified the authenticity of documents allegedly proving
that the Bolsheviks were German agents. To H arper's embarrassment, the
documents soon proved to have been fabricated. From 19 19 to 1922
Harper worked for the State Department, where his confidential analy­
ses firmly supported the official policy of nonrecognition of the Soviet
Union.90
In subsequent years Harper traveled to Washington often and met reg­
ularly with State Department officials. But he gradually came to question
the wisdom of nonrecognition and to abandon his anti-Bolshevism. In
1924-25 he adopted a more nuanced view of the Bolshevik leadership,
distinguishing between Stalin's "moderation" and the "extremism" of
the largely Jewish circle led b y Trotsky In 1936, when Stalin began stag­
ing the treason trials of his erstwhile fellow revolutionaries, Harper felt
that "Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev were the three leaders for whom I
had not been able to eliminate a personal feeling of resentment and even
hatred. Lenin and Stalin had never aroused in m y 'bourgeois soul' the bit­
ter anger that these three did."91
Eager to witness Bolshevism in action, Harper was frustrated by the
refusal of the Soviet authorities to grant him a visa. The Soviets finally re­
lented after Charles Merriam recruited Harper to write the Soviet volume
of his civic training series. Harper and Merriam traveled to Moscow in
1926, and Harper spent three months in the country including an ex­
tended tour of the countryside. He found life in Moscow and in the vil­
lages better than he expected. He reported to his cofunder, Charles
Crane's Institute of Current World Affairs, that the Soviet regime w as
firmly in power, that its reforms were taking a positive direction, and that
Stalin was not intent on a world revolution.92
H arper's study of Soviet civic training m ay have been his most im­
portant contribution to Soviet studies. The objective tone of the book
prompted Charles Beard to snipe, in his otherwise very favorable review
in the A PSR, that Harper had written "with a detachment that is almost
as cooling as the atmosphere of an adding machine." The Times Literary
Supplement similarly characterized Harper as "always very cautious in his
conclusions," yet detected that Harper was "inclining toward a favorable
verdict on the [Soviet] system ."93 Indeed, Harper's scholarly tone could
not hide his growing admiration for the Soviet experiment. As his biog­
rapher observed, Harper accepted the argument that genuine democracy
entailed economic equality, and his study betrayed sympathy toward So­
viet claims of "democratic centralism." Harper believed that Soviet work­
ers and peasants exercised real, if limited, influence on government
policy through trade unions and cooperatives; he insisted that leadership
positions within local soviets were genuinely elective.94 The book re­
ceived a favorable review in Izvestia, and Harper was never barred from
the Soviet Union again; he visited Moscow five more times between 1930
and 1939 95
In late 1926, when Harper was en route from Moscow to Chicago,
Charles Merriam, who had returned home earlier, advised him that cu­
riosity about Russia ran so high that "you w ill need to set aside about
three months for a continuous round of luncheons and addresses."
Harper told his audiences that the Soviet experiment was neither a com­
plete failure nor an unqualified success. The stock market crash of 1929
generated yet greater demand for Harper's analysis. In 1930 he visited
the Soviet Union again to observe Stalin's five-year plan, and came aw ay
with a favorable impression. He wrote a friend in the State Department
that the plan was building a society on the basis of "a new type of citi­
zen," dedicated to the common good by collective effort.96 In his public
lectures and written report, Harper described Stalin as a "clever and re­
sourceful .. . machine boss." Although he expressed qualms about the
harshness of the five-year plan, he praised Stalin's economic accomplish­
ments and concluded that the sacrifice demanded from the masses was
necessary for the ultimate success of the Soviet experiment.97 In his next
visit to the Soviet Union, Harper observed "food shortage, goods deficit,
inefficient m anagem ent. . . and other evidences of difficult and costly
wastage," but he nevertheless felt that "distinct progress had been made
during the two years between m y visits of 1930 and 1932." 98 In his report
on the trip, he described Stalin as "a man of will, power and intelli­
gence . . . an astute politician." Harper continued to voice optimism about
the prospects of modernization in the Soviet Union and to play down the
human cost of Stalin's forced industrialization drive. After yet another
visit to the Soviet Union (1934), Harper concluded that Stalin's agricul­
tural collectivization drive w as "successful" as well.99
In the early 1930s Harper was active in the campaign to establish diplo­
matic relations with the Soviet Union. He welcomed President Roo­
sevelt's decision in 1933 to recognize the Soviet regime, and envisioned a
U.S.-Soviet alliance against the Nazi menace. A t that time H arper's ad­
vocacy of U.S.-Soviet cooperation was based largely on realpolitik con­
siderations, but the promulgation of the new Soviet constitution in 1936
led him to argue that the two nations were linked not only by their op­
position to Hitler but also by a growing convergence of values.100
Harper, who was in Moscow when the 1936 constitution w as ratified,
interpreted the document as evidence of the sincerity of the Soviet
regime's search for a democratic formula. Although Harper recognized
that the constitution would not result in a multiparty parliamentary
democracy, he thought that it would make Soviet representatives more
responsible to the electorate, and that the Supreme Soviet would "resem­
ble" Western parliaments because of the "standardization of the proce­
dures of legislation." In the report he wrote about his 1936 visit, Harper
granted that the present emphasis of the Soviet regime w as on economic
democracy, but expressed the expectation that political democracy would
eventually achieve equal ranking in the Soviet system. A t the same time,
Harper expected that the United States would continue to move toward
economic democracy under the N ew Deal.101
Harper's optimism found expression in his 1937 book, The Government
of the Soviet Union.102 Bruce Hopper, who reviewed the book favorably in
the APSR, noted that Harper portrayed the Soviet Union as "m oving to­
ward a larger measure of liberty for the individual."103 Indeed, although
Harper conceded that the Soviet regime had some "totalitarian" charac­
teristics, he w as impressed by Soviet "democratism," that is, effective
mass participation in the making of policy, if not in the electoral process.
The general principles of the revolution were handed down b y the Party,
Harper insisted, but
the working out of the details of the new social o rde r . . . must be the
result of the experience of the masses in the actual process of build­
ing. The five-year plans, which are the most concrete expressions of
policy, are Party programs and require centralized administration. But
counter-planning from below developed and was encouraged because
it was realized that the plans would fail if they remained purely bu-
 reaucratic projects imposed from above to which there was no effec­
tive mass response. The extent of realization of these plans has been
evidence of a mass response; and the manner of this realization has jus­
tified to a considerable degree the boast of the Bolsheviks that "m il­
lions make the plans/'
Harper added that Stalin w as a "teacher" rather than a "personal dicta­
tor/' Stalin clearly "acts on the principles he recently outlined, of coor­
dination of the view s of the central leaders with the experience of those
on whose backs, so to speak, the policies adopted have to be worked
out/'104
The massive purges of the party that began in 1936, including the Mos­
cow show trials, did not mesh well with Harper's optimistic outlook on
the prospects for political freedom in the Soviet Union, But even though
Harper expressed significant discomfort about the purges in his private
correspondence, he never criticized Stalin in public. On the contrary, he
rationalized the purges as a temporary stage on the road toward democ­
racy, and as an understandable reaction to the machinations of Russia's
foreign enemies and the Trotsky-led threat to socialism in one country. In
The Government of the Soviet Union Harper accepted the Soviet claim that
large German and Japanese espionage missions were operating in Rus­
sia, and suggested that the treason trials were necessary to quash foreign
contacts with internal dissenters.105 In his last visit to Moscow, in M ay
1939, Harper encountered a friend who had "narrowly escaped from the
destructive overreaching. After telling me [Harper] of this terrible aspect
of the purge, this old friend remarked: 'But in view of what we now see
that Hitler and the Japanese were able to do in Austria, Spain, Czecho­
slovakia and China, I realize that Stalin w as right and w ise /"106 Harper
basically concurred with this judgment.
In August 1939 Harper joined other Soviet sympathizers in signing an
open letter that described as "fantastic falsehood" the analogy between
the Soviet Union and "totalitarian" states. The letter asserted that the So­
viet Union w as firmly committed to the causes of cultural freedom, trade
unionism, and world peace. The N azi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, signed
shortly after the publication of the letter, disabused many Soviet sym pa­
thizers of the belief that the Russia was a bulwark of peace, but Harper
refused to budge. He vigorously defended the pact as a defensive ma­
neuver imposed on Stalin by the reluctance of the Western democracies
to stand up to Hitler, and justified Stalin's subsequent annexation of the
Baltic countries on the ground that it would protect their citizens from
Nazism and war. Few Americans were willing to listen to Harper, though.
Between August 1939 and June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet
Union, Harper was shunned by fellow faculty, and attendance in his
classes dropped.107
The formation of the U.S.-Soviet wartime alliance seemed to Harper
the realization of a lifelong dream and earned him renewed public re­
spect. In November 1942 he presided over a "Salute to our Russian A lly"
mass rally, sharing the stage with Charlie Chaplin, Carl Sandburg, senior
government officials, and high-ranking military officers. Three months
later Samuel Harper succumbed to a heart attack.108

Frederick L. Schuman (1904-1981) earned his doctorate at the University

of Chicago under the supervision of Harper and international relations
specialist Quincy Wright. His dissertation, published as a book in 1928,
harshly criticized U.S. antagonism toward the Soviet Union and called for
a reversal of the policy of nonrecognition. Charles Merriam w as "much
impressed by [Schuman's] intellectual enthusiasm and capacity" and in­
vited him in 1927 to join the Chicago faculty.109
Nobel laureate Herbert Simon recalled that "during the period of the
Thirties, when I w as a student in the department, 'the faculty' meant
primarily Merriam, [quantitative methods pioneer Harold] Gosnell,
[Harold] Lasswell, and Frederick Schuman." Simon counted Schuman
among the "stars" of Merriam's department.110 Indeed, Schuman quickly
earned a reputation as a prolific author, brilliant writer, and pioneering
proponent of the realist approach to international relations.
Schuman's second book, a study of French foreign policy, won praise
for its "brilliant and picturesque style" and for being a "remarkably suc­
cessful attempt to use the method of the exact scientists in the field of
international politics."111 His third book, International Politics (1933), be­
came one of the most popular international relations texts of its era, and
went into seven printings. Schuman criticized "traditional" international
relations scholars for excessive "legalism " and for failing to adopt "any
unified scheme of interpretation." Schuman adopted "pow er politics" as
his unifying scheme; he maintained, much as Hans Morgenthau would
argue fifteen years later, that "all politics is a struggle for power, but while
power is sought in domestic politics as a means toward other ends, power
is sought as an end in itself in international politics." The reviewer of the
book in the A PSR characterized it as "a valuable, interesting and brilliant
work . . . well coordinated, thoughtful, scholarly, and intellectually stim­
ulating."112 Schuman subsequently published a critical analysis of Ger­
m any's "neurosis" (for which, as w e saw in chapter 2, he w as chided for
having "unduly minimized the positive" achievements of Nazism) and
many other books on world politics and the Soviet Union.113 Altogether,
he produced thirteen books in thirty-three years.114
 Despite his soaring reputation, the University of Chicago did not pro­
mote Schuman to full professor. In 1936 he accepted a professorship at
Williams College, where he taught until 1968. The primary reason for his
departure w as the displeasure of Robert Hutchins, the university's pres­
ident, with Merriam's practice of hiring the department's own graduates
and Hutchins's dislike of the scientific approach to social science.115 But
in the background of Schuman's departure were also the charges, made
public in 1935 by drugstore millionaire Charles Walgreen, that Schuman
and other University of Chicago professors exposed their students to
communist propaganda. Merriam and Hutchins rallied to defend Schu­
man, and the legislative committee established to investigate the matter
found that there was no communist subversion on campus.116 Still, the
affair probably did not help Schuman's bid for promotion.
Schuman may have been a nonpartisan university lecturer, but outside
the classroom he was one of the most outspoken American sympathizers
with the Soviet Union. During the 1930s, alongside, his academic work,
Schuman w as active in civic affairs and contributed numerous articles to
popular magazines such as the New Republic. The views he expressed in
these articles were characteristic of "fellow travelers" of communism,
that is, American intellectuals who, though not radical in political orien­
tation, rarely voiced criticism of the Soviet Union.117
Schuman's sympathy for the Soviet Union was to a significant extent
motivated by his antipathy to fascism. He was one of the first Americans
to warn against the danger of Nazi expansionism, and he welcomed the
call, issued by the Communist International in the summer of 1935, to
unite all "progressive" forces in an antifascist "Popular Front." This call
reflected a shift in Soviet foreign policy, aw ay from denouncing the im­
perialism of Western democracies, toward greater cooperation with them
in the name of "collective security."118 Committed though he was to the
realpolitik theoretical perspective, Schuman took it upon himself to pro­
vide a normative defense of the reversal of Soviet foreign policy.
In an article titled "Liberalism and Communism Reconsidered," pub­
lished in the summer of 1936, Schuman set out to demonstrate the close
affinity of these ideologies, setting them apart from fascism. He wrote that
Marx had built his philosophy on "the foundations of Ricardo and Adam
Smith," and thus liberalism and communism shared a belief in reason and
the common man. Schuman argued that the liberal democracies had "re­
luctantly perpetuated economic and social inequalities through demo­
cratic forms of government" in the hope that political democracy would
eventually result in economic democracy; by the same token, commu­
nism had "reluctantly adopted non-democratic forms of political power"
in order to combat economic and social injustice. Schuman insisted that
the Soviet Union was, broadly speaking, democratic, because its political
system allowed for mass selection of officials, mass criticism, and mass
participation in politics. Since Soviet communism and Western liberalism
were both on the "democratic" side, Schuman argued, they could profit
from each other's experience. In a 1937 article in the New Republic, Schu­
man similarly argued that "in closer union and in gradual assimilation
between these faiths [democracy and sovietism], freedom m ay yet find
salvation." In sum, Schuman articulated a substantive, not procedural,
view of democracy — proposing that democracy entailed socioeconomic
equality as much as political freedom — and expressed the accommoda-
tionist stance that American liberal democracy must improve itself by
borrowing the socioeconomic features of sovietism.119
The Moscow show trials failed to shake Schuman's faith in the pro­
gressive nature of Stalinist communism. In the summer of 1937 he con­
tended that the trials should be evaluated as much on grounds of political
expediency as on grounds of the actual guilt of Trotsky and the defen­
dants. Trotsky was an extremist advocate of world revolution and class
warfare, whereas Stalin stood for peace and cooperation with the bour­
geois democracies. Schuman accepted the defendants' forced confessions
as genuine, yet suggested that even if all the specific charges against them
were fabricated, Americans should side with Stalin against his Trotskyite
enemies.120
In August 1939 Schuman was among the cosponsors of an open letter,
signed b y 400 Americans (including Samuel Harper), addressed to "all
active supporters of democracy and peace." The letter praised Russia for
its progressive educational system, scientific prowess, enlightened social
and racial policies, and economic achievements. It maintained that the So­
viet Union "considers political dictatorship a transitional form and had
shown a steadily expanding democracy in every sphere. Its epoch mak­
ing new constitution guarantees Soviet citizens universal suffrage, civil
liberties, the right to employment, to leisure, to free education, to free
medical care, to material security in sickness and old age, to equality of
the sexes in all fields of activity and to equality to all races and national­
ities." All these achievements were enumerated to dispel the notion that
communism and fascism were equally menacing to the democratic w ay
of life, and to support the argument that the Soviet Union w as a force for
world peace. Ironically, the letter w as published in the issue of The Nation
which reported the N azi-Soviet pact.121
After the signing of the pact, the Soviets reversed their policy of col­
lective security and abandoned the Popular Front. Although Schuman, in
a series of articles published between December 1935 and M ay 1939, en­
thusiastically supported collective security, in November 1939 he changed
his position in line with the Soviet reversal.122 Writing in the New Repub­
lic, Schuman argued that Stalin's purges, although they had claimed the
lives of some innocent people, had effectively curtailed Nazi attempts to
subvert the Soviet regime. The success of the purges had convinced Hitler
of the danger in attacking the Soviet Union and led him to realize that he
would have a better chance in the West. Because Britain and France had
rebuffed the Soviet Union's calls for collective security, they had only
themselves to blame if Russia turned elsewhere in search of security. The
N azi-Soviet pact, Schuman concluded, was "a work of diplomatic genius
worthy of a Medici, a Richelieu, or a Bismarck."123
The Soviet invasion of Finland temporarily undermined Schuman's
confidence in Stalin's wisdom; the invasion, he acknowledged, was an act
of "blind brutality, as devoid of political intelligence as of legal and moral
scruples."124 But Schuman regained his faith after the formation of the
U.S.-Soviet wartime alliance. In 1944 in the APSR he heaped praise upon
a book that depicted the Soviet Union as a force for world peace.125 After
the w ar he resumed judging Stalinism by its purported ends rather than
by its means. In M ay 1946 Schuman wrote in the New Republic that al­
though "Soviet collectivization and industrialization during the 1930s
were agonizing ordeals," they resulted in "victory in building the foun­
dation of Soviet power and the expectation of a life of ultimate abundance
and freedom for the Soviet peoples."126 Similarly, in his 1946 book, Soviet
Politics at Home and Abroad, Schuman contended that the brutal aspects of
Stalinism were more than offset by two major accomplishments:
One is the cure of the mass neuroses of our time through the reinte­
gration of personality around community values and purposes, which
afford escape from loneliness and, ultimately, from class snobberies
and mass envies characteristic of deeply divided societies. The other is
the cure of economic paralysis and stagnation . , . the building of an in­
stitutional framework wherein all who are able and willing to work
m ay find productive employment in a constantly expanding economy.
Schuman argued, much as he had done before the war, that the Soviet
Union w as "a democratic polity — in its ends and in its achievements, if
not alw ays in its m eans."127
New Republic correspondent Heinz Eulau reviewed Schuman's book
favorably. Eulau, a political scientist who later became a leader of the be­
havioral movement in the discipline and president of the APSA, wrote
that the book corrected common misrepresentations of Soviet Russia. He
expressed agreement with Schuman's vision of future convergence be­
tween Western liberty and Soviet socioeconomic equality. Merle Fain-
sod, on the other hand, subjected Schuman's book to trenchant criticism.
Fainsod noted Schuman's "lack of first hand familiarity with Russian
sources" and wrote that Schuman's "rhetorical brilliance" failed to con­
ceal the wishful nature of his thinking. "The fundamental difficulty is that
Schuman's hopes and aspirations for democratic development in the
U.S.S.R. lead him to obscure, play down, and ignore dictatorial reali­
ties."128
Schuman opposed the Truman Doctrine, actively supported Henry
Wallace's failed presidential campaign in 1948, and remained an ardent
critic of U.S. Cold War policy. In 19 71, in his contribution to a Festschrift
for Quincy Wright, Schuman argued that Cold W ar-era America was "af­
flicted with a collective neurosis" and "m ass psychosis" much like the
mass neurosis he had observed in Nazi Germany in the early 1930s.129
Schuman's case, like that of John Burgess, suggests that although in­
dividual scholars are capable of swimming against tidal w aves of
wartime patriotism, their nonconformity m ay cost them their profes­
sional reputation. Schuman's pioneering contributions to international
relations are hardly remembered today partly because of his political
views. Whereas the first edition of Schuman's International Politics was
praised in the APSR in the strongest terms, the fourth edition (1948) was
sharply criticized for exhibiting "an attitude more appropriate to politi­
cal agitation and special pleading than to a textbook in international re­
lations." The reviewer concluded that "for beginners, without adequate
means of correcting its distortions, [International Politics] is an unsuitable,
even dangerous, book to use."130
In 1950 Schuman was named by Senator Joseph McCarthy as one of
the alleged Communist employees of the State Department (Schuman
never worked for the department).131 Even though political scientists
have generally disapproved of M cCarthy's anticommunist bluster, they
were not always reluctant to damage a colleague's career in more subtle
w ays.132 At the Russian research centers founded after the w ar Schuman
and other fellow travelers were considered "beyond the pale."133 When
Harold Lasswell was asked by Schuman's publisher to evaluate a manu­
script submitted by another Soviet expert, Lasswell replied that "his po­
litical orientation is not that of Schuman's, and you might be doing Knopf
a service in nullifying to some extent the emotional tone of Schuman's
w ork." In 1963, when Thomas Barclay, professor emeritus of political sci­
ence at Stanford, heard that Schuman had been offered a temporary
position there, he wrote to the provost that Schuman was "biased, preju­
diced, and highly subjective in his opinions and teachings" and that he
had caused "difficulty, controversy and embarrassment" at Williams.
Barclay warned the provost that offering Schuman a regular appointment
would hurt Stanford's fundraising efforts.134
 Nor did the Soviet side embrace Schuman. In a "Cultural and Scien­
tific Conference for World Peace/' held in New York in 1949, the chief So­
viet delegate rebuked him for suggesting that there were elements in both
Russia and America favoring war.135 A few years later Pravda attacked
Schuman as an apologist for imperialism; Pravda misrepresented The
Commonwealth of Man — a 1952 book that Schuman was particularly
proud of — as a work that "urgently preaches the idea of setting up a
world government by means of conquest, of course, under U.S. leader­
ship."136

in his 19 3 1 book, The Making of Citizens, Charles Merriam wrote that the
Soviet Union "is the w orld's most interesting and suggestive experiment
in civic education, rich in materials for the student of civic processes." He
claimed that one of the keys to the success of the Soviet experiment was
"the adoption of a democratic social system." Unlike the czarist tyranny,
which recruited much of its leadership from the hereditary nobility,
the new civil service is recruited largely from the workers, with, of
course survivals from the old order, but emphasis is placed upon mass
participation in government. The most impressive parts of the gov­
ernment are the Communist party and the Red army, while wide sup­
port is sought for the whole [civil] service through the democratic
appeal and through the democratic practice of organizing industrial
life in the factory and agricultural life in the rural Soviets___ Mass re­
sponsibility in economics and politics and popular education have
produced a form of democratic nationalism, quite unexpected by the
founders of communism and in a sense unwelcome to some of them.137
In the early 1930s Merriam believed that the Soviet Union was evolving
in a democratic direction, and held fast to the accommodationist view
that Russia offered US valuable lessons in nation-building methods.
After the Illinois legislature cleared the University of Chicago of the
charge of communist subversion, Merriam helped persuade Charles Wal­
green, whose allegations had triggered the legislative investigation, to en­
dow a lecture series in defense of American institutions. Merriam was one
of the early beneficiaries of this endowment.138 In 1940 he delivered five
lectures sponsored by the Walgreen Foundation, which were published
in a book titled What Is Democracy?139 The lectures largely reproduced the
content of other publications by Merriam in the late 1930s, a period in
which he rallied to develop a normative defense of American democracy.
At that time Merriam no longer regarded the Soviet Union as an "exper­
iment"; he abandoned his illusions about Russia's "democratic national­
ism " and viewed it as a form of "new despotism."140 Still, his reply to
"what is democracy?" is of interest here for its contrast with another
prominent answer to this question, provided fifteen years later under the
auspices of the same foundation. In his 1955 Walgreen lectures, published
as A Preface to Democratic Theory, Robert Dahl sought to ground demo­
cratic theory in reality rather than in ideals. Dahl, as I noted above, fol­
lowed Schumpeter in defining democracy largely in procedural terms.
Merriam began his 1940 Walgreen lectures with a definition of democ­
racy as "a form of political association in which the general control and
direction of the commonwealth are habitually determined by the bulk of
the community in accordance with appropriate understandings and pro­
cedures providing for popular participation and the consent of the gov­
erned." But he insisted that "democracy is not a mere form, a mere
mechanism---- Democracy is a spirit, an attitude toward fellow-men, a
mode of political cooperation through which the human personality m ay
find the finest and richest expression of human values. The form is not
the end; it is the means towards an end — the happiness of mankind." In­
deed, Merriam's defense of democracy consisted largely in elaborating
the ends — "assumptions," in his parlance — of democracy.141
The ends of democracy, according to Merriam, included the advance­
ment of "the dignity of man," the consummation of the "constant trend
in human affairs toward the perfectibility of mankind," and the notion
that "the gains of civilization are essentially mass gains and should be dif­
fused throughout the people as promptly and equitably as possible."142
"Fair participation in the gains of civilization" entailed the following:
"For everyone equal access to minimum security.. , . For everyone food,
shelter, clothing, on an American minimum standard. For everyone a job
at a fair wage . . . and a guaranty against joblessness. For everyone a guar­
anty of protection against accident and diseases. For everyone a guaran­
teed education---- For everyone a guaranty of protection against old age.
For everyone an opportunity for recreation and the cultural activities ap­
propriate to his time."143 Merriam thus articulated an idealist, substan­
tive vision of American democracy that differed rather sharply from the
realist, procedural vision articulated by Dahl in his 1955 Walgreen lec­
tures.
Merriam tirelessly championed intelligent "planning" as the best route
to the realization of democracy's ideals. "There is reason to believe," he
emphatically claimed, "that systematic, forward-looking planning would
facilitate the adoption of such policies regarding our natural and human
resources as would best serve this basic purpose of our system, increas­
ing our output and providing for sounder distribution." Merriam not
only wrote about national planning as a scholar but actively practiced it
as vice-chairman of the National Resource Planning Board. His service on
the board and on the President's Committee on Administrative Manage­
ment (the "Brownlow Committee") gave Merriam access to President
Roosevelt and established him as an important figure in the New Deal.144
Merriam w as pleased that the doctrine of laissez-faire "has now been
generally repudiated," but he was aware that "in diluted form [this doc­
trine] still survives as a nucleus of opposition to forms of social control,
and especially to any movement labeled as a 'p lan .'"145 To Merriam's cha­
grin, during World War II this "diluted" opposition intensified in both the
congressional and academic arenas. In 1943 Congress dealt a blow to Mer­
riam's vision of a democratically planned society when it killed the Na­
tional Resource Planning Board. The rhetoric of the board's congressional
opponents equated planning with communism and totalitarianism. On
the academic front, too, the progressive worldview epitomized by Mer­
riam w as coming under attack, especially from conservative émigré
scholars. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Austrian-born economist Joseph
Schumpeter, fearing that N ew Dealism would degenerate into bureau­
cratic socialism, developed a minimalist, procedural conception of democ­
racy that w as anathema to Merriam's democratic idealism. Closer to
Merriam's home, conservative critics of progressivism gained a platform
on the University of Chicago campus with the 1941 founding of the Com­
mittee on Social Thought. A s Merriam's biographer observed, the com­
mittee served as a center for guest European intellectuals, "w ho tended
to see N ew Dealers like Merriam as misguided provincials, caught in a
naïve interpretation of the nature of m an."146
One of those visiting intellectuals, Austrian economist Friedrich
Hayek, touched Merriam's raw nerves when he forcefully argued, in The
Road to Serfdom (1944), that governmental economic and social planning
were incompatible with liberty and inevitably led to totalitarian dictator­
ship. Merriam, who took pains to differentiate planning for democratic
ends from fascist and Soviet planning, naturally took exception to
Hayek's view. In an extremely heated debate, broadcast nationally on
NBC radio in April 1945, the aging Merriam charged that Hayek had mis­
interpreted the meaning of "planning" and underestimated the efficacy
of democracy. Hayek angrily responded that "people like you, Merriam,
are inclined to burden democracy with tasks which it cannot achieve, and
therefore are likely to destroy democracy." Merriam was incensed. Sev­
eral months later he wrote in the A PSR that "H ayek's cynical and con­
fused appeals are not fundamentally directed to reason at all, but to fear
and distrust. His volume is addressed to non-rational forces and against
forms of conscious social control." Merriam characterized The Road to
Serfdom as a "dism al" and "over-rated work of little permanent value."147
A s it turned out, however, The Road to Serfdom made the bestseller lists
and continues to sell steadily.148 Merriam's What Is Democracy? had years
earlier gone out of print.

The Victory of Procedural Democracy

The onset of the Cold War enhanced fears that democratic social con­
trol, however benign its aims, might lead to totalitarian dictatorship. In
December 1948 another conservative colleague of Merriam, the distin­
guished University of Chicago economist Frank Knight, outlined his
view of democracy at the annual meeting of the APS A. Although he did
not name Merriam in his address, Knight might have had him in mind
when he declared that "Russia is but an extreme case of what is going on
everywhere, including our own country. Taking 'democracy' to mean
achievement of particular ends instead of freedom — ends laudable in
the abstract — the people keep giving new tasks and more and ever more
power to government until presently it w ill be the master of all instead of
the servant."149
Soon even former stalwarts of the N ew Deal were conceding this point.
Legal scholar Adolph Berle — one of President Roosevelt's most influ­
ential advisers and a staunch advocate of increased government controls
on corporate power — acknowledged in 1950 that "if fear of the giant cor­
poration exists, apprehension of the leviathan state is surely no less. A
generation which has watched the extreme of police-state organization in
Soviet Russia and its equally frightening off-shoot. . . the Nazi and Fas­
cist organization in Germany and Italy, is not likely to underestimate the
possibility that an overmastering state likewise can become a tyranny."150
As historian Alan Brinkley observed, Berle's reversal illustrates "how
profound and lasting the impact of totalitarianism has been on the liberal
view of the state." In the 1930s, Brinkley argued, many liberals "had bal­
anced [liberty] against other values that they had considered equally im­
portant: economic justice, equality, efficiency." However, once America
found itself in a w ar against totalitarianism, first of the fascist kind, then
the communist one, concern for personal freedom assumed a new ur­
gency, and statist economic reforms began to appear more threatening.
The result w as "a gradual movement aw ay from the celebration of the
state that had marked liberal thinking in the late 1930s, an ebbing of com­
mitment to the 'religion of government' that [New Dealer] Thurman
Arnold once invoked."151
American political science was not insulated from this reorientation of
liberal thought. In the 1950s political scientists played a crucial role in re­
fining the idea of totalitarianism into a "m odel" or "syndrom e," whose
traits included "an official id eo lo g y. . . characteristically focused and
projected toward a perfect final state of m ankind."152 This view of total­
itarianism, which gained wide acceptance in the profession in the 1950s,
w as hardly reconcilable with Charles Merriam's notion that "the per­
fectibility of mankind" was a key "assumption" of American democracy
The shifting orientation toward greater emphasis on electoral process,
free choice, and political liberty is epitomized by Robert Dahl's career
from the late 1930s to the 1950s. Dahl's doctoral dissertation, written dur­
ing the late N ew Deal, w as an ambitious theoretical attempt to reconcile
the principles of political democracy with a variety of socialist programs.
Dahl was then a member of the (anti-Stalinist) American Socialist Party
and hoped "that the United States would move through a kind of a sec­
ond N ew D e a l. . . in the direction of a democratic socialist order." Like
many on the American left, Dahl opposed American intervention in
World War II, but the fall of France in 1940 caused him to reassess his iso­
lationism. He left the party and later volunteered for combat duty in Eu­
rope.
Upon joining Yale's faculty after the war, Dahl cotaught a seminar on
planning with Charles Lindblom.153 In the book that resulted, Dahl and
Lindblom delineated a program of incremental rational planning appro­
priate for a mixed economy embedded in a democratic society. They ar­
gued that the w ar of the "ism s," which pitted Schumpeter and Hayek
against defenders of socialism, had become obsolete; Schumpeter's stark
portrayal of the "mythical grand alternatives" — either "complete [so­
cialist] planning" or unfettered free markets — represented "a disap­
pearing point of view." The book received mixed reviews and had no
significant impact on disciplinary discourse.154
In his next book, A Preface to Democratic Theory, Dahl no longer linked
democracy to economic programs; he acknowledged Schumpeter's "ex­
cellent analysis" and defined democracy in largely procedural terms. Un­
like its predecessor, the Preface fast became a classic. Samuel Huntington
later observed approvingly: "B y the 1970s, the debate [on the meaning of
democracy] w as over, and Schumpeter had w on."155 The Preface w as a
milestone on Schumpeter's road to victory.
 Cold War Politics

In the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, American political science
swung strongly toward ideological nationalism. Robert Dahl, as w e saw
in the preceding chapter, expressed an exceptionalist form of this nation­
alism when he declared that the pluralistic democratic process f unctioned
remarkably well in America but w as probably "not for export to others."
In its triumphal form, the nationalism of the era w as most glaringly evi­
dent in Seymour Martin Lipset's claims that America "is the good society
itself in operation," and that with "the most developed set of political and
class relationships. . . [the United States] has presented the image of the
European future." Lipset also proposed that "to clarify the operation of
Western democracy in the mid-twentieth century m ay contribute to the
political battle in Asia and A frica."1
It is hard to determine which of the two strands of nationalism enjoyed
greater popularity in the discipline at the time. However, it is clear that a
number of important political scientists actively participated in the poli­
tics of shaping the "European future" and the "political battle in Asia and
Africa." A s consultants, advisers, associates, or beneficiaries of various
national security agencies, some leading scholars consciously and ac­
tively took part in the campaign to defend democracy against its totali­
tarian enemies even as in their writings they sought to "clarify the
operation of Western democracy" in a scientific, dispassionate fashion.
Lipset himself, for example, received two sizable grants from the U.S. Air
Force in the late 1960s, one to examine "implications of comparative na­
tional development for military planning," another to study "emergent
leaders in developing nations."2 Thus the professed identity of the disci­
pline as a detached science of politics, an identity vigorously championed
by the behavioral revolution that swept the discipline during the Cold
War, w as at odds with the reality of political scientists' enmeshment in
the politics they studied.
This chapter, unlike the preceding three, is concerned not with politi­
cal scientists' images of a particular enemy regime but with documenting
their involvement in Cold War politics. This involvement w as large, and
analyzing it comprehensively would require a separate book. Here I nar­
rate only a small but significant part of the story by presenting four
sketches, each dealing with an important political scientist or group of po­
litical scientists and the institutions with which they were associated.
A ll four sketches illustrate the incongruity between the discipline's
claim to be a disinterested science and its actual intimacy with political
interests. None of them calls into question the character or integrity of the
protagonists. All, however, raise the question: How valid is the presup­
position that the subject is separate from the object of research — a
bedrock assumption of the scientific approach to the study of politics —
if the subject is implicated in the politics being researched?
The battle for the hearts and minds of the peoples of the Third World
is the context of all four sketches; three touch specifically on the Vietnam
conflict, describing the involvement of political scientists in the w ar's
prosecution and / or the Vietnam-era turmoil in the internal politics of the
APSA. The sketches are followed by an account of the intense, if imper­
manent, impact of the Vietnam War on the profession, including the tilt
toward ideological accommodationism and the delegitimation of collab­
oration with national security agencies.

Public Administration and the Developing Nations

In chapter 2 I discussed the postwar decline of the field of public ad­
ministration, manifested in the 1956 closure of the Public Administration
Clearing House (PACH), the demotion of the field from its status as one
of the APSA 's official core fields, and the displacement of its traditional
curriculum by a public policy program at Harvard's School of Public
Administration. The decline was gradual because a considerable number
of scholars, trained in public administration during its interwar heyday,
remained faithful to its canons until their retirement. Their career paths
were smoothed, and the field's decline prolonged, by a growing demand
for technical assistance in building the "new nations."
In 1955 the Eisenhower administration, concerned about Marxist in­
roads into the Third World, established the International Cooperation
Administration (ICA) to coordinate U.S. foreign aid programs.3 Under
the auspices of the ICA and other U.S. agencies (and occasionally under
the auspices of international organizations), American public adminis­
tration experts were attached to U.S. diplomatic missions in Asian and
Latin American countries, where they advised host governments on how
to reform their administrative machinery. Although it is not clear whether
these experts' encounters with the Third World left a mark on their host
countries, it is clear that the encounters affected the experts themselves.
The sojourn in Third World countries allowed public administrationists
to indulge in a lifestyle they could not afford at home; it also awakened
their interest in studying "comparative administration" and often re­
sulted in scholarly publications about the host country.
Affording a window into the Cold War career of public administra­
tion (and, incidentally, of Yale's department of political science) is the
correspondence of James W. Fesler, one of the field's central figures dur­
ing its decline. Fesler (b. 19 11) received his doctorate in 1935 from Har­
vard University. From 1935 to 19 3 1 he taught at the University of North
Carolina and w as substantially engaged in public service. In 1936, after
the publication of Fesler's first professional paper, he w as invited by
Louis Brownlow to join the President's Committee on Adm inistrative
Management. During World War II Fesler served on the War Production
Board, including a stint (1943-45) as chief of the board's Policy Analy­
sis and Records branch. In 19 5 1 Fesler joined the department of politi­
cal science at Yale University, where he held the Cowles Professorship
of Government until his retirement in 1979. He served two terms as
chair of the department and played an important role in building it from
a program whose reputation rested narrowly on the shoulders of its in­
ternational relations scholars into the profession's top-ranked depart­
ment overall. Fesler served as president of the Northeastern Political
Science Association (1958-59) and vice-president of the A P SA (19 6 8-
69). His patience and fairness were instrumental in preserving civility
during the A PSA 's contentious 1969 annual meeting. Several of his stu­
dents rose to prominence in the profession, including Aaron W ildavsky
and Theodore Lowi, APSA 's presidents in 19 85-86 and 19 9 0 -9 1 respec­
tively.4
In 1958 Fesler spoke before the Yale and Government Committee of the
Yale Club in Washington. After praising the scholarly achievements of
Yale's political scientists, Fesler reviewed their contributions to politics
and public service. He and Robert Dahl, Fesler began, had run unsuc­
cessfully for public offices in Hamden and North Haven (suburban N ew
Haven). Soviet specialist Frederick Barghoom had served in the State De­
partment and then in the American embassy in Moscow for five years.
Fesler continued,

Professor [Walter] Sharp served with the Department of State, the UN

Food and Agriculture Organization, the WHO and UNESCO. He spent
the summer of 1952 in French Indochina as a Public Administration
consultant to the Mutual Security Administration, and spent the 19 5 4 -
55 academic year in Cairo as coordinator for the UN of the Egyptian
Institute of Public Administration. He continues now as a consultant
to the Department of State.
"I consulted the Vietnamese government," Fesler noted, and "from time
to time I have served as consultant to a variety of federal agencies." He
added that "w ithin the last year professor [Harold] Lasswell has lec­
tured at the N aval War College, the A ir University, the Arm y War Col­
lege and the Marine Corps Educational Center. [China specialist] Professor
[David N.] Rowe lectured at the National War College---- I lectured at
the Industrial College of the Armed Forces," and so on. "In sum ," Fesler
assured Yale's alumni in Washington, "it would be difficult for anyone
to maintain that Yale's political scientists lack contact with the real
w orld."5
Fesler's account was by no means complete. He might also have men­
tioned Lasswell's close association with the RAND Corporation; Rowe's
work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA's precursor;
Rowe's stint from 1954 through 1956 as head of the Taipei office of the
CIA-funded A sia Foundation; and Rowe's 1953 testimony before the
Reece Committee, a congressional committee investigating the alleged
procommunist bias of American foundations, for which Rowe won the
committee's praise.6 Had Fesler updated his speech two decades later, he
might also have mentioned the practical activities of, among others, Bruce
Russett, a Yale Ph.D. who remained on its faculty, becoming a leader in
the quantitative study of international relations and longtime editor of
the Peace Science Society's Journal of Conflict Resolution. In the 1960s and
early 1970s Russett consulted to or conducted research for the Institute
for Defense Analyses (investigator, 1962); the U.S. Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency (investigator, 1963-66); the Bendix Aerospace Di­
vision (consultant, 1964-72); the Department of Defense Advanced Re­
search Projects Agency (ARPA; contract, 1967); the System Development
Corporation (consultant, 1965-66); the RAND Corporation (consultant,
1966-70); the General Electric Technical Military Planning Operation
(consultant, 1966-1970); and the N aval War College Advanced Research
Office (contract, 19 7 3 -7 4 )/ For ARPA, Russett sought to develop "quan­
titative methodology and theory for use of publicly available data . . .
to improve prediction and understanding of actions by foreign nations."8
A s Yale's political scientists maintained this close "contact with the real
w orld," their department became the leading political science graduate
program of the 1970s. In doing so it rode the crest of the behavioral revo­
lution, which sought to transform the discipline into an empirical science
of politics. Robert Dahl, Harold Lasswell, Gabriel Almond (who taught at
Yale in 19 4 7 -5 1 and 1959-63), and Karl Deutsch (who taught there from
1958 to 1967) were central figures in the behavioral movement; Dahl
wrote one of the movement's manifestos.9 But how compatible was the
vision of the discipline as a science of politics with the reality of Yale po­
litical scientists' actual involvement in politics? If we discover that a med­
ical researcher became intimate with his patients, we tend to regard his
claims to knowledge with suspicion. Should we not, b y the same token,
suspect claims about urban politics in Connecticut if the knower was him­
self involved, however marginally, in such politics?10 Should w e not sus­
pect knowledge claims about the Soviet Union if the knower served for
five years in the American embassy in Moscow?

Fesler's mention, in the remarks quoted above, of the globe-trotting itin­

erary of Yale colleague Walter Sharp gives some indication of the "in­
ternationalization" of public administration during the early Cold War.
More evidence of the field's Third World record comes from Fesler's cor­
respondence with public administrationists outside Yale. Allan Richards,
a former student, wrote to him on stationery with the letterhead "Escuela
de Administración Pública, Universidad Mayor de San Andres, en Co­
operación con la Universidad de Tennessee, La Paz, Bolivia." The Uni­
versity of Tennessee's Bolivia outpost was funded by the ICA, and its
mailing address was "U.S. Operations Mission to Bolivia, Department of
State Mailroom, Washington." Fesler wrote to Richards that "though
there are certain frustrations in technical assistance work, you could, I
should think, find considerable satisfaction in the effort to help develop­
ing peoples.. . . [My wife] and I were completely captivated b y the Viet­
namese people and tore ourselves aw ay with considerable difficulty."11
The displacement of the accommodationist impulse to reform America's
administration by a nationalist demand to reform foreign governments is
nicely illustrated by the career path of another Fesler correspondent, Fred
W. Riggs. From 19 5 1 through 1955 Riggs (b. 1917) served as assistant di­
rector of PACH, bastion of the old Progressive tradition in the field. When
PACH closed because of lack of funds, Riggs was appointed Bentley pro­
fessor of government at Indiana University, which he left in 1967 to teach
at the University of Hawaii.12 His letters to Fesler indicate that in the late
1950s Indiana University established public administration consulting
"groups" in Thailand and Indonesia, under contract with the U.S. gov­
ernment. In the career of these groups, the boundary between practical
and scholarly work w as blurred. For example, in 1958 Riggs reported to
Fesler that "Fred Horrigan of Indiana University's Group [in Bangkok]
was engaged in intensive field work on local government and adminis­
tration, and came up with some interesting material. He is now process­
ing it for his dissertation at I.U ."13
A t Indiana Riggs began teaching courses in problems of development
and comparative public administration, and the focus of his research
shifted to the developing world. In 1957-58, funded by the Social Science
 Research Council, he went to Thailand, where he studied government pro­
grams relating to the production, transportation, and distribution of rice.
The following year Riggs taught at the Institute of Public Administration
in Manila under a Rockefeller Foundation grant. From Manila he reported
to Fesler on "a number of studies and field su rv eys. . . conducted by men
brought here under the Michigan University contract."14 In 1963-64 Riggs
was a "senior specialist" at the East-West Center in Hawaii, writing a book
on the modernization of Thailand's bureaucratic polity.15 The East-West
Center w as a division of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the overt
propaganda arm of the U.S. government, and its letterhead at the time
read: "Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between East and
West; A Project of the Government of the United States in Cooperation
with The University of H aw aii."16 Although Riggs was probably free to
write as he pleased once he received his appointment, it is likely that
scholars who framed their research questions in a more critical idiom than
the argot of "modernization," say by conceptualizing the United States as
an "im perial" power, would have been less favored with East-West Cen­
ter residencies or grants from major foundations.
Fesler's own encounter with the developing world began in 1952,
when the Carnegie Corporation invited him to tour East Africa with three
other Yale social scientists. Carnegie, whose leaders maintained close ties
to the U.S. government, sought to acquaint American scholars with this
soon-to-be-decolonized region. The participants in the African "junket,"
as Fesler described it, were not required to produce scholarly publica­
tions; it w as strictly a learning tour.17 More consequential in terms of
influencing Fesler's scholarship was his second encounter with the de­
veloping nations, a 1956 sojourn in South Vietnam as consultant in the
ICA-sponsored Michigan State University (MSU) mission.
The central figure in M SU's Vietnam mission was political scientist
Wesley Fishel (1919-1977). After receiving his doctorate from the Uni­
versity of Chicago in 1948, Fishel taught American servicemen in Japan,
where he befriended Vietnamese exile Ngo Dinh Diem. When Fishel
joined M SU as assistant professor in 19 3 1, Diem followed him to East
Lansing. With Fishel's help, Diem portrayed himself to U.S. policymak­
ers as a pro-American anticommunist and cultivated enough American
support to enable himself to assume power in South Vietnam in 1954. At
the request of the State Department, M SU allowed Fishel to return with
Diem to Saigon, where Fishel lived in the presidential palace and became
Diem's most trusted American adviser.18
Diem requested that MSU set up a technical assistance program in
Vietnam, and MSU President John Hannah w as eager to oblige him. Han­
nah was an Eisenhower Republican who shared with IC A's directors the
vision of American universities as "manpower reservoirs" for promoting
U.S. interests abroad. Under Hannah's leadership, MSU established out­
posts in thirteen developing countries, mostly nondemocracies. The Viet­
nam MSU program, launched under ICA auspices in 1955, was the
biggest of the thirteen. In the seven years of its existence, it spent $25 mil­
lion of U.S. taxpayers' money on "technical assistance" to South Vietnam.
Fishel w as appointed "chief of mission" of the MSU program and con­
tinued to enjoy greater access to Vietnam's president than any other
American in Saigon. In 1959 he wrote an article in the New Leader in which
he described Diem's regime as a "Democratic One Man Rule." Two years
later Fishel likened Diem to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.19
After leaving Diem's palace Fishel lived grandly in an opulent Saigon
villa. His MSU colleagues lived comfortably, too, making close to double
their normal salaries. Their academic careers flourished. Despite the prac­
tical nature of their assignments, most of the MSU faculty who went to
Saigon got promotions either during their tour of duty or immediately af­
ter their return. Fishel was promoted to full professor in 1957 despite a
thin publication record.20
The MSU team provided training and consulting in both police and
public administration. The police administration staff trained Vietnamese
internal security forces, including the secret police, and supplied them
with guns and ammunition. They also assisted the Vietnamese govern­
ment in creating a national identity card program, designed to ferret out
communist infiltrators. From 1955 to 1959, M SU's police administration
division in Saigon gave cover to a contingent of C IA agents. Their true
identity w as no secret to the program's "legitimate" academics; Fesler, for
example, was fully aware of the CIA's presence, and recalled that it was
not an issue at the time.21
The university's public administration division engaged in several
projects, including a school for civil servants, a national institute for pub­
lic administration, and refugee resettlement. A number of MSU political
scientists participated in these projects, including, in addition to Fishel,
Guy Fox, Walter Mode, Robert Scigliano, Ralph Smuckler, and Edward
Weidner. The division also recruited political scientists from other uni­
versities as consultants; Fesler spent the summer of 1936 in Saigon, fol­
lowed by public administration experts Arthur Naftalin of Minnesota
and John D. Montgomery of Harvard University. Another visiting politi­
cal scientist (whose name Fesler did not recall) worked on drafting the
South Vietnamese constitution.22
Fesler w as invited to Vietnam, as he indicated before his departure, "to
be sort of a general consultant, and particular consultant on field admin­
istration and intergovernmental relations problems."23 In Saigon he dis-
covered that the pattern of Vietnamese field administration "follows the
French Prefect design; they can hardly conceive of a system where you
don't have a regional director in charge of all field activities of the gov­
ernment, the very embodiment of 'le pouvoir executif/"24 Fesler con­
tributed "reflections on administrative organization" to a Vietnamese
journal, wrote a memo to President Diem, and attended several working
sessions with Diem. In the memo he noted that the government's services
were "not reaching the people," largely because province chiefs were be­
having like independent "kings." Fesler made various recommendations
on how to strengthen Saigon's control of the provinces and improve the
delivery of services, including a drastic reduction in the number of ad­
ministrative districts constructed by the French authorities.25 It is indeed
ironic that whereas Woodrow Wilson and the founders of public admin­
istration regarded the French bureaucratic system as a model for admin­
istrative reform (though not as good a model as the Prussian), American
administration experts were now trying to reform the bureaucratic struc­
ture installed by France in its former colony.
Fesler's encounter with Vietnam left a significant mark on his scholar­
ship, if not on the administration of his host country. In 1957 he obtained
funding from the Carnegie Corporation to study comparative field ad­
ministration. A s he wrote in 1961 to an acquaintance, "M y principal re­
search project these days is on comparative field administration and it
w as largely stimulated by my realization of how inadequately prepared
I w as to give sensible advice on field administration in Vietnam when I
didn't have a satisfactory understanding of how the French prefectoral
system w orked."26 In the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a "big
boom," as Fesler described it, in the study of comparative administra­
tion.27 If Fesler's own case is any indication, it appears that the boom was
driven less by a theoretical dynamic internal to the field than by increased
U.S. government demand for knowledge useful for checking commu­
nism in the Third World.
The trip to Vietnam also made Fesler an advocate of the South Viet­
namese cause. Soon after returning to N ew Haven, on the Yale Reports ra­
dio program, Fesler told listeners that "Vietnam's capacity for stable
government is of great moment to us because Vietnam is a critical outpost
of the free world in Southeast Asia, where most nations are either com­
munist or easy prey for Communism." He spoke favorably of President
Diem and explained that "so long as the internal communist threat to se­
curity continues to exist, it is difficult to reestablish local self-government
and to institute free elections as we know them in the West."28 Fesler
joined American Friends of Vietnam (AFVN) and helped ship American
books to Vietnamese academic libraries, but by 1961 his contact with Viet­
nam became "attenuated."29 A t that time, two disillusioned members of
M SU's Vietnam team published a critical account of Diem's regime in the
New Republic, which prompted Diem to terminate the MSU program.30
Wesley Fishel, however, remained a vocal supporter of American in­
volvement in Vietnam even after the 1963 assassination of his friend
Diem. In 1965 the White House arranged for Fishel to receive $23,000 to
establish a prowar national speakers' bureau and information center.
Fishel also worked closely with the National Security Council on a proj­
ect to recruit American students for volunteer work in South Vietnamese
villages. A kickoff rally for the project was held at MSU in 1965, featuring
Vice President Hubert Humphrey and USIA Director Carl Rowan. Fishel
headed the MSU chapter of AFVN, and in public debates on campus he
labeled opponents of the war "m adm en" and "traitors." After Ramparts
magazine published an expose of MSU's Vietnam adventure in 1966,
Fishel's former ally and Saigon assistant, political scientist Robert Scigliano,
resigned and fled to the State University of N ew York at Buffalo. Fishel
stayed in East Lansing and stuck to his guns but became increasingly iso­
lated and a prime target of the antiwar protests that swept the campus in
the late 1960s.31

The Dual Career of Gabriel Almond

Gabriel Almond (b. 19 11), arguably the leading student of "political
culture" and one of the most important political scientists of the postwar
era, held teaching posts at Yale, Princeton, and Stanford Universities.
From 1954 onward he chaired the highly influential Social Science Re­
search Council Committee on Comparative Politics. He earned numer­
ous professional honors, including the presidency (in 1965-66) of the
APSA .32 Here I situate Almond's scholarship in the context of lines of in­
quiry on cultural manipulation and propaganda methods that arose from
social scientists' government service during World War I and World War
II. His scholarship w as oriented to the American national security con­
cerns and policies of his time, and his scholarly success w as enmeshed
with intelligence and psychological warfare work in the service of the
U.S. government. In American Cold W ar-era scholarship on political cul­
ture, the boundaries between the study of political culture and the poli­
tics of U.S. foreign policy were porous at best.

From Civic Training to Civic Culture

The Civic Culture (1963), written b y Almond and his prize student, Sid­
ney Verba, presented the "paradigmatic statement" of a "political cul­
ture" research program in political science.33 It fast became a classic,
generating controversies and an array of retrospective symposia.34 The
Civic Culture is remembered for theorizing that high levels of popular po­
litical participation were actually bad for democracy, as well as for the au­
thors' innovative use of survey research on a massive, crossnational scale
(Almond and Verba defined political culture in terms of "a psychological
orientation toward political objects" and portrayed the political culture
of five nations on the basis of the attitudes expressed by hundreds of cit­
izens in interviews conducted b y professional pollsters).35 The book is
usually regarded as a piece of objective, apolitical scholarship in com­
parative politics; it has rarely been discussed as a study in national secu­
rity.36 Upon close inspection, several facts about the substance of the
book, the background of its chief author, and his career suggest that the
book constituted an intellectual contribution to / on American national se­
curity rather than a neutral study of political culture.
The Civic Culture was explicitly motivated by the need to win the hearts
and minds of the peoples of the w orld's "emerging nations." At the be­
ginning Alm ond and Verba stated that the political culture of the future
"w ill be a political culture of participation," yet "what the mode of par­
ticipation w ill be is uncertain. The emerging nations are presented with
two different models of the modem participatory state, the democratic
and the totalitarian---- Both modes have appeal to the new nations, and
which w ill w in out — if indeed some amalgam of the two does not
emerge — cannot be foretold."37
Almond and Verba were hardly neutral on the question of "which will
win out." They concluded that Third World leaders must use symbols no
less than education to build democratic nations. "If a new nation is to cre­
ate a civic culture. . . there must be a symbolic event, or a symbolic,
charismatic, leader or some other means of creating commitment and
unity at the symbolic level." Although the authors avoided making de­
tailed policy recommendations, they framed their general conclusions as
potential contributions to the victory of Western democracy over Soviet
totalitarianism in the struggle for the Third World. Their agenda was con­
gruent with contemporaneous U.S. national security policy, which recog­
nized the strategic competition between the superpowers in Europe as a
virtual stalemate, and attached increasing importance to the "nonstrate-
gic" threat posed by the spread of communist revolution throughout Asia
and Latin America.38
But the case for seeing Alm ond's studies of political culture as national
security studies rests on more than his obvious sharing of the views and
goals held b y the foreign policy establishment at the time. It also rests im­
portantly on Alm ond's actual service for the national security state. Fur­
thermore, the case m ay be profitably enriched by placing The Civic Cul­
ture in the context of earlier studies of culture, which also had their intel­
lectual roots in America's international conflicts.
In the preface to The Civic Culture, Almond wrote: "The study of the
political culture of democracy had its inspiration some thirty years ago in
the Social Science Division of the University of Chicago---- In particular
this study owes its inspiration to the work of Charles E. Merriam. His
Civic Training series formulated m any of the problems with which this
study is concerned."39 A s I explained in chapter 2, Merriam served as
chief American propagandist in Italy during World War I and returned
home convinced that "publicity" techniques could be used profitably for
the purpose of nation-building, or "civic training," as Merriam preferred
to call it. The "comparative civic training" project w as Merriam's princi­
pal scholarly endeavor in the late 1920s, resulting in a series of country-
specific monographs and Merriam's synthesis of their findings in his
book The Making of Citizens (1931).
Gabriel Almond entered the University of Chicago as an undergradu­
ate in 1928, when Merriam w as in the midst of the project. A decade later,
when Almond submitted his Ph.D. dissertation to Merriam, the civic
training monographs were already out of print, and the series soon faded
from professional memory. Alluding to the fate of the series, Alm ond re­
cently recollected that he "carried aw ay from his graduate years at
Chicago feelings of frustration and unfinished business." For Almond,
The Civic Culture was an attempt to resurrect and extend, with the help of
more sophisticated scientific research methods, the agenda set by Mer­
riam in the 1920s.40
Almond observed that "today we would call what Merriam w as
studying comparative political culture and socialization. Merriam called
it 'Civic Training' and 'Civic Education/ reflecting the more rationalist-
voluntarist conceptual terminology of the social sciences at that time."41
N ow Almond was correct in pointing out that his mentor's project dealt
with culture and socialization, and in that sense his own project w as in­
deed continuous with Merriam's. But this statement also hints at, or per­
haps glosses over, an important discontinuity between the two projects.
Merriam w as a progressive driven by an accommodationist impulse to
reform aspects of American social and political life; he studied foreign
"political cultures" in order to learn how to bring problematic aspects of
American life under enlightened social control. Almond, on the other
hand, turned in the 1950s into a nationalist liberal who (quite typically of
American intellectuals at the time) felt quite satisfied with American life.
Whereas Merriam sought to borrow from foreign civic models, Almond
depicted Anglo-American civic culture as a model for the rest of the
world; and whereas Merriam sought to bring domestic problems under
control, Alm ond's scholarship lent itself to bringing foreign problems and
foreign peoples under American control.42 Ironically, Almond sought to
combat the appeal of the same Red propaganda methods that his mentor
had found so appealing. Whatever the actual discontinuities, however,
Almond himself regarded The Civic Culture as the progeny of Merriam's
civic training project; both projects exhibited substantial interest in the
use of cultural symbols in nation-building, and both projects had signifi­
cant roots in national security concerns with civilian morale and ideo­
logical/ psychological warfare.
To round out the intellectual and sociological background to Gabriel
Alm ond's career, it is important to discuss another one of his mentors at
the University of Chicago, Harold Lasswell. Lasswell (1902-1980) was
among the most prolific and most brilliant social scientists of the twenti­
eth century. If there is a unifying theme in Lasswell's vast scholarship,
spun over five decades from the 1920s to the 1970s, it is the theme of pro­
paganda: "the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of
significant symbols," as he defined it.43
A s a junior professor, Lasswell assisted his senior colleague (and for­
mer teacher) Charles Merriam in his civic training project. Lasswell as­
similated Merriam's interest in propaganda and his commitment to
technocratic social control. In his dissertation, published as Propaganda
Techniques in the World War; and in subsequent analyses, Lasswell took it
as given that just as during w ar governments must influence the enemy's
opinions and morale, so during peace they must manage the opinions of
their own publics. In modern industrial society, propaganda had become
a necessary tool for the control of opinion, "a mere tool no more moral or
immoral than a pump handle."44 The propagandist understood that so­
ciety w as "a process of defining and affirming meaning," and that by us­
ing cultural symbols he could redefine conflictual political situations in a
w ay that involved neither victory nor defeat but a new "integration." Pro­
paganda thus promised both a more efficient ("more can be won by illu­
sion than coercion") and a more humane method of control than the
old-fashioned politics of conflict, force, and coercion. This is not to say
that Lasswell renounced the use of force altogether. He contended that
"propaganda of the deed" — isolated violent acts designed to provoke
fright and produce defeatism — was an important complement to the
propaganda of the word and the pictorial symbol.45
In the late 1920s Lasswell turned to psychoanalytic theory, partly in an
attempt to understand and manipulate the ways in which symbols oper­
ate on the human personality, hi Psychopathology and Politics (1930) he
introduced "life-histories" produced b y psychoanalytic interviews as a
resource for political research. On the basis of life histories of politicians,
including cases drawn from the archives of mental hospitals, Lasswell
concluded that "political movements derive their vitality from the dis­
placement of private affect upon public objects," that "political life seems
to sublimate many homosexual traits," and that "political crises are com­
plicated b y the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive im pulses/' To
overcome these pathologies, Lasswell proposed that conventional poli­
tics be supplanted by "preventive politics," whose ideal would be "to ob­
viate conflict b y the definite reduction of the tension level in society" The
agents for the realization of this ideal would be "social administrators and
social scientists," who would skillfully use symbols to channel the sub­
conscious forces of the human personality to social purposes.46
Lasswell extended this line of analysis to the international realm in
World Politics and Personal Insecurity (1935). He theorized that "w ars and
revolutions are avenues of discharge for collective insecurities/' They
were brought about by "rulers who are adept at diverting, distracting,
confusing, and dissipating the insecurities of the mass by the circulation
of efficacious symbols." The "preventive politics" that Lasswell pre­
scribed for the world entailed the displacement of divisive, parochial
symbols by a "m yth of world unity." Lasswell explained that "the pre­
requisite of a stable order in the world is a universal body of symbols and
practices sustaining an elite which propagates itself by peaceful methods
and wields a monopoly of coercion which it is rarely necessary to apply
to the uttermost."47
Lasswell, however, recognized that "a united world remains remote
and uncertain."48 The world w as still divided into sovereign political
units; there was no truly universal elite who would make use of Lass-
w ell's skills to control the world's insecurities, and if he were to put his
ideas in the service of an elite it would have to be the ruling elite of a sov­
ereign state. Indeed, it was the American foreign policy elite who, out of
concern for America's insecurity, would give Lasswell the chance to be­
come the propagandist-therapist that he wanted to be.
In the late 1930s leaders of the Rockefeller Foundation, concerned
about the susceptibility of America's large immigrant population to So­
viet and Axis propaganda, enlisted leading propaganda experts in an
effort to consolidate American public opinion in favor of war against Ger­
many. Lasswell received a sizable grant from the foundation on the basis
of his theory that the elite of U.S. society should systematically manipu­
late mass sentiments in order to protect democracy from its authoritarian
enemies. The grant funded the establishment of the Experimental D ivi­
sion for the Study of War-Time Communication, located at the Library of
Congress under Lasswell's directorship. There Lasswell and his staff pi­
oneered quantitative content analysis and used the new method to track
the flow of key verbal symbols emanating from the propaganda outlets
of the warring parties.49 Lasswell soon made such a name for himself that
in early 1941 he was offered the post of "chief psychologist of the War
Plans Division of the War Department," at the rank of lieutenant colonel
(he turned it down).50
The Experimental Division became an important component of the in­
telligence and psychological warfare apparatus established after Amer­
ica's entry into the war. During the w ar Lasswell extensively consulted to
several national security agencies, including the Office of Strategic Ser­
vices, the Office of War Information, and the arm y's psychological w ar­
fare branch. He also installed a staff in the Justice Department "for the
analysis of [the communication of] all organizations with possible foreign
connections," a staff which he described as an "executive equivalent of
the Dies Committee," the predecessor of the House Un-American Activ­
ities Committee.51
Lassw ell's division served as an academic training center, where
young social scientists learned advanced analytical and methodological
research skills while discharging their patriotic duties. Many of these
trainees went on to become academic stars in postwar social science, in­
cluding sociologists Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz, philosopher
Abraham Kaplan, psychologist Irving Janis, and political scientists Ithiel
de Sola Pool, Nathan Leites, Heinz Eulau, Karl Deutsch, and Alexander
George.52 These scholars thereafter continued to fuse scholarly and na­
tional security work. Nearly all of them were involved, to varying de­
grees, in psychological and ideological warfare operations of the U.S.
government during the 1950s 53 Shils, for example, was a central activist
in the CIA-sponsored Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization
whose mission w as to conduct an international culture w ar against the
Marxist intellectual left (Lasswell, Lipset, Carl Friedrich, and Merle
Fainsod were members of the congress, too).54 Lasswell himself also con­
tinued to work extensively in government-sponsored psychological w ar­
fare.55 He took an academic post at Yale Law School after the war but
spent much of his time in Washington and Santa Monica, California,
home of the RAN D corporation. A t RAND, a quasi-govemmental na­
tional security campus, Lasswell served as a "permanent consultant" for
over twenty-five years.56
In 1967 Lasswell invited Gabriel Almond to contribute an essay to a
volume on "propaganda in world history." He wrote to Almond that "it
would be unthinkable for me not to enlist you in an undertaking of this
character.. . . I have you in mind [as a contributor] because I am aware of
the rich experience you had in the full range of specialized operations in
the contemporary world, and I know that you are continually raising
non-obvious questions about it/'57 What "specialized operations" was
Lasswell alluding to, and how w as he aware of Alm ond's "rich experi­
ence" in the field?
Almond studied under Lasswell as an undergraduate and coauthored
his first publication with him.58 Until his departure from Chicago in 1938,
Lasswell served as Alm ond's dissertation supervisor. The dissertation
w as a sociological study of the plutocratic elite of N ew York City, and A l­
mond subsequently added to it a psychoanalytic dissection of the life his­
tories of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and other wealthy New
Yorkers.59
Early in the war Almond joined the intelligence branch of the Office of
Facts and Figures (OFF), an agency established in October 19 4 1 to com­
bat foreign propaganda and boost American civilian morale. In mid-1942
the OFF w as folded into the Office of War Information (OWI). Lasswell
w as involved in the work of both entities as an influential consultant, and
thus w as able to observe how Almond was gaining "rich experience" in
psychological warfare.60 In 1945 Almond transferred to the U.S. Strategic
Bombing Survey, shifting his attention from domestic to enemy morale.
The goal of the survey was to study the effect of bombing on the German
war effort in order to apply these lessons to the ongoing bombing of Ja­
pan. Almond's Morale Division conducted a sample survey of German
attitudes immediately after the Nazi capitulation. In that capacity, he had
the opportunity to acquire survey research skills that would help him re­
alize his dream of putting Charles Merriam's civic culture research pro­
gram on a more scientific ground.61
In 1947 Almond joined the distinguished Institute for International
Studies at Yale University. The institute was an intellectual auxiliary of
the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and its members maintained close
contacts with government agencies. Arnold Wolfers, one of the institute's
central figures, w as a friend of Dean Acheson and the most important
conduit on the Yale campus for recruitment by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Frederick Dunn, the institute's director, w as known for his frequent trips
abroad on assignment from the State Department. Historian Robin Winks
observed that "though they would not have said so, [the institute's] schol­
ars were working on a history of imperial America, and all of their efforts
were of interest to the State Department. Most received assistance from
it."62
Alm ond's work at the institute w as no exception, conforming closely
to the strong anticommunist line adopted b y the Truman administration.
Almond first tackled the danger of the rise of the extreme right and es­
pecially the Marxist left in Western Europe. He warned that the growing
strength of left-wing parties in Italy and France was threatening the ef­
fectiveness of the "third force" political coalitions that the United States
was then promoting, covertly as much as overtly.63 The conformity with
official U.S. policy was also evident in a book that Almond subsequently
edited, in which he advocated accelerating the de-Nazification process
in Germany and publicizing the work of anti-Nazi German resistance
groups.64 These recommendations supported the notion that West Ger­
many should be reintegrated into an anticommunist Western bloc.
The American People and Foreign Policy was the most significant work
produced by Almond at Yale University. The book took it as a given that
Americans must exercise the position of world leadership that had been
"thrust" upon them, and that they must stand up to "an opponent which
tends to subordinate all values to power, which accepts no limits to ex­
pansion, and no inhibitions as to method save expediency." The aim of
the book w as to assess the "psychological potential" of the American peo­
ple in this struggle.65 In typical Lasswellian fashion, Almond's analysis
divided the American people into masses and elites.
Almond reported with satisfaction about the existence of a "general
ideological consensus" among masses and elites alike. Americans gener­
ally agreed with the main themes of their contemporary foreign policy —
"resistance to Communist expansion by economic, diplomatic, propaganda
and, if necessary, military means, and the establishment of a peaceful and
legal international order in which American material and security inter­
ests would be protected." This foreign policy consensus w as buttressed
by a domestic liberal consensus on the values of freedom and mass w el­
fare. Groups that did not share the foreign policy consensus were "de­
viant." The list of deviants included not only the Communist Party but
also "radical appeasers" such as the Wallace for President Committee and
"extreme internationalists" such as the World Government N ow organi­
zation. Even the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was, A l­
mond implied, on the verge of deviance in 1947, when it withheld support
from the Truman Doctrine and opposed compulsory military service. For­
tunately, the tide of deviance was arrested in 1948 with the purge of the
communists from the ranks of the CIO and the failure of Henry Wallace's
presidential campaign.66 The consensus was safe.
Almond nevertheless expressed serious doubts about Americans' abil­
ity to formulate and carry out an effective foreign policy. The reasons for
this pessimism were rooted in American culture. On the basis of "national
character" studies by anthropologists Margaret Mead, Geoffrey Gorer,
and Clyde Kluckhohn (all of whom were involved in psychological w ar­
fare against Japan),67 Almond characterized American mass culture as
anti-intellectual and as shot through with materialism: "The American
 tends to be caught up in an endless race for constantly changing goals —
the 'newest' in housing, the 'latest' in locomotion, the most 'fashionable'
in dress and appearance." Because the American masses "tend to exhaust
their emotional and intellectual energies in private pursuits," Almond psy­
chologized, they tended to react to foreign policy problems "with formless
and plastic moods which undergo frequent alterations." Cautioning that
the anthropologists' insights were impressionistic, Almond proceeded to
corroborate them with the aid of the more exact tools of data analysis; his
analysis of opinion polls only reinforced his view that the "foreign policy
attitudes among most Americans lack intellectual structure and factual
content." In short, Almond concluded that the American mass public was
moody and superficial; it lacked the cultural traits and "psychological po­
tential" equal to the task of checking the communist enemy.68
Almond found the elites to be only marginally better prepared than the
masses to conduct an effective foreign policy. He criticized them for em­
phasizing organization and technique at the expense of rational, long­
term policy planning, and for sharing the anti-intellectual bias of the
masses. He further contended that "although policy-thinking at the elite
level has more intellectual structure and factual content, it shares with
mass thinking the instability of moods and simplifications of political re­
ality." Even the professional foreign policy bureaucracy suffered from a
"parochial. . . mentality," and it "dim ly understood" the relation of pro­
paganda to foreign policy.69
Almond concluded the book with advice to "those responsible for the
formulation and execution of public information programs in the foreign
policy field." He counseled against giving detailed information about for­
eign affairs to the mass public, because all the public cared for w as " cues
for mood responses---- It does not listen to the content of discussion but its
tone." The key to a more effective policy lay rather in "enlarging the at­
tentive public [a far narrower stratum than the mass public] and training
the elite cadres" to provide the cues to the masses in a w ay that would
preserve the consensus and moderate the public's erratic mood swings.
And who would train the elites in the orchestration of anticommunist
mass opinion?

The institutions of higher learning — and the social sciences in partic­

ular — have a potential function which cannot be sufficiently empha­
sized. The attentive public . . . is largely a college-educated public, and
the political, interest and communication elites are also largely college-
trained. It is in the social sciences in the universities that a democratic
ideological consensus can be fostered and a democratic elite discipline
encouraged.
Social science theory, Almond added, could facilitate a more rational
policymaking process by developing "a common language among the
various elite sectors."70 In sum, social science w as the most promising
prophylaxis to the psychocultural inhibitions on the conduct of U.S. for­
eign policy.
In the preface to The American People and Their Foreign Policy, Almond
acknowledged a "long-standing intellectual debt to Harold Lasswell,
who led the w ay among American political scientists in setting the prob­
lems of political behavior in their socio-psychological context." This ac­
knowledgment, albeit generous, w as somewhat understated, for the book
went beyond just "setting the problems" in Lasswellian fashion. In fact
there w as a substantial resemblance between the vision Almond articu­
lated in the book and the social vision of his mentor. The ideal society por­
trayed by both consisted of capricious masses, willingly kept under
control by an elite coached in the orchestration of "cues" and "sym bols"
by social scientists and propaganda experts. The American People and Their
Foreign Policy basically fleshed out the theory that a decade earlier had
caught the ear of Lasswell's patrons from the Rockefeller Foundation,
namely that the elite of U.S. society should systematically manipulate
mass sentiments in order to protect democracy from its authoritarian en­
emies.
In 19 5 1 Almond and other leading members of the Institute for Inter­
national Studies moved from N ew Haven to Princeton, where they es­
tablished the Center for International Studies. Frederick Dunn, the State
Department's flying consultant, directed the center during its first years.
Dunn's successor, political economy expert Klaus Knorr, was awarded
the government's National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal for
his longtime service to the CIA, the State Department, and the Defense
Department.71
The center tracked closely the important foreign policy concerns of the
day. In its tone and substance, the first major study done by Almond at
Princeton, The Appeals of Communism, spoke to the persisting apprehen­
sion of American foreign policymakers about the strength of the French
and Italian Communist parties, as well as to lingering (if diminishing)
concerns about the influence of the "sm all deviational movements of the
United States and England." By examining "w h y people join the Com­
munist movement and w hy they leave it," Almond sought to "increase
our understanding of the vulnerability of the free world to Communist
penetration" and to help promote the defection of communist activists.
The research methods employed by Almond were Lasswellian: content
analysis of communist publications, interviews with communist defec­
tors, and interviews with "a group of American psychoanalysts who had
had communists as patients. These analysts provided us with thirty-five
clinical case histories of Communists/' Almond found that the middle-
class membership of the Communist parties, especially in the United
States and Britain, included a "larger proportion of persons with psy­
chological problems and difficulties which they sought to solve by join­
ing the party." However,
This strikingly high incidence of neurotic needs among American and
British former party members should not lead one to the conclusion
that all middle-class neurotics are susceptible to Communism. It does
appear that middle-class persons with emotional problems who have
become accustomed to dealing with problems, conflicts and emotional
difficulties by means of a more or less complex pattern of intellectual
rationalization, and who are under pressure to justify the expression
of resentment in moral terms, are more likely to be susceptible than
those who cope with these problems through simpler forms of action
such as the direct expression of resentment, or through physiological
narcoses such as alcoholism and sexual promiscuity. Again and again,
our American and British middle-class material reveals this pattern of
intellectualization as a means of coping with alienative and maladjus-
tive feelings and impulses.72
Alm ond's use of psychoanalytic case histories obviously replicated
Lasswell's use of mental hospital records in Psychopathology and Politics.
But whereas Lasswell, writing long before the Cold War, attributed neu­
rosis and maladjustment to politicians of all persuasions, Almond re­
served these diagnoses to communist activists.
Almond found that the appeal of communism to the workers and
peasantry of France and Italy w as driven more by objective socioeco­
nomic conditions of poverty and unemployment than by neurosis. His
policy conclusions were differentiated accordingly. In the United States,
communist influence had become marginal. The policy of blacklisting,
harassing, and condemning former communists w as counterproductive,
Almond warned. Instead, defectors from the party and its front organi­
zations should be forgiven their past errors and reintegrated into Am eri­
can society. In France and Italy, on the other hand, American policy had
failed to seriously weaken the Communist parties, which continued to
sabotage the development of economic and political stability, thus serv­
ing Soviet policy goals. Almond advocated a bold U.S campaign — to be
conducted by U.S, trade unions rather than directly by the U.S. govern­
ment — of support for noncommunist left-wing movements that would
siphon popular support from the Communist parties. This campaign
called for the construction of "a communication [read: propaganda] and
organizational network . . . by a militant working-class elite, anticommu­
nist but dedicated to working-class interests. And such an elite will have
to fight innumerable pitched battles against a clever and tenacious enemy,
and by virtue of inexhaustible patience and effort unlock the fingers of
Communist control one by one and bring the working classes of France
and Italy back to the West."73
Almond did not wait for publication of the book in order to begin pro­
moting his policy recommendations. The records of the U.S. Psychologi­
cal Strategy Board contain a memo from Almond, dated April 16 ,19 52, in
which he urged the board to "monitor this study . . . and appraise the use­
fulness of the work we are doing here at Princeton from the point of view
of the Psychological Strategy Board." The board, established by President
Truman, w as charged with coordinating American psychological and
ideological warfare efforts throughout the world. Its existence was un­
known to most Americans. Almond was named an external consultant,
joining an exclusive group of social scientists that included Hadley
Cantril, Clyde Kluckhohn, Philip Selznick, Harold Lasswell, and Lass-
w ell's apprentices Daniel Lerner and Morris Janowitz.74
According to published biographical sketches, in the 1950s and early
1960s Almond frequently rendered services to government (or quasi-gov­
ernment) agencies. He consulted to the Air University (1948), the State
Department (1950), the Office of Naval Research (1951), and the RAND
Corporation (1954-55) and was a member of the Science Advisory Board
of the U.S. A ir Force in i96o~6i.75 This list is incomplete, though; the bi­
ographical material does not mention his work for the Psychological
Strategy Board or his later (1958-61) membership in a classified "Work­
ing Committee on Attitudes Toward Unconventional Weapons" along
with, among others, Thomas Schelling, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and the leg­
endary chief of the U.S. Air Force's Strategic A ir Command, General Cur­
tis LeMay. The focus of the social scientists on the committee — like the
focus of Alm ond's unit of the wartime Strategic Bombing Survey — was
civilian morale; the social scientists were expected to find w ays to mini­
mize unfortunate reactions by target peoples to the use of chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons in the Third World. The use of crop-de­
stroying agents that might cause general famine was among the scenar­
ios brought before the committee.76 Thus, it appears that Gabriel Almond
was busy doing national security work at the same time that he was at­
taining a position of leadership in the field of comparative politics.
The connection between Almond's scholarly work on political cul­
ture/psychology and his national security background is also evident
in the people and institutions who assisted him in his research. Funding
for The Appeals of Communism and for The Civic Culture came from the
Carnegie Corporation (Almond acknowledged the funding in the pref­
aces), whose leaders worked very closely with national security agencies
in the 1940S and 1950s; Alm ond's benefactor, senior Carnegie execu­
tive John Gardner, was a prominent participant in psychological opera­
tions during World War IL Later, concurrently with his Carnegie duties,
Gardner advised the Defense Department's primary committee on the
scientific aspects of psychological warfare.77 The interviews of foreign
communists for The Appeals of Communism and the massive foreign sur­
vey research for The Civic Culture study were carried out b y Alm ond's
friend Elmo Wilson. Wilson led the survey division of the OWI, Alm ond's
employer during the war, and then established an international polling
organization that was sustained primarily b y U.S. government contracts.
Wilson, too, was a consultant to the Psychological Strategy Board and an
active participant in government-sponsored classified projects.78 Finally,
most of the colleagues who gave Almond advice on his research an d /o r
manuscripts (as acknowledged by Almond) were themselves involved,
some quite heavily, in psychological warfare or intelligence work.79 In
sum, Almond seems to have been part of a network of social scientists,
pollsters, and foundation executives that w as forged in the intelligence
and propaganda agencies of World War II, and sustained by the continu­
ing commitment of its members to the prosecution of ideological and psy­
chological warfare during the Cold War.
Given this context, The Civic Culture and, more generally, the "political
culture" approach of which the book became a leading classic can be seen
as the culmination of a trajectory of preoccupation with winning and con­
trolling the minds of people. It was a trajectory in which political science
scholarship and the politics of national security shaded into and fed each
other, beginning with the issue of civilian morale during World War I,
through research on "civic training" and "propaganda" in the 1920s and
1930S, through renewed concern with morale and propaganda during
World War II and the early Cold War, leading to the issue of winning the
minds of the peoples of the emerging nations. Although the political cul­
ture approach is remembered today primarily as an important if some­
what dated milestone in the internally driven momentum of political
science theory, its proponents actually promoted it partly on the ground
that the concept promised to "yield more understanding about the pos­
sibilities and limitations for consciously changing a political culture in or­
der to facilitate national development." As Ellen Herman observed, "It
was partly because of the blueprint it offered for engineering political
change in the third world — a prim ary concern of much U.S. foreign and
military policy — that the political culture perspective became a domi­
nant one by the mid-1960s."80
 Lucian Pye and MIT’s Center for International Studies
Just as Harold Lasswell nurtured a cadre of national security-oriented
experts in political psychology, so did his student Gabriel Almond. By the
early 1950s Almond had already established a reputation as an important
political scientist and begun attracting talented students, some of whom
became leading scholars of political culture and development in their
own right, including Sidney Verba, Myron Weiner, and Lucian Pye. Pye,
who completed his doctorate at Yale in 19 51 before rejoining the insti­
tute's defectors at Princeton, was a relatively rare species of a China ex­
pert untainted by the "who lost China" witch hunt. In 1953 he was named
in a Ford Foundation document as a preferred candidate to do a study of
M alayan guerrillas, part of a series of country studies that Ford sponsored
in close coordination with CIA director Allen Dulles.81
Pye wrote Guerrilla Communism in Malaya under Almond's close guid­
ance at the Princeton Center for International Studies. Pye spent six
months in Malaya, where he enjoyed the close cooperation of British colo­
nial officials.82 The book portrayed the colonial authorities favorably and
basically defended British counterinsurgency policies designed to assure
continued British access to M alaya's raw materials.83
In substance and method, Pye's book bore a "close relationship" to A l­
mond's work. It expanded to Asia the investigation of the appeals of com­
munism and employed the Lasswell-Alm ond method of relying on "life
histories" of communists, in this case those who had surrendered to the
British police. Pye also shared Alm ond's conviction that communists
sanctioned violence for its own sake and that they "are no longer bound
by strong standards of morality and decency."84
Whereas Almond had argued that in America communism appealed
to neurotic intellectuals and in Italy and France it appealed to the poor
and unemployed, in Asia, Pye claimed, communism thrived on the inse­
curity and confusion of "people engrossed in a restless effort to be part of
the modern w orld." Pye characterized the communist defectors he inter­
viewed as intuitive rather than analytical thinkers, "lacking consistent or
clear concepts of causality." Having shed the norms of traditional society,
they were left with "inadequate standards to guide them in an unpre­
dictable w o rld .. . . As is common with people involved in a process of
acculturation, they place great emphasis upon the form or the style of ac­
tion, upon means rather than ends." It was precisely this type of person
that the communists needed, since communism "can flourish only with
the support of people who are fascinated with its means and who lack the
standards to appraise its ends." Pye concluded that economic develop­
ment would be insufficient to counter the communist threat in Asia un­
less coupled with "political development." The challenge was to create
"a greater sense of community among those being [economically] as­
sisted" by constructing alternative, noncommunist, organizational out­
lets for the insecurities of the modernizing Asian masses.85
Pye's analysis of Malayan communism signaled a trend to expand the
scope of psychological warfare against communism from persuasion and
"propaganda" to "development." At the forefront of this trend were the
scholar-warriors of the Center of International Studies (CENIS) at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which Pye joined in 1956.
CENIS originated in project TROY, a top-secret study group based at MIT,
whose task was to advise the State Department on how to beam Am eri­
can propaganda across the Iron Curtain. The project's final report, sub­
mitted to the secretary of state in February 19 51, stressed the importance
of cementing tight relations between American universities and the
American foreign relations and intelligence bureaucracies. A n annex to
the report recommended the establishment of grant research centers on
university campuses to assist the government in w aging political w ar­
fare. CENIS w as the first center of this kind. It was set up with C IA and
Ford Foundation money, and the CIA's assistant director, economist M ax
Millikan, stepped down to become the center's first director. Because of
the classified nature of its research, CENIS's doors were watched by an
armed guard, and badges were necessary to enter the premises.86
When MIT formally established a department of political science in
1965, its faculty came mainly from CENIS. Indeed, so accomplished was
this group of political scientists, assembled under the auspices of the
national security establishment, that not long after its incorporation the
department ranked among the profession's top ten.87 Much of the de­
partment's soaring reputation w as based on its pioneering role in the
development of quantitative and computer simulation methods, the ac­
coutrements of the scientific approach to political science.
After joining MIT, Pye continued to engage in the politics of national
security while rising to prominence as a leading scholar of comparative
politics and political culture (in 1988-89 he w as honored with the presi­
dency of the APSA). In 1961 Pye contributed a paper titled "The Roots of
Insurgency and the Commencement of Rebellions" to a symposium on
"Internal War," held at Princeton University. Among the symposium's
other participants were political scientists Harry Eckstein, Karl Deutsch,
Lasswell, Almond, Verba, and Lipset. Ellen Herman observed that al­
though it was "a purely theoretical effort on its face, the symposium w as
hardly removed from the world of practical military affairs. H arry Eck­
stein, organizer of the event, presented his p a p e r. . . to the Smithsonian
Institution's Research Group in Psychology and Social Science, charged
with advising the Department of Defense on the direction of military be­
havioral research, just a few months later/'88
At roughly the same time, Eckstein and Pye were preparing a report
for the Office of N aval Research (ONR), edited by Ithiel de Sola Pool,
which urged the government to award contracts to social scientists for
counterinsurgency research. Counterinsurgency, Pye stated in the report,
"m ay prove to be a more fruitful [research area] for social scientists than
many other aspects of military strategy.. . . Without question, social sci­
ence research is in a strong position to contribute useful knowledge in de­
signing and developing internal security forces."89 Such hubris about the
w ar potential of social science was not uncommon in the 1960s, especially
around Cambridge, Massachusetts. Pool, the first chairman of MIT's po­
litical science department, wrote that if "you feel that the U.S. govern­
ment does not seem to understand Vietnamese villagers, or Dominican
students, or Soviet writers," then "you should be demanding that the C IA
hire and write contracts with our best social scientists."90 Leading inter­
national relations scholar Kenneth Waltz recalls that during a session of
the famous Harvard-M IT arms-control seminar in 1964, the presenter de­
clared that the United States would win in Vietnam because "w e have so­
cial science while the other side does not."91
The recommendation of the ONR report w as enacted by the Kennedy
administration, and large sums of counterinsurgency research funds
were channeled to social scientific research projects and consultancies;
Pye and his CENIS colleagues were among the major beneficiaries. Pye
taught courses in counterinsurgency theory for the State Department, ad­
vised the U.S. Agency for International Development, and, as Christo­
pher Simpson notes, "w as a frequent consultant to government agencies
concerning psychological warfare aimed at Asians."92 At least one of
these consultancies took Pye to Vietnam, where he applied his experience
with communist defectors in Malaya to the "Chieu Hoi" program, a psy­
chological warfare campaign designed to encourage defections of Viet-
cong personnel.93 Insights from the theories developed by Pye, Pool, and
Daniel Lem er at MIT were also used by the CIA in designing the contro­
versial Phoenix program, which sought to neutralize Vietcong personnel
either through persuasion or, in thousands of cases, through summary
liquidation94
Ithiel Pool was a "campus leader and passionate Trotskyite" at the
University of Chicago in the late 1930s. He studied with Lasswell there
and during the war worked at Lasswell's Library of Congress unit. This
wartime stint was the first chapter in a tight and lasting relationship be­
tween Pool and the national security bureaucracy. During the Cold War
he consulted to the RAND Corporation, the Weapon Evaluation Group
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. A ir Force Operations Evaluation
Board, the Directorate of Research and Engineering at the Defense De­
partment, and Radio Free Europe. For the last, Pool sought to estimate the
size of Soviet audiences by developing a computer simulation model of
communication in totalitarian societies (this effort became designated
Project COMCOM).95
From about 1966 to 1968 Pool served as a major ARPA contractor for
counterinsurgency research in Vietnam. He operated through the Simul-
matics Corporation, a private firm Pool cofounded in 1959 to perform
computer simulations of voter behavior for the Kennedy presidential
campaign. ARPA gave Simulmatics a substantial contract covering sev­
eral research tasks, including studies of the Chieu Hoi program, rural
pacification, and urban insurgency. To fulfill these tasks, Simulmatics
hired junior researchers to do full-time fieldwork and recruited groups of
senior scholars who made short research trips to Vietnam.96 One of these
scholars, social psychologist James Whittaker, recently described how, in
the summer of 1966, he flew with Pool and several other social scientists
to Vietnam, where they were given simulated military ranks and ferried
by A ir America planes to Chieu Hoi centers around the country. Whit­
taker w as asked to review the strategic psychological warfare effort in
Vietnam in addition to evaluating the effectiveness of Chieu Hoi. He re­
membered that after his group's return to the United States, five gradu­
ate students were to spend six months in Vietnam conducting "depth
interviews" with Vietcong defectors.97
A s Whittaker's account hints, the Simulmatics contract w as a source
of research material an d /or employment for graduate students. Paul
Berman, for example, partly based his dissertation, supervised by Pool,
on transcripts of interviews with communist defectors conducted by
Simulmatics.98 A more intriguing example is the case of another Pool stu­
dent, Samuel Popkin. Originally from northern Wisconsin, Popkin en­
tered MIT as an undergraduate in the late 1950s; it w as "Sputnik," as he
put it to me, that made it possible for him to make this school choice, atyp­
ical for a youngster of his background. He recollected that the campus
w as suffused with Cold War hawkishness. Walt W. Rostow, a prominent
CENIS associate whose Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Man­
ifesto enjoyed great popularity at the time and who was about to join the
Kennedy administration, told Popkin's humanities class that, as he spoke,
Soviet scholars were sitting in their libraries, figuring out how to foment
revolutions in the emerging nations; we must hit our own libraries, Ros­
tow urged the students, to learn how to win the minds of Third World
populations for the cause of freedom.
 In 1965 Popkin, by then a graduate student, went to work for Simul-
matics on a poverty alleviation project in New York C ity As a specialist
in opinion polling, he knew nothing about Vietnam, but chose to go there
when Simulmatics received the ARPA contract, partly because it offered
a w ay out of the draft, Popkin spent a year in rural Vietnam working on
village pacification. He supervised a team of Vietnamese students who
interviewed villagers and members of the South Vietnamese village mili­
tia in an attempt to evaluate the militia's effectiveness."
In Vietnam, Popkin w as shocked by the massive scale of the American
use of force and was appalled to discover that U.S. forces often wiped out
whole villages in retaliation for the hostile acts of individuals. He was
equally appalled by the Stalinist methods employed by the Vietcong. His
experience turned him into a critic of U.S. Vietnam policy, though he did
not become radicalized and, unlike many radical opponents of the war,
did not advocate support instead for Ho Chi Mirth's regime. In 1969 he
defended his dissertation on Vietnamese village politics. In 19 71, while
Popkin w as teaching at Harvard University and adapting the dissertation
for publication, he w as subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury
investigating the unauthorized dissemination of the Pentagon Papers.
Popkin, who was a friend of Daniel Ellsberg, denied knowing anything
about the distribution of the Pentagon study and refused to name the
American officials he had interviewed during his research. In November
1972 he w as imprisoned on contempt of court charges, and his photo was
featured on the first page of the New York Times. He was released fourteen
days later, after the heavy guns of Harvard Law School "bombarded" the
Justice Department on his behalf. Popkin managed to revive his career,
moved west, and helped raise the political science program at the Uni­
versity of California at San Diego into the profession's upper ranks.100
Popkin's important book, The Rational Peasant (1979), was based on li­
brary sources, for as a result of his ordeal with the Justice Department he
w as unable to use his own fieldwork notes.101 The book's importance
stemmed partly from its being the first major application of the rational
choice approach in comparative politics. Popkin depicted Asian peasants
as calculating individuals, no less politically sophisticated than their
Western counterparts. In adopting this framework he consciously re­
belled against the ethnocentrism of the psychocultural approach then
dominating comparative politics, illustrated above by Pye's claim that
Malayan guerrillas did not think analytically. Since the publication of
Popkin's book, the rational choice approach has become dominant in
comparative politics and in political science in general. Today, as in­
evitably happens with all orthodoxies, its critics charge that it exerts a
stultifying effect on the discipline.102
MIT's political scientists were implicated in the politics of the Vietnam
conflict not only as government servants but also as public supporters of
the w ar effort. In July 1965, Pool, Pye, Robert Wood, and William Griffith
(who transferred from the CIA-supported Radio Free Europe, where he
served as chief political adviser, to the CIA-supported CENIS in 1959) dis­
patched a letter to the editor of the New York Times, strongly endorsing
President Johnson's decision to escalate the war. "Historians m ay look
back at 1965," they stated, "as a creative period in American foreign pol­
icy. The American action speaks clearly: w e w ill resist Communist covert
aggression as w ell as open invasion." A White House aide informed John­
son that the letter was authored b y "highly distinguished m en" and "con­
tains some very cogent arguments to support your position." Several
days later Lincoln Bloomfield wrote to the New York Times from London
to express support for his colleagues' position. Bloomfield, who came to
MIT from the State Department, criticized "some utterances from aca­
demic quarters which condemn U.S. counteraction while never seeming
to recall or be in any w ay bothered by the savage, ruthless and literally
murderous conspiracy against South Vietnam."103
The outspoken hawkishness of MIT's political scientists marked them
as favored targets of the antiwar movement on campus. In October 1969,
150 students marched peacefully to the CENIS building, calling for the
termination of Pool's Project COMCOM and two other psychological
warfare projects: International Communism, headed by Griffith; and the
Cambridge Project, which aimed to develop computer techniques for so­
cial scientific foreign area research. Several weeks later Pool, Pye, Griffith,
and Max Millikan were tried by a mock revolutionary tribunal and found
guilty of "crimes against humanity." It was probably these events that
Pool alluded to when he wrote, in a note to Lasswell in 19 71, that "I'm at
CENIS for a year while the blood dries. Call when you come to Cam­
bridge and I'll give you the gory details."104
To what extent were the hawkish views of MIT's political scientists
representative of the attitudes of American political scientists toward the
Vietnam War? Certainly, many political scientists came to oppose the war
at various stages after 1965, and some voiced opposition even before Viet­
nam entered the consciousness of most Americans. Hans Morgenthau of
the University of Chicago was among the earliest, sharpest, and most per­
sistent spokespersons for the antiwar cause. (That Morgenthau, a promi­
nent public intellectual and the most important international relations
scholar of his generation, has never been elected to the APSA presidency
is a blemish on the association's record.) Stanley Hoffmann of Harvard
became, in his words, "a premature opponent of the w ar" when he began
speaking out against it in 1963. The United States in Vietnam, by Cornell
University Asia specialists George Kahin and John Lewis, w as one of the
most influential books in turning American academics against the war.105
In 1968 Morgenthau, Hoffmann, Kahin, and Almond (who by then had
severed his ties to the foreign policy bureaucracy) joined the foreign pol­
icy advisory team of Eugene McCarthy, the antiwar candidate, in his failed
bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. They were matched, on
the Hubert Humphrey side, by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Hunt­
ington, among others.106
But notwithstanding the cases of these and other vocal opponents of
the war, the hawkish views of the MIT political scientists were not mar­
ginal within the profession, especially in its senior ranks; political scien­
tists were, on balance, more supportive of the administration's policy
than were other American intellectuals. Three pieces of evidence support,
though b y no means conclusively prove, this claim. The first piece is a let­
ter signed in Ju ly 1965 by "a number of the nation's leading professors
supporting the Administration's position," as a White House memo to
the president put it. "I am trying to find some benefactors," the memo
read, "w ho m ay be willing to finance newspaper ads carrying the state­
ment---- Certainly, it reveals that the academic community does not
stand behind Hans Morgenthau." The statement was initiated by Donald
Herzberg, director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers Univer­
sity and a key member of the APSA establishment (discussed below);
many of its sixty-seven signers were political scientists, including Pye,
Lipset, Huntington, Morton Halperin, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Robert Osgood,
Martin Diamond, and Karl Cemy.107
The second indication of the relative hawkishness of American po­
litical scientists is provided b y a Morgenthau essay titled "Truth and
Power," published in November 1966. Morgenthau wrote that "large seg­
ments of the intellectual world have indeed been silenced or corrupted.
This is especially true of those segments which are professionally con­
cerned with the activities of the government. If one examines, for exam­
ple, the lists of intellectuals who have gone on record against the war in
Vietnam, one is struck by the relative paucity of political scientists." Mor­
genthau went on to blast "some intellectuals who have attacked their dis­
senting colleagues with unaccustomed violence . . . while, unknown to
the public, they were working for the government part time." The schol­
arship produced at government contract centers, he continued, is "but the
ideological defense of a partisan position, an intellectual gloss upon
power, made to appear as the objective truth."108
Morgenthau's claim is corroborated by a careful study of America's
intellectual elite, conducted b y sociologist Charles Kadushin in 1970.
Kadushin interviewed a sample of 1 1 0 intellectuals, academics and
nonacademics alike, probing their views on the burning issues of the day.
He found that the vast majority of these intellectuals had either opposed
U.S. Vietnam policy all along or had turned against it during the 1960s;
only a small minority never wavered in their support of the wan Refer­
ring to the latter group, Kadushin observed that "almost all who always
supported the United States government position are either in political
science or public law Most have had some official connection with the
government/' Of course, it is possible that the ranks of the opponents in
Kadushin's sample also included some political scientists (he kept the
names of his interviewees confidential), but the fact that unwavering sup­
port for the administration's Vietnam policy was concentrated almost ex­
clusively among political scientists is striking nonetheless. Kadushin's
findings constitute the third piece of evidence suggesting, if not proving,
that the hawkishness of MIT's political scientists was representative of
the profession's senior ranks, and that political scientists tended to har­
bor more hawkish views on Vietnam than did American intellectuals in
general.109

In chapter 1 , 1wrote that the POLITY data set, inspired by the political de­
velopment theories of Harry Eckstein and Gabriel Almond, "is a mecha­
nism by which, to borrow Antonio Gramsci's terms, 'traces' of the
historical process of U.S.-Germ an relations are 'deposited' into contem­
porary political research 'without leaving an inventory.'" The same ob­
servation, with Cold War politics substituting for U.S.-Germ an relations,
applies to the data sets and data analysis methods developed at MIT with
the generous support of the U.S. government. The MIT political scientists
themselves did not quite hide their government connections; they were
in fact rather proud to serve their country. But the current practitioners of
political science qua science are at best dimly aware of the embeddedness
of their methods, data sets, and research institutions in the politics of the
Cold War.

The Politics of Evron Kirkpatrick and the APSA

Although he did not produce particularly influential pieces of schol­
arship, Evron Kirkpatrick (19 11-19 9 5 ) became an important political sci­
entist by virtue of the considerable organizational and political skills he
brought to his position as executive director of the APSA. During Kirk­
patrick's twenty-seven-year tenure (1954-81), the association's mem­
bership more than doubled, the format of the annual meetings was
revamped, and sizable grants were obtained from foundations to fund
projects such as the popular Congressional Fellowship program. With
the help of Max Kampelman, the APSA's treasurer and general counsel,
Kirkpatrick turned the association into one of the most prosperous pro­
fessional societies in Washington,110
Kirkpatrick, as his friend and successor Thomas Mann observed,
"wanted to treat the arguments and evidence of human political behav­
ior scientifically." He played a crucial role in engineering the inclusion of
political science in the social science program of the National Science
Foundation (NSF, created in 1950 as an outgrowth of the activities of the
Office of N aval Research). He also greatly strengthened the institutional
infrastructure of the scientific study of politics by securing continuing fi­
nancial support of the National Election Studies and supporting the es­
tablishment of the Inter-university Consortium on Political and Social
Research. Although his position prevented him from overtly taking sides
in theoretical debates, Kirkpatrick was privately sympathetic to the be­
havioral movement. Through his backroom efforts, behavioralist Austin
Ranney w as appointed in 1966 to succeed "traditionalist" Harvey Mans­
field Sr. as editor of the American Political Science Review (.APSR); the
appointment quickly opened up the journal to scientifically oriented sub­
missions.111
But even as he endeavored to shape the discipline as a detached, apo­
litical science of politics, Kirkpatrick w as actively engaged in politics on
three interrelated levels: the APSA, the Hubert Humphrey wing of the
Democratic Party, and the psychological Cold War.
Kirkpatrick earned his doctorate in political science from Yale Univer­
sity in 1939. He joined the University of Minnesota as an instructor in 1935
and rose to full professor in 1948. In the late 1930s Kirkpatrick was known
in Minneapolis as a Trotskyite, but he later left the radical movement and
assisted his former student, Hubert Humphrey, in forming the Democrat­
ic-Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota.112
Near the end of World War II, the center of Kirkpatrick's professional
life shifted to Washington, though he maintained his affiliation with the
University of Minnesota for a while longer. In 1943 he served as assistant
director of the research and analysis division of the OSS. When the OSS
w as disbanded in late 1945, its research and analysis staff was transferred
to the State Department. Kirkpatrick remained with the intelligence sec­
tion of the State Department for eight years. He began as assistant re­
search director and projects control officer of research and intelligence,
served as chief of the external research staff from 1948 to 1932, and, from
1932 to 1934, as chief of the psychological intelligence and research staff.
In 1934 Kirkpatrick was promoted to deputy director of the State De­
partment's office of intelligence research. It w as from this position that he
was appointed executive director of the APSA .113
One of Kirkpatrick's missions at the State Department was the orches-
tration of propaganda disguised as academic scholarship. He played a
central role in a covert effort to recruit East European refugee scholars, in­
cluding former Nazi collaborators, to staff an ostensibly private research
institute that would take an anti-Soviet line. He also agreed to put his
name and academic credentials on counterpropaganda books that, though
published by ostensibly private imprints, were actually penned by State
Department researchers. One of the researchers who worked under Kirk­
patrick, political scientist Jeane Jordan, became his wife.114

The Politics of the Association

Kirkpatrick would probably have been pleased with a posthumous
tribute which praised him for having "endeavored to keep [the APSA]
from becoming politicized/'115 But a demand to keep politics out of an
organization is hardly politically neutral itself, for it serves the interest of
the organization's existing leadership. In contrast to presidents and coun­
cil members of the APSA, whose terms in office are limited, no term limit
applies to the association's executive director. During his long tenure
Kirkpatrick built a power structure that, though he would have denied it,
was not necessarily responsive to the sentiments of the membership.
In a trenchant critique of the politics of the APSA, Alan Wolfe con­
tended in 1969 that "the electoral process of the A PSA bears a strong re­
semblance to the process of either the state of Alabama or the Soviet
Union." Nominating committees were prevented by the association's
constitution from presenting more than one candidate for each elected of­
fice, and not one of the 149 nominations made between 1958 and 1967 (to
the presidency, vice-presidency, and council) w as contested at the annual
business meeting. The business meetings were brief, sparsely attended,
and performed a function of ratification rather than decisionmaking. In
the absence of meaningful elections and participation, the association
was practically run by an "oligarchy," who secured the allegiance of the
rank and file through the dispensation of career-enhancing rewards such
as Congressional Fellowships and committee memberships.116
Wolfe brilliantly analyzed this state of affairs as a realization of the
ideal political system implicit in the theories of the era's leading scholars.
Referring to the theories of, among others, Almond, Eckstein, Austin Ran-
ney, and Edward Banfield, he wrote:

Viewed in the context of this type of political science the internal diffi­
culties of the APSA become less surprising. It was an interest group
with oligarchic tendencies, but that is nearly inevitable in private
groups and it also makes them more effective in the group struggle.
Within the Association there w as apathy and a low voter turnout, but
 too much mass activity upsets the delicate stability of political systems,
so perhaps that is for the best. A power structure existed, but strong
leadership is needed in any political system___ Elections tended to be
meaningless, but that really isn't correct because the purpose of elec­
tions is only secondarily to elect people. They are much more impor­
tant indicators of trends. The entire atmosphere of the APSA was
apolitical, in which case we are lucky because political controversy is
a bad thing which smart people should avoid. The membership, ac­
cording to the only survey taken, seemed to be extremely alienated
from the leadership, but they are only expressing their own authori­
tarian perceptions. A n intensive examination w ill show that they re­
ally are happy.
The survey Wolfe alluded to showed, according to its takers, that "un­
doubtedly a sizable majority of political scientists perceive the existence
of an Establishment which wields substantial influence over at least some
aspects of professional life."117
The notion that a narrow power structure developed in the association
under Kirkpatrick's regime receives added support from the memoirs of
David Easton, author of the foundational text of the behavioral move­
ment, who displayed sympathy toward the dissenters within the associ­
ation during the Vietnam War.118 During his terms as vice-president
(1967-68) and president (1968-69) of the association, Easton had an op­
portunity to observe its inner workings closely. In one of the first meet­
ings of the APSA's Executive Committee Easton attended, Kirkpatrick
explained that his retirement plan was underfunded, then left the room
and sent in his personal attorney to make the case for him. Into the room
walked M ax Kampelman, who simultaneously served as the associa­
tion's legal counsel, and proposed that APSA make a substantial lump­
sum payment to Kirkpatrick's pension fund. The committee promptly
approved the grant, notwithstanding the apparent conflict of interest, and
the matter w as never formally taken up by the business meeting.
Easton observed that Kirkpatrick was, quite appropriately, in the habit
of identifying scholars who were doing what he interpreted to be good
work, and facilitating their projects. This practice inadvertently created a
"coterie of people around him who felt very favorably disposed toward
him, and whom he in turn could lean on in order to get things done in the
profession." Kirkpatrick thus became
a very influential person within the discipline. Influential enough so
th at. . . those of us who were behaviorally inclined recognized very
quickly that w e had a sympathetic soul in Kirkpatrick, and he w as of
enormous help to us in reshaping the agenda, the programs of the as­
 sociation, seeing to it that the right people got on the program com­
mittees and were invited to participate in the work of the association.
And that ultimately the editorship of the A PSR fell in hands that were
more sympathetic to the changes that were taking place.

The members of Kirkpatrick's inner circle, most of whom shared the

behavioral persuasion, included Jack Peltason, Richard Scammon,
Howard Penniman, Max Kampelman, Karl Cerny, Heinz Eulau, Harold
Lasswell, Donald Herzberg, Warren Miller, Austin Ranney, and Jeane
Kirkpatrick. The Kirkpatricks' home was the group's favorite gathering
place. Eulau recently recollected that "the good times Warren [Miller] and
I and, in earlier days, friends such as Austin Ranney or Harold Lasswell
had at Evron Kirkpatrick's house in Bethesda are too many to recall in
particular. The cocktail hour w as prolonged because Jeane played the
roles of cook and conversationalist to perfection." Lasswell's papers con­
tain many references to these sybaritic gatherings.119
The members of the APSA's inner circle "battled," as a recent obituary
of one of them put it, "against those who sought in the late 1960s to politi­
cize the profession in behalf of the counterculture's radical agenda —
those who sought to trash precisely those institutions of a free and dem­
ocratic society that Howard [Penniman] loved so deeply and served so
w ell." (The obituary listed the CIA, the State Department, the USIA, and
the Psychological Strategy Board among the institutions that Penni­
man served.) That such a passionate attachment to political institutions
clashed with the inner circle's vision of the discipline as a detached sci­
ence of politics w as something that its members spent little time reflecting
about.120

The APSA'S Special Relationship with Hubert Humphrey

Kirkpatrick worked effectively to foster ties between the discipline and
the U.S. Congress. He understood, as Easton observed, that freshmen
lawmakers "were just like any other human being. Coming in to a strange
city . . . they were often very lonely. So [Kirkpatrick] would make it his
job to go up to see them___ And he made many good friends not only for
himself, but for the discipline as a whole." Kirkpatrick's ties were instru­
mental in persuading Congress to add political science to the mandate of
the NSF and in sustaining the Congressional Fellowship program, whose
beneficiaries produced most of the research on Congress published in the
profession's leading journals.121
Kirkpatrick's contacts on Capitol Hill crossed party lines, and the
Congressional Service Awards that the association used to bestow upon
lawmakers went to both Democrats and Republicans. Still, one senator
enjoyed a far more intimate relationship with the APSA than did other
lawmakers: Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, leader of the liberal an­
ticommunist camp in the Democratic Party.
The relationship was hatched at the University of Minnesota, where
Kirkpatrick struck a close and enduring friendship with Humphrey, his
favorite student. Kirkpatrick arranged a fellowship for Humphrey to take
a master's degree in political science under Charles Hyneman at Louisiana
State University (1940), and he helped Humphrey in his teaching at
Macalester College in 1943-44. Kirkpatrick also guided Humphrey in his
1943 and 1945 campaigns, the latter one successful, for mayor of Min­
neapolis. In those days Humphrey befriended a number of Macalester
political scientists and socialized regularly with graduate students and
young faculty of the University of Minnesota's department of political
science, including Herbert McCloskey (a former Trotskyite), Howard
Penniman, Arthur Naftalin (who worked for Mayor Humphrey before
running successfully for mayor himself), and Max Kampelman.122
The N ew York-born Kampelman (b. 1920) was a friend of Socialist
leader Norman Thomas, and in 1942 he was granted a conscientious ob­
jector status. The government sent him to Minneapolis to be a human
guinea pig for an experiment at the University of Minnesota on human
starvation. While the experiment was going on, he finished a law degree
and embarked on doctoral studies in political science. His dissertation,
supervised by Kirkpatrick, dealt critically with the communists' attempt
to control the CIO. The anticommunist theme of the thesis was not acci­
dental, for sympathizers with Norman Thomas loathed Stalin with a
passion surpassed only by the anti-Stalinism of the Trotskyites. Anti-Stal­
inism w as indeed the ideological cement that bonded the former Trot­
skyite Kirkpatrick, social democrat Kampelman, and liberal Humphrey.
As Kampelman wrote in his autobiography, the most popular discussion
topic in the social gatherings of Minnesota's political scientists was "how
to gain control of and strengthen the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party that
Kirkpatrick, Humphrey, Naftalin and their allies had put together in 1944.
To defeat the Communists and eliminate their influence became our pur­
pose, our passion, our pleasure." This goal was accomplished in 1947-48,
when Humphrey and his fellow political scientists dislodged the com­
munists from the party's leadership.123
After Hum phrey's election to the Senate in 1948, Kampelman followed
him to Washington and served as his legislative counsel until 1955 (he
then went into private legal practice, while serving as an APSA officer
until 1968). In those years Humphrey, who joined the APSA in 1943, at­
tended the profession's national conventions regularly and was often
asked to participate in session discussions. Kirkpatrick's selection as ex­
ecutive director gave Humphrey "inner pleasure" and led to a relation­
ship of "intimacy," as Kampelman described it, between Humphrey and
the association. "When Hubert became a Vice President of the APSA in
1955 he w as as overjoyed as if he'd been elected to national office."
Humphrey received the Congressional Distinguished Service Award in
1959/ continued to participate in annual meetings, and served as an ac­
tive member of the Advisory Committee of the Congressional Fellowship
program. More than thirty fellows served in his office, and some of them
went on to work for him as senator and vice president.124
Kirkpatrick and Kampelman continued to advise Humphrey in his
campaigns, and, partly through their efforts, the circle of political scien­
tists who became active in Humphrey's politics greatly expanded, over­
lapping in part with the APSA's inner circle. The roster of Humphrey
activists in the profession included Austin Ranney, Warren Miller, Jack
Peltason, Richard Scammon, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Charles Hagen, Herbert
McCloskey, Nelson Polsby, Charles Gilbert, John Roche, Norton Long,
Seymour Martin Lipset, Charles Hyneman, Samuel Huntington, and
Zbigniew Brzezinski.125 Most of them were well-known political scien­
tists; five (Ranney, Miller, Lipset, Huntington, and Hyneman) served as
APSA presidents and two (Ranney and Polsby) as editors of the A PSR ,
It can thus be said that, diverse though the political preferences of po­
litical scientists m ay have been in general, the politics of the profession's
elite in the 1960s corresponded to the blend of liberalism and firm anti­
communism for which Humphrey was a leading symbol. M any in the
older cohort of the elite had received their political education in the ranks
of the anti-Stalinist left in the late 1930s, and clung to anti-Stalinism as
they later moved toward the liberal center. Over the years, the liberalism
of some Humphrey supporters has become attenuated, but not their an­
ticommunism. Lipset, Kampelman, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Huntington, and
Brzezinski emerged as central figures in the "neoconservative" backlash
against the Democratic Party's diminishing commitment to anticommu­
nism, epitomized by the 1972 presidential candidacy of George McGov­
ern, While Brzezinski and Huntington went on to lead the hawkish wing
of the Carter administration's foreign policy bureaucracy, Kirkpatrick
and Kampelman gradually drifted aw ay from the Democrats and served
in key foreign policy positions in the Reagan administration.126
In their efforts to defend democracy against communist encroach­
ments, the anticommunist political scientists sometimes displayed an
uncritical attitude toward noncommunist dictatorships. Juan Linz, who
came as a confirmed anticommunist from Franco's Spain to study under
Lipset in the 1950s, published an influential essay in 1964 in which he de­
veloped the totalitarian-authoritarian typology through an uncritical
portrayal of Franco's regime. Jeane Kirkpatrick, whose dissertation was
a benign depiction of Peronism replete with survey data analysis, later re­
vived the totalitarian-authoritarian distinction in her famous attack on
President Carter's foreign policy, which got her the attention of the Rea-
ganites.127 And Huntington, as noted in the introduction, cautioned
against pushing the apartheid regime too hard, lest it be replaced b y "the
revolutionaries of the African National Congress."

Kirkpatrick in Cold War Politics

The third arena in which Evron Kirkpatrick promoted political inter­
ests while promoting the discipline's identity as a disinterested science
w as the psychological Cold War. Kirkpatrick had not entirely severed his
ties to the intelligence bureaucracy after assuming the APSA's director­
ship. In 1955 he and Kampelman founded a corporation, Operations and
Policy Research (OPR), of which they served as president and vice-pres­
ident respectively. OPR enlisted political scientists to review books to
guide USIA in stocking its libraries around the world. It also produced a
large number of factbooks and analytical studies of Latin American elec­
toral politics. In early 1967, when the press exposed a network of "pri­
vate" organizations secretly funded b y the CIA, it turned out that OPR
w as handsomely supported by foundations that served as CIA conduits,
and that its work involved classified research in addition to overt propa­
ganda. For example, political scientist Amos Perlmutter w as retained by
OPR to study, under a U.S. Air Force contract, how to "improve under­
standing of the role of foreign military forces in stabilization of the Mid­
dle East."128
After the exposure of OPR's ties to the CIA, a group of political scien­
tists circulated a petition demanding the resignation of Kirkpatrick and
Kampelman. APSA president Robert Dahl then appointed four past pres­
idents to investigate the matter. The investigators did not delve into the
tension between the discipline's aspirations to be a detached science and
political scientists' actual implication in politics. Instead, they framed the
issue in ethical terms and concluded that, because OPR was organiza­
tionally separate from the APSA, the integrity of the association had not
been compromised. They acknowledged that the APSA benefited from
CIA money indirectly, through grants it received from the Asia Founda­
tion, yet expressed "full confidence" in the leadership of Kirkpatrick and
Kampelman.129
The investigative committee's report did not arrest the dissent that be­
gan percolating through the ranks of the association against the backdrop
of the Vietnam War, the civil rights struggle, and urban riots. The dis­
senters were initially fragmented into groups that represented con­
stituencies such as women, blacks, and socialists, but around the time of
the 1968 annual meeting they formed a loose umbrella organization
named the Caucus for a New Political Science. H. Mark Roelofs of New
York University w as elected to chair the caucus, and among its activists
were Christian Bay, Ruth Hawkins, David Kettler, Sanford Levinson,
Theodore Lowi, Michael Parenti, Marvin Surkin, Michael Walzer, and
Alan Wolfe. Although the association's establishment viewed the caucus
as a hotbed of countercultural radicalism, the majority of its members
were liberals, and the caucus found allies even among the usually-con-
servative followers of political theorist Leo Strauss, arguably the harsh­
est critic of behavioral political science.130
The caucus's protest was not aimed only at the governance of the as­
sociation. Caucus members criticized the political irrelevance of the dis­
cipline, pointing out that in the past decade the APSR had published only
three articles on the urban crisis, four on racial conflict, and one on
poverty. The caucus complained that the new behavioral elite of the pro­
fession, in its attempt to make political science value free, "has had to neu­
tralize the larger issues of political and social goals. They have been more
concerned with how the system works than explaining its structural
weakness." The caucus's battle cries were, as the sympathetic Easton put
it, "relevance and action." Its platform called upon the discipline to redi­
rect its energies to facilitate "societal change rather than to merely de­
scribe and perpetuate the social and political status quo."131
The 1968 annual convention of the APSA took place in Chicago shortly
after the tumultuous Democratic Party convention. In the business meet­
ing, a motion to prohibit Kirkpatrick from holding both his A PSA and
OPR positions was voted down, and spokespersons for dissenting groups
were repeatedly gaveled down. Vietnam w as uppermost on people's
minds. The convention's most popular panel was "Defining the National
Interest: The Vietnam Case," which drew a crowd of 750. In the follow­
ing months, as Easton recalled, "the Vietnamese War was reaching its cli­
mactic point, and . . . the student movement w as paralleling that of the
Vietnam War. And that very much intruded on everything that w as hap­
pening in all the professional associations---- It became apparent that
most associations were going to be faced with rather tumultuous annual
meetings---- In some cases there w as violence."132
The 1969 annual convention, held in N ew York, ended peacefully. The
business meeting drew nearly a thousand people, lasted until the early
morning, and w as rather stormy at times. The Caucus for a N ew Political
Science achieved some victories in the business meeting. It opened with
Easton's presidential address, which was friendly to the dissenters' call
for change, and declared a new, "post-behavioral" revolution in political
science. In contrast to the business meeting the year before, the gavel was
used little, and members of all factions were given ample time to speak,
including a radical who called for a moment of silence in memory of the
recently deceased Ho Chi Minh. Moreover, a motion was passed that
transferred much of the decisionmaking power from the Executive Com­
mittee to a more widely constituted councik133
The 1969 convention ushered in a brief democratic revival in the asso-
ciation. For the first time in memory, elections became contested* The of­
ficial presidential candidate, Robert E. Lane, was challenged by caucus
candidate Christian Bay, who garnered 2,816 votes, about a third of the
total (the 1969 voting was conducted by mail, a maneuver engineered by
Kirkpatrick's allies out of fear that the caucus might mobilize a majority
in the business meeting)» The following year, caucus candidate Hans
Morgenthau lost to Heinz Eulau, and in 1973 the establishment's Austin
Ranney beat Peter Bachrach by a modest margin.134
But the APSA's democratic revival w as short-lived, and, so long as it
lasted, caucus candidates lost elections more often than they won them.
Moreover, the rebels failed to conquer the nonelective sources of power
within the association. When Austin Ranney stepped down from the
A PSR 's editorship he was replaced by Nelson Polsby, a fellow behav-
ioralist and Humphrey Democrat. Several years later, when the editor­
ship changed hands again during Ranney's presidency, he made sure that
the position would not go to a "Caucus type," as he put it. And Evron
Kirkpatrick, a prime target of the caucus's attacks in the late 1960s, re­
mained in his post until 1981. Thus it is not surprising that the caucus's
substantive agenda largely failed to materialize. Political science is hardly
more socially relevant and action oriented today than it was forty years
ago.135
The Caucus for a N ew Political Science survives today as a small, mar­
ginal section in the APSA, yet young political scientists have little idea of
its origins. Presently a new revolutionary movement is afoot in the pro­
fession, known as the "Perestroika" movement. Its agenda in many w ays
resembles that of the caucus: against overquantification, for greater rele­
vance, and for strengthening democracy within the association. Pere­
stroika activists correctly recognize that to promote this agenda they must
engage in political action within the profession. They have been encour­
aged by the recent nomination of Susanne Rudolph of the University of
Chicago, one of their leaders, as president of the APSA .136 If there is a fur­
ther lesson that they can draw from the failure of the postbehavioral rev­
olution, as well as the victory of the behavioral one, it is that conquering
the A PSA 's top elective posts might not guarantee success; controlling the
association's permanent bureaucracy is equally important.
 1Ó4 I Our Enemies and US

The Impact of Vietnam

We have seen that the Vietnam War made two marks upon the disci­
pline: it sowed some of the seeds, mediated by the agency of Samuel
Popkin, of the rational choice approach to comparative politics; and it
constituted an important background condition of the ultimately unsuc­
cessful revolution that shook the A PSA 's ramparts in the late 1960s. Two
other disciplinary developments are partly traceable to Vietnam: oscilla­
tion toward an accommodationist (and, to a lesser extent, an opposi­
tional) ideological stance, and a straining of the relationship between
political science and the government.

Post-Vietnam Ideological Oscillation

The Vietnam-era turmoil, in conjunction with other contemporaneous
crises such as the urban race riots and Watergate, raised doubts in the
minds of many political scientists about the applicability of pluralist
democracy as a model for the world or even about its adequacy for Am er­
ica. For some graduate students and junior scholars in Asian and Latin
American studies, these doubts took an oppositional ideological form;
these scholars came to see the American political-economic system as rot­
ten, and advocated a socialist transformation.
The study of Latin America w as instrumental in introducing into dis­
ciplinary discourse the ideas of dependency theory, which explained
Third World underdevelopment in terms of capitalist exploitation rather
than in terms of a late start in modernization, and accepted revolution as
a means of escaping such exploitation. In the 1970s dependency became
a popular analytical category in comparative politics and international re­
lations, but interest in the theory petered out in the 1980s.137
In Asian studies, young political scientists such as Edward Friedman
and Andrew Nathan were among the activists of the Committee of Con­
cerned Asian Scholars (CCAS), formed in 1968. Outraged at the Vietnam
War and disillusioned with capitalism, CCAS members looked favorably
on Chairman M ao's regime and ignored mounting evidence of the bru­
tality of the Cultural Revolution. Many of them believed that Maoism w as
successfully creating a "new socialist man," and they took at face value
M ao's rhetoric about transferring power from the bureaucracy to the peo­
ple. "M ao w as almost invariably responding in a uniquely creative and
profoundly ethical w ay to deep political crises," Friedman wrote. But
most CCAS members were disabused of their illusions after two CCAS
groups visited China 19 7 1 and 1972. Ironically, as U.S.-Chinese relations
warmed up, the radicals' role as Mao enthusiasts was taken over by the
established Asia hands against whom CCAS had rebelled; John Fairbank,
the dean of Chinese studies at the time, reported upon returning from
China in 1972 that "the Maoist revolution is on the whole the best thing
that happened to the Chinese people in centuries/' Friedman and Nathan
later established themselves as senior China scholars at the University of
Wisconsin and Columbia University respectively and became fierce crit­
ics of the Chinese regime; Nathan has been barred from entering China
in recent years.138
The oppositional post-Vietnam w ave thus crested rather fast, and it
carried with it primarily junior political scientists in area studies and
international relations. A somewhat more durable post-Vietnam trend,
which engaged more senior scholars, including Americanists and politi­
cal theorists, involved a swing toward accommodationism. Several im­
portant books published in the 1970s implied that although the American
democratic system was basically sound, it required reform in facilitating
greater political and economic equality and more extensive citizen par­
ticipation. In search of reform ideas, the authors of these books displayed
substantial curiosity about foreign systems, including, rather promi­
nently, the Yugoslav model.
Robert Dahl, as we have seen, attempted in his dissertation to recon­
cile political democracy with socialism. In the 1950s and early 1960s,
Dahl's publications gave little indication of his socialist commitment, but
in the late 1960s socialist sensibilities began resurfacing in his work. In his
renewed quest to theorize a more equitable form of democracy, Dahl en­
countered the Yugoslav system of workers' self-management and ap­
peared, at least momentarily, to like what he saw. In After the Revolution,
Dahl wrote that after Tito's break with Stalin, "Yugoslavia became the
only country in the world where a serious effort was made to translate
the old dream of industrial democracy into reality — or into as much re­
ality as dreams usually are." To be sure, he acknowledged, "the workers'
councils were by no means autonomous," but "it seems clear that [they]
were much more than a façade behind which the party and state officials
actually managed the enterprise." Dahl noted that "if Yugoslavia is less
democratic than the United States in the government of the state, it is
more democratic in the government of the enterprise."139
Dahl's colleague and former collaborator Charles Lindblom criticized
pluralist theory for overlooking the privileged position of business inter­
ests, which resulted in economic inequality. In Politics and Markets, Lind­
blom, as a reviewer noted, "remains a defender of the market system,
b u t . . . argues against those (both conservatives and radicals) who main­
tain that it is impossible to reconcile the market system with a much more
egalitarian distribution of income and wealth." Lindblom, like Dahl, was
drawn to Tito's Yugoslavia, a country he had sought to visit earlier to wit­
ness what he described as an intriguing case of using market mechanisms
for national economic planning.140 The book contained an extended,
sympathetic discussion of the Yugoslav experiment, which concluded
with the statement that, though the system was young and fragile, "Yu­
goslavia may presage the gradual development of a greatly more efficient
and equitable economic order. In destroying the historical connection be­
tween market system and private enterprise, Yugoslavia m ay — it is at
least a possibility — have set itself and the world on a new course."141
Political theorist Carole Pateman found the Yugoslav model equally
promising. In Participation and Democratic Theory, Pateman criticized
Lipset, Dahl, Eckstein, Almond and Verba, and other contemporary the­
orists of democracy for stressing political stability at the expense of mass
participation. A s an antidote to these contemporary theories, she recov­
ered the democratic theories of John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
and G. D. H. Cole, who argued that the experience of political participa­
tion at the local and workplace level w as crucial to democratic citizenship
and socialization. Whereas in England and the United States there w as a
"singular lack of examples of enterprises organized on democratic lines,"
Yugoslavia provided,

in the form of their workers' self-management system, the only avail­

able example of an attempt to introduce industrial democracy on a
large scale, covering enterprises of many sizes and types over a whole.
No discussion of industrial participation and democracy can afford
to ignore the Yugoslav system. It is also of considerable interest be­
cause, seen as a whole, the Yugoslav socio-political and industrial
forms of organization look, in many respects (at least formally), re­
markably like Cole's blueprint for a participatory society.

Pateman proceeded to discuss the Yugoslav case in considerable detail.

Cautioning that her findings were tentative, she concluded that "the Yu­
goslav experience gives us no good reason to suppose that the democra­
tization of industrial authority structures is impossible, difficult and
complicated though it might be."142
Dahl was not the only one of Pateman's bêtes noires who came to share
her interest in the Yugoslav model. Sidney Verba, who spearheaded a
massive crossnational research project on participation and political
equality, included Yugoslavia in the study as a case of "democracy of a
different kind." Unlike the other authors, however, Verba's researchers
actually conducted intensive fieldwork in Yugoslavia. Perhaps this fact
accounts for Verba's ultimate evaluation of the quality of Yugoslav work­
place democracy, which, though not harsh, was less favorable than the
judgments of Pateman, Lindblom, and Dahl.143
A dramatic upsurge of interest in corporatism was another significant
manifestation of the post-Vietnam oscillation of disciplinary discourse to­
ward accommodationism. Theories of corporatism shared with pluralist
theory the emphasis on interest groups as the building blocs o f politics,
but they envisioned an active role for "the state" — a category elided by
pluralism — in harmonizing and reconciling interests, especially busi­
ness and labor. Lurking underneath many ostensibly value-free analyses
of corporatism was the view that the cure to the malaise of "ungovern­
ability" and "stagflation," from which the United States and Britain were
w idely said to suffer in the 1970s, lay in strengthening the authority of the
state as an autonomous actor serving the public good and in increasing
its capacity to provide for mass welfare.
Much of the literature that flew the corporatist banner analyzed the
democratic welfare states of continental Europe, implying that the liberal
United States could draw useful lessons from the corporatist European
model,144 Interestingly, however, the merits of corporatism were initially
brought to the general attention of political scientists not by students of
European democracies but by those who studied Latin American and
Iberian dictatorships,145 A number of Latin American experts adopted the
attitude that corporatist regimes such as Peron's Argentina, Vargas's
Brazil, or Franco's Spain offered "potentially viable (if unpleasant) modes
of organizing a society's development efforts,"146 A few of them, most no­
tably Howard Wiarda, a prolific Latin Americanist at the University of
Massachusetts, suggested that these regimes offered an example not only
for other developing countries but also for the developed United States.
In his study of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal, a regime he dubbed
a corporatist "experiment," Wiarda wrote:
A case can be made that, in comparison with both the liberal and the
socialist alternatives, a number of the Iberic-Latin systems, founded
upon corporatist principles, come out not altogether badly on a vari­
ety of indices of participation, social justice and the management of the
twentieth century change process.. . . Perhaps terms like participation
and even democratization mean different things in different cultural
contexts, and maybe the indices of electoral participation used by
North American social scientists are themselves culture bound. More­
over, given the growing realization that the United States has not
coped very well with, much less solved, its fundamental problems of
poverty, racism, unemployment, alienation, inadequate human ser­
vices and the like, it may be that the Iberic-Latin model and practice of
dealing with some of these same issues contain lessons from which we
can learn.
Iberic-Latin societies such as Portugal had modernized, Wiarda sug­
gested, "without sacrificing the sense of community, personalism, moral
values and national purpose which we [Americans] seem to have lost."
Their "adapting to modernization without being overwhelmed by it may
offer instruction concerning our own developmental dilemmas and in­
stitutional m alaise/'147
Although the attraction of the corporatist and Yugoslav models was
more intense and durable than the appeal of Maoism, interest in these
models subsided in the 1980s as the sense of national malaise that fed this
interest began to recede. The corporatist literature of that era m ay still be
covered in introductory graduate seminars today, but it is treated more
as a historical relic than as a viable research agenda. It appears, from the
content of most contemporary textbooks in American politics, that plu­
ralism survived its critics and remains the predominant model of Amer­
ican government in the discipline today.

Strained Relations with the State

There appears to be an inverse relationship between the popularity of
the state as a theoretical category in political science and the strength of
the profession's actual links to the state. During the early Cold War, po­
litical science developed intimate ties to the national security state at the
same time that the state vanished from disciplinary discourse. Con­
versely, before World War I, when the state was the discipline's central
theoretical concept, there were few direct contacts between the profession
and the actually existing state. Similarly, in the post-Vietnam era, when
calls to "bring the state back" into political analysis reverberated through­
out the discipline, the profession's actual ties to the state were becoming
strained.148 State funding for political science research declined, and op­
probrium came to be attached to working for the government's intelli­
gence agencies.
The infrastructure of the behavioral revolution received lavish support
from state agencies in the 1960s, including substantial amounts allocated
by the Pentagon with the expectation that behavioral social science would
contribute to winning the Cold War. Thus, the Dimensionality of Nations
(DON) project, an effort to collect quantitative data on international
events, launched in 1962 by Harold Guetzkow at Northwestern Univer­
sity (later directed by Rudolph Rummel), was funded to the tune of $ 1.2
million, largely from the NSF and ARPA.149 The World Data Analysis Pro­
gram, directed by Bruce Russett at Yale University, received $330,000
from the NSF in 1964 and $353,500 from ARPA in 1967. In his reports to
ARPA, under the heading "DOD Implications," Russett wrote that the
program's aims were "to investigate and test quantitative techniques
which can be employed to assess the problem forms of conflict and co­
operation among nations/' ARPA money supported various research proj­
ects at Yale, including doctoral dissertations and the production of a
widely used world data handbook.150
But as the Vietnam War dragged on, and as social science failed to de­
liver on its promise, ARPA began slashing its behavioral research budget.
With the post-Vietnam shrinkage of the U.S. defense budget, Pentagon
support for political science research dwindled further, resulting in the
termination or significant contraction of various scientific projects. ARPA's
support of Yale's world data analysis program appears to have ended in
1973. The DON project was discontinued in the mid-1970s after ARPA cut
its funding.151 The end of the Vietnam War thus slowed the momentum
of the behavioral revolution by undermining its institutional infrastruc­
ture. (In international relations, significant NSF funding for data gather­
ing and analysis was restored in 1986.)152
In 1975 Russett discussed the difficulties facing behavioral research
in the aftermath of Vietnam. He contended that warriors and scholars
"share more in common than they often realize---- Differences of lifestyle,
values, and political beliefs should not blind members of either profes­
sion to some very significant characteristics that they share and some
common problems with regard to which they may be able to learn from
each other." A central shared problem was that

both professions feel themselves a bit under siege in these days. Both
fill a role that was highly valued by society in the 1950s and early
1960s.. . . A decade ago was the great time of academic advisors with
the fruits of their "policy science." . . . Scholars thought they could
solve any problem: war, cancer, poverty.
Of course, they could not. It w as clearly a bad mistake for either the
scholarly producers or their enthusiastic consumers ever to allow
themselves to be persuaded that quick solutions were at hand.
N ow . . . many people are profoundly disillusioned with scholars' abil­
ity to come up with any answers to the great questions before u s .. . .
Similarly, in their public statements most military men left the im­
pression that victory in Vietnam was achievable because it was a po­
litical-military problem they could solve. A disastrous war has proved
the opposite.. . . The perceived failures of both soldiers and scholars,
combined with the perceived diminution in external threat, leaves
both of us on an outgoing tide. Both professions face the fact of de­
clining resource allocations from society and the prospect of further
declines. Our budgets are stagnant; our real share of the gross national
product is declining.
To overcome the problem, Russett called upon soldiers and professors to
maintain and strengthen our links with the broader society. One small
instance of these links is the contact between scholars and soldiers both
at military institutions and at civilian universities. Neither those who
expelled ROTC from the universities nor those who, in pique, then for­
bade military officers to attend those universities served their society
well. Professionals cannot live in ghettoes, particularly not in ghettoes
of their own making.153
This excerpt is indicative of the dual nature of the relationship between
political science and the national security establishment in the 1970s and
1980s: on the one hand, scholars such as Russett, who developed ties to
the state before or during Vietnam, were reluctant to sever these ties. On
the other hand, after Vietnam, moral opprobrium w as attached to such
ties within the broader academic community. Several scandals that
erupted in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrate both that collaboration with
national security agencies did not stop after Vietnam and that it met with
disapproval. In 1976 Soviet specialist Myron Rush of Cornell University
openly accepted a scholar-in-residence position at the CIA, on leave from
Cornell. The appointment evoked a stormy protest by Cornell graduate
students, who charged that faculty involvement with the C IA "under­
mines the trust necessary for the survival of the academic community and
basic academic freedoms." In 1984 the New York Times reported that Rut­
gers University officials admonished two political scientists for using re­
search papers submitted by unwitting students in their own research
project for the CIA. And in 1985-86 newspaper reports revealed that the
CIA had secretly financed two scholarly publications b y Harvard politi­
cal scientists: an article on "Dead Dictators and Rioting M obs," published
in International Security, coauthored by Samuel Huntington; and a book
on Saudi Arabia authored by N adav Safran. The revelations stirred up a
controversy on campus, and Safran resigned from his post as director of
Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. A resolution condemning
Safran's actions was passed by a vote of 193 to 8 at the 1985 conference of
the Middle Eastern Studies Association.154
But the norm, often observed in the breach, against collaboration with
the intelligence bureaucracy appears to have evaporated since the end of
the Cold War. A recent investigation of the state of cloak-gow n relations
in international studies found that "the opprobrium that used to attach
to any relationship with government intelligence agencies has more or
less vanished." According to Bradford Westerfield, a Yale University po­
litical scientist with ties to the CIA, cooperation between professors and
U.S. intelligence agencies "is now very much to the fo re .. . . There's a
great deal of actually open consultation, and there's a lot more semi-open,
broadly acknowledged consultation/'155
The w ar on terrorism launched in response to the September 2001 at­
tacks on N ew York and Washington m ay increase the intimacy between
political science and the intelligence bureaucracy. An October 2001 arti­
cle in the New Yorker explained how analyses of civil wars produced in
recent years b y prominent political scientists could be useful to the gov­
ernment in the current war. One of these analyses, the "state failure"
project, directed by Ted Gurr of the University of Maryland (who also di­
rected the POLITY project), was commissioned by the CIA. Other lines of
internal w ar analysis may have been launched independently of the gov­
ernment, but their future growth and development are likely to be fa­
vored by generous government funding.156
But even if individual political scientists were suddenly to renounce
their ties to power, such a move would not necessarily erase traces of
power from disciplinary scholarship so long as scholars, distant from
power though they might be themselves, continue to rely, as they in­
evitably must, on concepts, data sets, and findings produced by other
scholars intimate with political interests. Moreover, it is hard to see how
political science scholarship can be made disinterested, notwithstanding
the good intentions of its producers, so long as the profession remains
embedded in the institutional structure of American higher education,
whose sustenance depends heavily on government and corporate inter­
ests. The obvious falseness of the presupposition that scientific knowl­
edge of politics is distinct from politics is not easily evaded. Nor do I think
it can be.
CONCLUSION

Toward a Reflexive Political Science

In the preceding chapters I have challenged the self-image of Am eri­

can political science as a detached science that is somehow attached to
democracy. In actual practice political science does not exhibit an abiding
commitment to democracy nor does the discipline constitute an excep­
tion to Max Weber's contention that social scientific knowledge "is al­
w ays knowledge from particular points of view /'1 Political science is
written from a distinctly American point of view; it is attached to its
homeland rather than to democracy per se.
Political scientists use the term ideology for human thought that avoids
reflection on the circumstances in which it is embedded or the interests it
serves. But they almost never apply this concept to their own discipline.
They readily analyze the social embeddedness of the beliefs, ideas, and
attitudes of nonacademic actors, but they seldom explore the political and
social enmeshments of their own knowledge production efforts.
American political science is ideological, and its unacknowledged, un­
derlying ideal is America. Its ostensibly objective theoretical discourse re­
flects successive reconstitutions of the identity of US in relation to the
identity of "Other" states, especially those that became Am erica's chief
enemies. In the course of America's major international conflicts, politi­
cal science scholarship has re-visioned America and its enemies in w ays
that have greatly magnified the differences between them. After the con­
flicts these revised, highly polarized images have been projected upon the
past, obliterating earlier portrayals of America and its yet-to-be enemies
as far more alike than present theory would have them.
In all the cases analyzed in this book, the mutually constituted images
of America and its later rivals have swung from accommodationism to
nationalism. Before the conflict, prominent American political scientists
regarded aspects of the foreign regime as potential models for use in rem­
edying America's flaws; after the conflict, America's flaws were recast as
virtues, and the former virtues of the enemy regime as flaws. A narrative
of likeness and convergence between US and Them thus became a narra­
tive of difference and divergence.
 John Burgess, a Civil War veteran who viewed states' rights and non-
Teutonic immigration as threats to America's political stability, regarded
the "United States of Germ any" as a model of centralized political order
in a racially homogeneous land. And from the 1880s through the 1930s
generations of public administration scholars looked to Germany's effi­
cient bureaucratic state in their quest to energize the American state and
to strengthen the influence of public-minded administrators at the ex­
pense of parochial politicians. However, concurrently with two wars
against Germany, America's weak state, pluralistic interest-group poli­
tics, and racial diversity came to be seen as its sources of strength, not least
because those features of the American system most differentiated it from
Germ any At the same time, Germany's strong state and Teutonic iden­
tity became fatal flaws. A "special path" theoretical narrative then
emerged, which portrayed Imperial Germany as a precursor to Nazism
and contrasted Anglo-American (and French) political development with
the reactionary trajectory of Germany (and Japan). The grip of this nar­
rative remains so intense that most contemporary political scientists
know nothing about the Teutonic theory of the founder of their discipline,
are unaware of Woodrow Wilson's admiration of Prussian municipal self-
government and are remarkably uncurious about their discipline's con­
temporaneous view of Nazism.
The mutual constitution of America and the Soviet Union in political
science discourse underwent an equally remarkable shift from accom-
modationism to nationalism. During the 1930s some leading political
scientists looked favorably upon Stalin's Soviet Union as a model of eco­
nomic growth through state-guided industrial rationalization and intel­
ligent centralized planning. Other political scientists, troubled as much
by the unequal distribution of America's economic pie as by sluggish eco­
nomic growth, envisioned a future convergence of American liberty and
Soviet economic equality. With the onset of the Cold War, however, state-
guided planning and freedom from want — one of the famous "four free­
doms" which Americans were protecting from Nazism — dropped out
of the nation's political discourse, including the discourse of political sci­
ence.2 The Soviet Union then joined, and ultimately eclipsed, Germany
as the totalitarian Other to which the identity of US was counterposed.
Russia w as now all state and no society, and America all society and no
state; glossed over were the earlier centrality of the doctrine of the state
and the fascination with centralized planning and bureaucratic efficiency.
Totalitarians were guided by ideology; Americans pragmatically fol­
lowed their interests. Soviet ideology stressed the struggle of objectively
constituted classes; in America there w as benign competition among be-
haviorally defined interest groups. This pluralist vision of American pol­
itics continues to dominate disciplinary discourse more than a decade af­
ter the demise of the ,/totalitarian,, regimes in opposition to which it was
originally conceived. It thus constitutes, to paraphrase Gramsci again, a
substantial trace which the history of American foreign relations de­
posited into political science without leaving an inventory.
Visions of other major enemies also swung from accommodationism
to nationalism. Before Fascist Italy joined N azi Germany and Soviet Rus­
sia under the label "totalitarian," some leading political scientists were
intrigued by Mussolini's "experiment" in social organization and control.
Similarly, in 1889 Woodrow Wilson commended Japan's leaders for "sin­
gular sagacity" in modeling their constitution upon Prussia's. But as Ja­
pan turned to external aggression and allied with Germ any against
America, its former sagacity became its historical burden, and it joined
Germany in the "special path" narrative of political development.3
To a significant extent, the reconstitutions of America's identity un­
folded through successive rearticulations of the concept of democracy.
The currently dominant understanding of democracy as a procedural
mechanism of leadership change in a multiparty setting crystallized dur­
ing the Cold War, when America confronted self-proclaimed "people's
democracies," ruled b y single parties and committed, at least rhetorically,
to social equality. Before the Cold War, however, political scientists
tended to define democracy in w ays that played down the importance of
electoral process. John Burgess opposed universal suffrage and was re­
luctant to endorse elections as the best method for selecting the nation's
top leaders.4
Woodrow Wilson, famous today for his pledge as a president to make
the world safe for democracy, earlier strove as a scholar to make democ­
racy safe for the world by entrusting it to a professional managerial class.
In Wilson's eyes, the civil service examination was an "eminently demo­
cratic" method of leadership selection, since "it draws all the governing
m aterial. . . from such part of the people as w ill fit themselves for the
function." Wilson defined democracy more in terms of its outcome —
rule by "the men of the schools, the trained, instructed, fitted m en" —
than in terms of the procedure yielding that outcome.5
After World War I, the managerial view of democracy epitomized by
Wilson w as rearticulated in the political science of Charles Merriam's
"Chicago school," augmented by Merriam's newfound faith in the au­
thority of science. Under the banner of "democratic social control" Mer-
riam and Harold Lasswell envisioned America as a state in which the
demos would be guided toward progressive "democratic" ends by an en­
lightened elite of social planners, counseled by social scientists. Later,
when Merriam was jarred by the rising tide of fascism to provide a nor­
mative defense of democracy, he insisted that democracy was not " a mere
form " as much as a "m ode of political cooperation through which the hu­
man personality may find the finest and richest expression of human val­
ues." Those values included not only political freedom but also freedom
from want — an "equitable" diffusion and "fair distribution of the gains
of civilization/'6
Younger political scientists in the 1930s were even more emphatic in
associating democracy with social justice. Merle Fainsod believed that
"democracy is as much concerned with the eradication of poverty, with
the guarantee of a living wage, and with the alleviation of unemployment
as it is with universal suffrage." Frederick Schuman argued that true
democracy entailed economic equality as much as political liberty. Robert
Dahl's doctoral thesis was a defense of democratic socialism. And Gabriel
Alm ond's dissertation gave a highly unflattering portrait of America's
capitalist class. Its title, "Plutocracy and Politics in N ew York City," re­
flected Alm ond's belief (in 1938) that because of the inordinate political
influence of the wealthy class, "it was an error to speak of the American
political system as a democracy."7
These visions of "democracy" — that is, America — fell into disfavor
because they made US appear too similar to our enemies. Burgess's vi­
sion of democracy qua constitutionalism became a casualty of the first
Germ an-American conflict because, measured against its standards, con­
stitutionless England appeared less democratic (that is, less America-like)
than Germany. Wilson's managerial vision survived the Great War and
folded into Merriam's "democratic social control" only to be dealt a mas­
sive blow b y the second Germ an-American war, which provided a vivid
lesson in the perils of administrative efficiency. And whatever prospects
of revival Merriam's vision m ay have had after World War II were dashed
by the onset of the Cold War, which gave great resonance to fears that
"democratic social control" and "democratic planning" might be pre­
ludes to totalitarian dictatorship. In the charged atmosphere of the U .S.-
Soviet conflict, neither Merriam's planned democracy nor the industrial/
social democracy envisioned by the young Dahl, Almond, and Fainsod
stood a chance of effectively rebutting the allegation that the Soviet
Union, as Frank Knight put it, "is but an extreme case of what is going on
everywhere, including our own country. Taking 'democracy' to mean
achievement of particular ends instead of freedom . . . the people keep
giving new tasks and more and ever more power to government until
presently it will be the master of all instead of the servant."8
In sum, the understanding of "dem ocracy" that dominates discipli­
nary discourse today, finding rigorous expression in scientific data sets of
"regime types," is the product of a subtle, complex, and untidy historical
process in which those dimensions of the concept on which America re­
sembled its enemies were excluded and those on which America most dif­
fered from its enemies became privileged. The procedural understanding
of democracy prevailed less because of its theoretical superiority than be­
cause of the Cold War, which greatly tarnished the appeal of competing
concepts.
Although I have not examined the evolution of political scientists' un­
derstanding of "science" as thoroughly as the evolution of their under­
standing of "democracy," the preceding chapters indicate that from the
interwar period to the 1950s the meaning of "science" changed in paral­
lel with the meaning of "democracy." The pressures of the Cold War
prompted political scientists to purge both from association with ideals.
In the interwar years Charles Merriam spearheaded a drive to put polit­
ical science on a "scientific" footing. But his conception of science was
inextricably linked to his search for practical methods for achieving re­
formist ends, not to a search for objective knowledge per se. In the 1950s
this value-oriented conception gave w ay to a conception of political sci­
ence as a value-free enterprise. A s Terence Ball observed, "such develop­
ments as the behavioral revolution and the turn toward 'science/ in
something like a positivistic sense, can be viewed as . . . the discipline's
rational and self-interested response to the climate and temper of the
[Cold War] times."9 By assuring suspicious senators and foundation offi­
cers that the discipline was as objective as the natural sciences, that po­
litical scientists were not ideologues but disinterested pursuers of truth,
and that the objective pursuit of truth w as a hallmark of democracy, the
leaders of American political science won generous funding for their dis­
cipline from private foundations and federal agencies. This generous
funding, in turn, further reinforced the discipline's swing toward, broadly
speaking, epistemological positivism.
In short, during the interwar period democracy was understood in
terms of reformist ideals, and the science of politics w as view ed as a ser­
vant of those ideals. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, democracy
came to be defined in procedural terms, and the science of politics was re­
configured as an ideal-free science appropriate for an ideal-free democ­
racy. This shift suggests a compelling answer to the secondary question
posed at the beginning of the book: How can we explain the internal in­
consistency of the discipline's self-image? The constitutive paradox of the
discipline — that it is putatively objective but at the same time aligned
with democracy — becomes less paradoxical once we recognize that the
meanings of both political "science" and "dem ocracy" have evolved in
the context of America's changing international rivalries.
What are the implications of m y analysis for the conduct of research in
political science? How should political science epistemology respond to
the idea that American political science has been written from a distinctly
American perspective? More generally, how should disciplinary episte­
mology come to terms with Weber's view that social scientific knowledge
is always from a particular perspective?
One possible response would be for political science to adopt Weber's
own epistemological position. Weber believed that social scientific in­
quiry is inevitably subjective; that social scientists' values, shaped by
their position in time and place, influence the questions they ask and the
significance they attach to the phenomena at hand. But he insisted that "it
obviously does not follow from this that research in the cultural sciences
can only have results which are 'subjective' in the sense that they are valid
for one person and not for others. Only the degree to which they interest
different persons varies."10 Weber argued, in other words, that although
social "facts" are inevitably value-laden, those facts are somehow verifi­
able independently of the values that give them significance. Thus, even
though he rejected the positivistic idea of a social science patterned after
the natural sciences, Weber clung to the positivistic presupposition of
subject-object separation.11
But Weber's attempt to fuse positivism and hermeneutics is not with­
out logical problems. Weber seems to have failed to work out fully the im­
plications of his insistence that the conceptual constructs of social science
are rooted in history (a view with which I obviously concur). If concepts
are indeed shaped by history, and if, as is often the case in American po­
litical science, history is the source of the "data" (or "cases") by which the
researcher's concepts are verified, then what should one expect but to
find that the data validate the concepts? After all, the concepts are the
products of the same history which serves to certify their validity.
Moreover, even if Weber's epistemological maneuver is entirely sound
in the abstract, it does not adequately describe the w ay in which political
science has actually been practiced in America in the past century. For, as
I have demonstrated in this study, the presupposition of subject-object
separation is belied by the reality of political science's enmeshment in the
politics it studies. The idea that political science scholarship stands apart
from the politics it studies is hardly consistent with a reality in which.the
discipline's professional association maintained intimate ties with Con­
gress, a reality in which most research on Congress was produced by
APSA-sponsored fellows, a reality in which most research on American
foreign policy was produced by researchers who were themselves in­
volved, however marginally, in formulating foreign policy, or a reality
in which the quantitative data sets commonly used to test hypotheses
against historical events contain traces of these very historical events.
A Weberian epistemology, then, does not constitute a safe refuge for a
discipline implicated with the object of its study Political science should
come to terms with the reality of its imbrication in politics by adopting an
approach that would explicitly take it into account. I propose, in other
words, that political science take a turn toward reflexivity. A reflexive po­
litical science is a science that self-consciously takes into account the his­
torical position of its own scholarship. It is a science that theorizes
historical political processes in w ays that illuminate the relationship of
these processes to the theory itself.
In tiie twentieth century a number of prominent philosophers and so­
cial theorists developed reflexive modes of thinking, including the criti­
cal theorists of the Frankfurt School.12 But these theories have had little
resonance in American political science, particularly in its empirical sub­
fields.13 And, in any case, it is not at all clear that modes of reflexive
theorizing developed in philosophy or the humanities are necessarily ap­
plicable to political research. Ultimately, if political science is to take a re­
flexive turn, it m ay have to blaze its own trail. The dimensions of this
reflexive trail are difficult to imagine. In the remaining pages I sketch sev­
eral possibilities, beginning with two examples drawn from m y own re­
cent work.
Consider, first, the "democratic peace" proposition, namely the claim
that democracies almost never wage w ar on one another. In recent years
international relations scholars have used sophisticated statistical meth­
ods to analyze reams of data on "w a r" and "regime type." On the basis
of this work, a near-consensus has emerged on the empirical validity of
the democratic peace proposition, if not on how to explain it. Interna­
tional relations scholars have repeatedly quoted, approvingly in most
cases, a colleague not usually given to hyperbole, who stated that "this
absence of w ar between democracies comes as close as anything w e have
to an empirical law in international relations."14
A reflexive approach entails viewing democratic peace scholarship as
a part of, rather than apart from, the very historical process of interna­
tional politics on which it purports to shed light. Rather than study "the
fact of democratic peace," as students of international relations com­
monly do,15 reflexivity directs us to inquire into the history of the ana­
lytical concepts, including "democracy," which the discipline uses to
measure, classify, and order its "facts." It directs us to wonder whether
these concepts, and hence the data they order, contain traces of the very
same history of international conflict that serves as the empirical testing
ground for the theory.
 In m y critique of the democratic peace proposition I argued that
"dem ocracy" should be interpreted as "Am erica/7 and that political sci­
entists7claim of a democratic peace should hence be understood as a spe­
cial case of a more general claim about peace among nations that are
" America-like/7The definition of democracy (that is, US) manifest in the
data sets employed by international relations scholars is the product of a
subtle historical process in which, as I explained above, those aspects of
the concept that made US resemble our enemies have been discarded,
while those dimensions that magnified the distance between US and our
enemies have become privileged. When these "regime type77data are pro­
jected upon the international history that gave rise to them, it should not
be surprising that the proposition that "America-like countries do not
fight each other" assumes the appearance of "an empirical law/7After all,
the concept of a democratic peace was shaped by the very same histori­
cal patterns of w ar and peace which, transformed into "data" or "cases,"
are being used to validate the concept. M y argument consequently re­
veals that the democratic peace proposition has a tautological quality. Po­
litical scientists7classification of countries as "democracies" is as much a
product of the (past) peacefulness of these countries in relation to one an­
other as the peacefulness of these countries is a product of their shared
democratic character. Thus, a reflexive turn may enrich political science
by generating insights that are counterintuitive and nonconventional
from the standpoint of the discipline's mainstream approach.16
Consider another central idea of American political science, the con­
cept of "political culture" (or "civic culture"). Political scientists typically
specify "political culture" as an independent variable that influences
some political outcome. For example, Almond and Verba posed the ques­
tion: "W hat is the impact of a political culture on the political system of
which it is a part?" Robert Putnam famously investigated how variation
in the civic culture of Italian regions affected the performance of repre­
sentative institutions. And a group of constructivist international rela­
tions scholars recently explored how "culture" shapes various aspects of
"national security." These studies and numerous others employing the
concept of political culture, though they differ in many ways, share the
presupposition that the researcher and the discipline to which he or she
belongs stand apart from the cultural and political processes being stud­
ied.17 In other words, the scholar is a student of political culture without
being of the culture.
A reflexive approach to political culture, rather than (or in conjunction
with) asking how political culture influences social and political out­
comes, might inquire how the concept of political culture has evolved his­
torically and to what extent its scholarship is embedded in the culture and
politics surrounding it. For example, rather than asking how the civic
cohesion of nations affects the performance and stability of democratic
government, one could ask how, historically, the interest of democratic
governments in fostering civic cohesion (or in undermining the cohesion
of enemy societies) m ay have shaped the agenda of civic culture research.
Similarly, rather than asking how culture, defined in terms of "identity/'
influences "national security," one might ask (as I have done in chapter 4
and elsewhere) how the politics of U.S. national security m ay have
shaped political scientists' conception of America's cultural identity or,
more broadly, their understanding of "political culture."18 If (as I have
found) scholarly interest in civic culture has been continually intertwined
with the interest of national security agencies in propaganda and psy­
chological warfare, then it follows that "culture" m ay be as much a prod­
uct of national security as a determinant of it.
"Public opinion" is another central area of political research that might
profit from a reflexive approach. A substantial subset of public opinion
scholarship debates the impact of public opinion on American foreign
policy, as well as the effect of salient world events on American public
opinion.19 A reflexive approach would entail inquiring how salient world
events have shaped not only public opinion but also the concept of pub­
lic opinion. And it would shift the inquiry from the impact of public opin­
ion on foreign policy to the relationship between foreign policy and
"public opinion." How have the w ays in which past researchers concep­
tualized and reconceptualized public opinion been shaped b y the foreign
policy interests of the federal government? How important w as the sup­
port of U.S. foreign policy agencies, or foundations intimate with these
agencies, in establishing the institutional infrastructure of public opinion
research?20 Could it be that "public opinion" is a product of government
policy no less than public opinion is a shaper of it?
These sketches of reflexive research ideas deal largely with issues of in­
terest to students of international relations, m y own substantive area of
interest. But other branches of political science, including American pol­
itics, might be equally amenable to reflexive theorizing. Take, for exam­
ple, the relationship between money and politics in America. Rather than
inquiring into the influence of corporate money on electoral politics, we
might broaden our understanding of the American political system b y in­
cluding the American academy and then investigate the trail of money in
electoral politics and its trail in academic scholarship/politics in mutu­
ally illuminating ways. To what extent do these trails intersect? Such a re­
flexive posture would direct us to explore, among other things, w hy the
discipline has by and large shied aw ay from critically investigating the re­
lationship between corporate money and politics in America, notwith­
standing the fact that in recent years this issue has been placed high on
the nation's public agenda (by elected politicians such as Senator John
McCain rather than by scholars).
Finally what about "objectivity"? If, as I have attempted to demon­
strate in this book, the actual practices of American political science have
diverged greatly from the norm of scientific objectivity, how should po­
litical science resolve this objectivity crisis? The instinctive inclination of
political scientists, assuming m y critique falls on receptive ears, would
be, I think, to try to resolve the crisis by seeking an epistemological pro­
tocol that would "control" for the "biases" discussed in this book and/or
by seeking a new epistemological norm to replace objectivity altogether.
Given the long-standing tendency of political science to look to other dis­
ciplines for theoretical inspiration, political scientists might perhaps be
expected to mine philosophy of science texts for such epistemological
remedies or alternative epistemological standards. Either way, if political
scientists remain set in their habits of epistemological thought, they will
probably debate the objectivity question in an abstract and nonhistorical
manner.
But w hy shore up or replace the discipline's existing epistemological
norms with other norms handed down from above or imported from
other fields? Why would we expect political science to abide by any new
set of norms any more than it has abided by the norms of scientific ob­
jectivity? I propose that political science instead tackle the objectivity
question in a reflexive manner. We should expand our study of past
episodes in which knowledge claims and political interests were ad­
vanced simultaneously by the same scholars or schools of thought. We
should carefully study how the meaning of political "science" may have
changed historically, how past political scientists defended and justified
the discipline's claim to the status of an objective science, and how the
meaning of "science" (or defenses of it) may have been related to social,
political, or economic processes under w ay in the United States or the
world. Reconstructing how certain norms gained their predominant sta­
tus in political science serves the ends of an ethical discipline no less than
the assertion of these norms themselves or the handing down, by an act
of deductive fiat, of alternative norms.

Lord Acton shrewdly observed that "few discoveries are more irritating
than those which expose the pedigree of ideas ."211have featured Acton's
aphorism as an epigraph for this book because I suspect that some fellow
political scientists might not entirely welcome my exposé.22 But rather
than reacting with irritation, political scientists m ay wish to consider an­
other shrewd statement, by Friedrich Nietzsche: "great truth wants to be
criticized, not idolized/'23 If American political science is the great, thriv­
ing, democratic science that its leaders portray it to be, then its practi­
tioners should at least listen to, if not agree with, m y criticism* While I do
not expect m y critique to meet with instant approbation, I hope that it w ill
provoke a long-overdue debate on the identity of American political sci­
ence.
 NOTES

I NT RODUCT I ON

1. Samuel P. Huntington, "One Soul at a Time: Political Science and Political

Reform/' American Political Science Review (hereafter APSR) 82 (1988): 3-10 , quo­
tations from 6-7.
2. Ibid., 5,9.
3. The lecture was published as "Reform and Stability in a Modernizing,
Multi-Ethnic Society," Politikon 8 (December 1981): 8-26.
4. Joseph Lelyveld, Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White (New
York: Times Books, 1985), 67-68.
5. Ibid., 68.
6. Huntington, "Reform and Stability," quoted in Republic of South Africa,
First Report of the Constitutional Committee of the President's Council (Cape Town:
Government Printers, 1982), 36.
7. Lelyveld, Move Your Shadow, 68.
8. Huntington, quoted in ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Johnson was a founder of TransAfrica, the largest American antiapartheid
group. See Isabel Wilkerson, "After Weeping for Mandela, Many Prepare to Sa­
vor Visit," New York Times, June 17,1990. Moreover, some political scientists in
South Africa itself courageously opposed apartheid. For example, Richard
Turner, a professor of political science at Natal University who exhorted his
white students to question the morality of the country's racial laws, was banned
by the South African government in 1973 and was murdered in 1977 by yet un­
known assailants. See Emma Daly, "Search for an Assassin," Independent (Lon­
don), October 16,1996.
11. William Claiborne, "The Birthplace of Apartheid May One Day Become
Its Deathbed," Washington Post, October 8,1989.1thank Glenda Morgan and An­
nette Seegers for educating me on matters South African.
12. Samuel P Huntington to Harold D. Lasswell, July 26, 1961, Harold
Dwight Lasswell Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library,
box 45, folder 623.
13. The quotation is from Samuel P. Huntington's entry in the 1997 Complete
Marquis Who's Who Biographies, www.galenet.com. In addition to this entry, I
found relevant biographical information in the following sources: Samuel P.
Huntington's entry in Contemporary Authors, www.galenet.com; George Will,
"Professors Who Play Politics," Washington Post, May 7, 1987; Philip Boffey,
"Prominent Harvard Scholar Barred by Science Academy," New York Times,
April 29,1987; Loch K. Johnson, America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic
Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 158-59; Samuel Huntington,
The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: Univer­
sity of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 319 n. 16; Chalmers Johnson, "The CIA and Me,"
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 29, no. 1 (1997).
14. Nor am I concerned with the quality of Huntington's work (or, for that
matter, the work of other scholars that I discuss in this book). Huntington is un­
doubtedly an original thinker, an erudite scholar, and a lucid writer.
15. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan
Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972); idem, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1977); Edward Said, Orien­
talism (New York: Vintage, 1978).
16. Edward H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 (New York: Harper
and Row, 1946).
17. Max Weber, "'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy" (1904), in
Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans, and ed. Edward Shils and
Henry Finch (New York: Free Press, 1949), 81, 84,58-59.
18. See, for example, many of the contributions to Joseph Kruzel and James
N. Rosenau, eds., Journeys through World Politics: Autobiographical Reflections of
Thirty-four Academic Travelers (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989).
19. Stanley Hoffmann, "An American Social Science: International Relations,"
Daedalus 106 (1977): 41-60; and David N. Gibbs, "Social Science as Propaganda?
International Relations and the Question of Political Bias," International Studies
Perspectives 2 (2001): 417-27, are notable exceptions in the subfield of interna­
tional relations.
20. For a fuller discussion of the Italian case see Ido Oren, "Uncritical Por­
trayals of Fascist Italy and of Iberic-Latin Dictatorships in American Political
Science/' Comparative Studies in Society and History 42 (2000): 87-118.
21. Such a view was evident, for example, in the writings of Henry Russell
Spencer, the profession's foremost expert on Italian politics in the interwar years
(and later elected to the presidency of the American Political Science Associa­
tion [APSA]). See ibid.
22. Charles E. Merriam, The Making of Citizens: A Comparative Study of Meth­
ods of Civic Training (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), ix, 223.
23. Karl F. Geiser, "Review of 'Germany Twilight or Dawn?' by Anonymous,
and 'My Battle' by Adolph Hitler," APSR 28 (1934): 136-38.
24. See Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and
Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), 3.
25. Arnold Lien and Merle Fainsod, The American People and Its Government:
A Textbookfor Students in Introductory College Courses andfor the Active Electorate
(New York: Appleton-Century, 1934); Paul Harper, ed., The Russia I Believe In:
The Memoirs of Samuel N. Harper, 1902-1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1945), 240-41.
26. Richard J. Samuels, "Japanese Political Studies and the Myth of the Inde­
pendent Intellectual," in The Political Culture of Foreign Area and International
Studies: Essays in Honor of Lucian W. Pye, ed. Richard Samuels and Myron Weiner
(Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 1991), 19.
27. On the postwar crisis of public administration see Donald Kettl, "Public
Administration: The State of the Field," in Political Science: The State of the Field,
ed. Ada Finifter (Washington, D.C.: APSA, 1993), 408; Vincent Ostrom, The In­
tellectual Crisis of American Public Administration (Tuscaloosa: University of Al­
abama Press, 1973).
28. See Karl W. Deutsch, "A Path among the Social Sciences," in Kruzel and
Rosenau, Journeys through World Politics, 18.
29. Lien and Fainsod, American People and Its Government, 441; Charles Mer-
riam, The New Democracy and the New Despotism (New York: Whittlesey, 1939);
David Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion
(New York: Knopf, 1951); Robert A. Dahl, "Socialist Programs and Democratic
Politics: An Analysis" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1940); idem, A Preface to Dem­
ocratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); Terence Ball, "Amer­
ican Political Science in Its Postwar Political Context," in Discipline and History:
Political Science in the United States, ed. James Farr and Raymond Seidelman
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 218.
30. This paradox was noted by Timothy Mitchell, who argued that "the rea­
sons for abandoning the concept [of the state] lay not in changes in states them­
selves but in the changed postwar relationship between American political
science and American political power." See "The Limits of the State: Beyond Sta­
tist Approaches and Their Critics," APSR 83 (1991): 79.
31. Gabriel A. Almond, The Appeals of Communism (Princeton: Princeton Uni­
versity Press, 1954); Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Po­
litical Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1963). See Ido Oren, "Is Culture Independent of National Security? How
America's National Security Concerns Shaped 'Political Culture' Research," Eu­
ropean Journal of International Relations 6 (2000): 543-73.
32. Samuel Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society
in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
33. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing
the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
34. Bradford Westerfield, quoted in Chris Mooney, "For Your Eyes Only,"
Lingua Franca 10 (November 2000): 36.
35. The following sources are helpful on the history and meaning of the con­
cept of ideology: Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (New York: Verso, 1991);
Mark Goldie, "Ideology/7 in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Ter­
ence Ball, James Farr, and Russell Hanson (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1989); Warren Samuels, "Ideology in Economics," in Modem Economic
Thought, ed. Sidney Weintraub (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1977)-
36. See e.g., Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas
in the Fifties (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, i960); Robert E. Lane, "The Decline of Pol­
itics and Ideology in a Knowledgeable Society," American Sociological Review 31
(1966): 649-69.
37. Said, Orientalism; William E. Connolly, Identity: Democratic Negotiations of
Political Paradox (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); David Campbell, Writ­
ing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1992).
38.1 have borrowed this taxonomy, and adapted it to my purpose, from Pe­
ter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American His­
torical Profession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 61-63.
39. The dissertation was published sixty years later. See Gabriel Almond, Plu­
tocracy and Politics in New York City (Boulder: Westview, 1998); see also Kathleen
O'Toole, "A Man of Conviction: 60-Year-Old Thesis Published at Last," Stanford
Online Reporter, April 29,1998, at www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report.
40. Transcripts of Robert Dahl and David Easton interviews, APSA Oral His­
tory Collection, University of Kentucky Library; Herbert Simon, Models of My
Life (New York: Basic, 1991); Seymour Martin Lipset, "Out of the Alcoves," Wil­
son Quarterly; winter 1999; biographical sketch of Ithiel Pool in American National
Biography Online, www.anb.org.
41. Dahl, Preface to Democratic Theory, 15 1; Seymour Martin Lipset, Political
Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), 439, 456;
Almond and Verba, Civic Culture.
42. The most conspicuous exemplar of the "democratization" genre may be
Huntington's The Third Wave. On the "democratic peace," see Ido Oren, "The
Subjectivity of the 'Democratic' Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial
Germany," International Security 20 (1995): 147-84.
43. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Northern
Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); idem, Bowling Alone: The Col­
lapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000).
David D. Laitin, "The Civic Culture at 30," APSR 89 (1995): 168-74, describes
Putnam's book as the successor of The Civic Culture in setting the standard for
political culture studies.
44. Oren, "Uncritical Portrayals of Fascist Italy."
45. Oren, "Subjectivity of the 'Democratic' Peace." I recapitulate this critique
in the concluding chapter of this volume.
46. Ted Hopf, "The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations
Theory," International Security 23 (1998): 176. Both Hopf and Jeffrey T. Checkel,
"The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory," World Politics 50
(1998): 324-48, provide useful reviews of the constructivist literature. Alexan­
der Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of
Power Politics," International Organization 46 (1992): 391-425, is an influential
article that stresses interaction between states as the source of state identity.
47. Hopf, "Promise of Constructivism," 178; Karl W Deutsch, Nationalism and
Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1953).
48. Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Views of China and In­
dia (New York: John Day, 1958), 405-6. Isaacs was affiliated with the CIA-
assisted Center for International Studies at MIT. The rigor and elegance of his
study suggest that work done in proximity to the government is not necessar­
ily low-quality work. What concern me here are the implications of the intimacy
between political science and political power for the identity of the discipline as
an objective science of politics. I thank Samuel Popkin for bringing Isaacs's book
to my attention.
49. Historians, too, have produced numerous studies of changing national
images without explicitly flying a constructivist banner. Studies of Americans'
images of Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union that I found helpful include John
P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972); Peter G. Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment,
1917-1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967); Paul Hollander,
Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and
Cuba, 1928-1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Henry Cord Meyer,
Five Images of Germany: Half a Century of American Views on German History
(Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, i960); Frank A. Warren,
Liberals and Communism: The "Red Decade" Revisited (New York: Columbia Uni­
versity Press, 1993).
50. See David Ricci, The Tragedy of American Political Science: Politics, Scholar­
ship, and Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); Raymond Sei-
delman and Edward Harpham, Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the
American Crisis, 1884-1984 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985);
John G. Gunnell, The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of an American Vo­
cation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); James Farr, John Dryzek,
and Stephen Leonard, eds., Political Science in History: Research Programs and Po­
litical Traditions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Rogers Smith,
"Science, Non-Science, and Politics," in The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences,
ed. Terrence McDonald (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Brian
C. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of Interna­
tional Relations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).
51. Stimulating interpretations of the tension between democracy and sei-
ence are offered by Terence Ball, "An Ambivalent Alliance: Political Science and
American Democracy," in Farr, Dryzek, and Leonard, Political Science in History;
Ricci, Tragedy ofPolitical Science; Smith, "Science, Non-Science, and Politics"; and
various essays in David Easton, John G. Gunnell, and Michael B. Stein, eds,,
Regime and Discipline: Democracy and the Development of Political Science (Ann Ar­
bor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).
52. Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (New York: Cam­
bridge University Press, 1991), xiv.
5 3 .1 was also helped and inspired by contextual histories of neighboring dis­
ciplines. They include Ellen Herman, The Romance ofAmerican Psychology: Polit­
ical Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995);
Novick, That Noble Dream; Christopher Simpson, Science of Coercion: Communi­
cation Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1950 (New York: Oxford Univer­
sity Press, 1994).
54. Two notable exceptions are Ball, "American Political Science in Its Post­
war Political Context"; and Ira Katznelson, "The Subtle Politics of Developing
Emergency: Political Science as Liberal Guardianship," in The Cold War and the
University: Toward an Intellectual Understanding of the Postwar Years, ed. David
Montgomery (New York: New Press, 1997), 171-94.
55. Karl Marx, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers,
1939); Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of
Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (1936; reprint, San Diego: Har­
court Brace, 1985).
56. For useful reviews see Barry Barnes, David Bloor, and John Henry, Scien­
tific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996); Steven Shapin, "Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowl­
edge," Annual Review of Sociology 21 (1995): 289-321.

CHA P T ER 1. I MPERI AL GERMANY

1. Alexander Gerschenkron, Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berkeley: Uni­

versity of California Press, 1943), 30, vii. In his later classic, Economic Backward­
ness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1963), Gerschenkron explicitly contrasted the historical devel­
opments of Britain and Germany.
2. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and
Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 36-37.
3. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and
Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon, 1966), esp. chaps. 7 -
8; quotations from xv, 437.
4. See David Blackboum and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History:
Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984); David Blackboum, Populists and Patricians: Essays in
Modern German History (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987); Geoff Eley, "Liberal­
ism, Europe, and the Bourgeoisie, 1860-1914," in The German Bourgeoisie: Essays
on the Social History of the German Middle Classfrom the Late Eighteenth to the Early
Twentieth Century, ed. David Blaekbourn and Richard Evans (London: Rout-
ledge, 1991).
5. Blackboum and Eley, Peculiarities of German History, 33.
6. For reflections on the "special path" debate see Peter Paret, "Some Com­
ments on the Continuity Debate in German History," in German-American In­
terrelations: Heritage and Challenge, ed. James F. Harris (Tübingen: Tübingen
University Press, 1991), 83 -88. Historical works influenced by the critique of the
special path thesis include George Steinmetz, Regulating the Social: The Welfare
State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993); and Dolores L. Augustine, Patricians and Parvenus: Wealth and High
Society in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford: Berg, 1994).
7. Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell Jr., eds., Comparative Politics To­
day: A World View, 5th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 240; Charles Hauss,
Comparative Politics: Domestic Responses to Global Challenges (St. Paul, Minn.:
West, 1994), 132-33; Michael Curtis, ed., Introduction to Comparative Government,
2d ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), 181.
8. Roy Macridis, ed., Modern Political Systems: Europe, 6th ed. (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1987), 170-71; John D. Nagle, Introduction to Compar­
ative Politics, 4th ed. (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1995), 29-36.
9. The inspiration is acknowledged in Gabriel Almond, "The Civic Culture:
Prehistory, Retrospect and Prospect," manuscript, Center for the Study of
Democracy, University of California at Irvine, 1995.
10. Ted R. Gurr, POLITY II: Political Structure and Regime Change, 1800-1986
(Codebook) (Ann Arbor: ICPSR, 1990), 36-37.
11. Recent studies that employ POLITY data include Stephen Knack and
Philip Keefer, "Does Inequality Harm Growth Only in Democracies? A Replica­
tion and Extension," American Journal ofPolitical Science 41 (1997): 323-32; James
Morrow, Randolph Siverson, and Tressa Tabares, "The Political Determinants
of International Trade: The Major Powers, 1907-90," American Political Science
Revievj (hereafter APSR) 92 (1998): 649-61; William Dixon and Bruce Moon,
"Political Similarity and American Foreign Trade Patterns," Political Research
Quarterly 46 (1993): 5-25; Yi Feng, "Democracy, Political Stability, and Economic
Growth," British Journal of Political Science 27 (1997): 391-418; Michael D. Ward
and Kristian S. Gleditsch, "Democratizing for Peace," APSR 92 (1998): 51-6 1;
Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
12. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, quoted in Roxanne
Doty Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 163.
13. Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, The Development ofAmerican Political
Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1967), 7-21. See
also Wilfred McClay's introduction to the recent reissue of John Burgess, The
Foundations of Political Science (1933; reprint, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction,
1994); and Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Keywords in American Politics since Inde­
pendence (New York: Basic, 1987), 164-68.
14. On Wilson's academic career see August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A
Biography (New York: Collier, 1991), chaps. 2-3; and Henry W. Bragdon, Wood-
row Wilson: The Academic Years (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1967).
13. McClay, "Introduction," vii.
16. Charles Merriam, A History of American Political Theories (New York:
Macmillan, 1903), 299. The preoccupation with national cohesion was shared by
American elites in general; it was not limited to political scientists. See Frank
Trommler, "Inventing the Enemy: German-American Cultural Relations, 1900-
17," in Confrontation and Cooperation: Germany and the United States in the Era of
World War 1, 1900-1924, ed. Hans-Jürgen Schröder (Providence: Berg, 1993), 110.
17. McClay, "Introduction," xni-xv.
18. During the nineteenth century about 9,000 American students flocked to
German universities, most of them after 1870. Berlin, home to the national Prus­
sian university, was the most popular destination, with American enrollment to­
taling 1,300 for the 1880s. See Dorothy Ross, The Origins ofAmerican Social Science
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 55; Somit and Tanenhaus, De­
velopment of American Political Science, 15 -16 ; Konrad H. Jarausch, "Huns,
Krauts, or Good Germans? The German Image in America, 1880-1980," in Har­
ris, German-American Interrelations: Heritage and Challenge, 148; Jürgen Herbst,
The German Historical School in American Scholarship, 1800-18/0 (Port Washing­
ton, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1972), chap. 1.
19. Somit and Tanenhaus, Development of American Political Science, 17.
20. Richard Ely instructed Wilson in political economy and George S. Morris
in philosophy. See Niels A. Thorsen, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson,
18 /5-19 10 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), chap. 4; John M. Mul­
der, Woodrow Wilson: The Years of Preparation (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978), 75,83.
21. Somit and Tanenhaus, Development of American Political Science, 34-38.
22. Wilson, for example, characterized German scholarship as exceptionally
"diligent" and "learned." See Woodrow Wilson, "A Book Review," Aprü 17,
1887, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur S. Link et al., 69 vols. (Prince­
ton: Princeton University Press, 1966-94) (hereafter PWW), 5:494.
23. McClay, "Introduction," xvi.
 24. Burgess later prepared an abridged version of the book, but a contract to
publish it was rescinded during World War I because of his German sympathies.
That version was published posthumously as The Foundations of Political Science
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1933). My discussion draws on the 1994
reprint by Transaction.
25. Burgess, Foundations, 3.
26. Ibid., 31-38. On the popularity and legitimacy of racialist ideas in the in­
tellectual discourse of late nineteenth-century America see Rogers M. Smith,
"Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America,"
APSR 87 (1993): 558-60; John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of Ameri­
can Nativism, 1860-1925,2d ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1988), chap. 6.
27. Burgess, Foundations, 20,16.
28. Ibid., chap. 5, quotations from 66, 70, 85-86.
29. The analogy between the German and American experience is most evi­
dent in John Burgess, "Laband's Public Law of the German Empire," Political
Science Quarterly 3 (March 1888), esp. 124-26. On the Prussian monarch, see John
Burgess, "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor," Political Science Quar­
terly 3 (June 1888): 335.
30. Burgess, Foundations, 106.
31. Ibid., 106,108,109.
32. Ibid., 75-76.
33. Ibid., 114.
34. Ibid., 121-22.
35. Burgess, "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor," 337.
36. Burgess, Foundations, 124.
37. Burgess, "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor," 334,335,347,349.
38. Burgess, Foundations, 127-28.
39. Burgess, "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor," 345-47.
40. Ibid., 357.
41. See Manfred Jonas, The United States and Germany: A Diplomatic History
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), chap. 2.
42. See Robert E. Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler: Prelude to War (New York:
Paragon House, 1989), chap. 5; Jarausch, "Huns, Krauts, or Good Germans?"
146-49; Trommler, "Inventing the Enemy."
43. John W. Burgess, Germany and the United States (New York: Germanistic
Society of America, 1908).
44. John W. Burgess, The European War of 1914: Its Causes, Purposes, and Prob­
able Results (Chicago: McClurg, 1915).
45. Ibid., 92-94.
46. The reason for the alteration in Wilson's view had more to do with nation­
alism than with concern for racial justice. See Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, 11-12 ,2 1.
 47. On the shift in the focus of late nineteenth-century political science from
the issue of "nation" to "state" see James Farr, "From Modern Republic to Ad­
ministrative State: American Political Science in the Nineteenth Century," in
Regime and Discipline: Democracy and the Development of Political Science, ed.
David Easton, John Gunnell, and Michael Stein (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1995).
48. "Editorial Note: Wilson's First Treatise on Democratic Government,"
PWW 5:58; Wilson, The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics (Boston:
Heath, 1889). All citations of The State are to this edition. Wilson's course notes
read more like preliminary book drafts than like skeletal lecture outlines, and
thus provide invaluable insight into his thought.
49. During 1888-95 Wilson also returned to Johns Hopkins annually to teach
administration, thus maintaining a vital connection with a graduate research en­
vironment. See Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, chaps. 8-io.
50. The State made available in English vast amounts of knowledge formerly
accessible only to advanced scholars. It was very successful and was revised in
1898 and 1910. The first part of the book is historical; the second part consists of
comparative "country chapters." In the comparative chapters Wilson relied
heavily on "the great" Handbuch des öffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart, an ency­
clopedic comparative survey of the theoretical principles and practice of poli­
tics and administration. See "Editorial Note: Wilson's 'The State/" PWW 6:245.
The State was translated into several foreign languages, including German. See
Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, 173-78. The opinion that the book was "probably
Wilson's greatest scholarly achievement" derives from his biographer Arthur
Link, quoted in Mulder, Woodrow Wilson, 103.
51. Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, chap. 1.
52. See especially Congressional Government, published in 1885 and later ac­
cepted as Wilson's dissertation. The book is reproduced in PWW 4:13-179.
53. "Prince Bismarck," November 1877, PWW 1:313. See also Congressional
Government, PWW 4:42-43, for a description of Gladstone's status in Parliament
as similar to Bismarck's status in the Reichstag.
54. "Self-Government in France," September 4,1879, PWW 1:515-38; quota­
tions from 529, 527.
55. In later years Wilson adopted Burke as his chief mentor; see Mulder,
Woodrow Wilson, 126-27.
56. "Self-Government in France," PWW 1:523,524,533.
57. French democracy is described as a "quick intoxicant or a slow poison"
in "The Modem Democratic State," December 1885, PWW 5:63. "Intoxication"
is also attributed to France in "Democracy and Efficiency," October 1900, PWW
12:6. For reference to "unstable" constitutionalism in France see "An Outline of
the Preface to 'The Philosophy of Politics,"' January 12,1891, PWW 7:98. In the
same outline Wilson also refers to French political development as "mechani­
cally homogenous" (101) and "impetuous" (102). Both terms carry a negative
connotation from the perspective of Wilson's notion of "normal" organic polit­
ical development.
58. On Wilson's struggle with the German language see WW to Edwin R. A.
Seligman, April 19,1886, PWW 5:63. That he won the struggle and read widely
in German Staatswissenschaft, philosophy, and political economy is most evident
from Wilson's "Working Bibliography, 1883-90," PWW 6:562-611. Wilson's
writings and lecture notes are loaded with citations of leading German schol­
ars.
59. Wilson, The State, 2. The Aryan theme is derived from the British scholars
Sir Henry Maine and William Hearn, the Darwinian theme from Herbert
Spencer; see bibliography in The State, 13.
60. The State, 4-5,154,580,577.
61. Wilson categorically rejects the social-contract theory of the state; ibid.,
11- 15 .
62. "Notes for Lectures at the Johns Hopkins," 1891-94, PWW 7:124.
63. "Notes for Lectures on Public Law," 1894-95, PWW 9:12.
64. "Report of a Lecture at the New York Law School," March 11,1892, PWW
7477 *
65. "Notes for Lectures on Public Law," PWW 9:13. See also "Report of a Lec­
ture at the New York Law School," PWW 7:477-79.
66. "Report of a Lecture at the New York Law School," PWW 7:474.
67. WW to Daniel Coit Gilman, April 13,1889, PWW 6:169-72.
68. "Minutes of the Johns Hopkins Seminary of Historical and Political Sci­
ence," March 15,1889, PWW 6:153.
69. "A Lecture on Democracy," December 5,1891, PWW 7:358.
70. "The Modem Democratic State," December 1,1885, PWW 5:63.
71. "A Lecture on Democracy," PWW 7:358.
72. "The Modern Democratic State," PWW 5:63. Elsewhere Wilson wrote that
Britain was fortunate to be geographically separated from "the fell sweep of Eu­
ropean wars and revolutions." But it was not the fate of Germany that Britain
was spared from as much as the "international compulsion which forced France
to become a centralized military despotism." Protected by their natural bound­
aries, the English "were in every way much more German [read: better] than the
Franks." See "The English Constitution," 1890-91, PWW 7:12-14.
73. "A Lecture on Democracy," PWW 7:356. For the argument that meritoc­
racy is a form of democracy see also "Notes on Administration," 1892-95, PWW
7:392-93. In later years Wilson used the medieval Catholic church as an exam­
ple of an "absolutely democratic organization," since its ranks were open to any
qualified man regardless of class. See "Address at the Inauguration of the Pres­
ident of Franklin and Marshall College," January 7,1910, PWW 19:743; and class
notes taken by Homer Zink, a student in Wilson's course in 1904, at the Seeley
G. Mudd manuscript library of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson Collec­
tion, box 6.
74. "The Modem Democratic State," PWW 5:85.
75. See The State, 285,296; also "Notes for a Public Lecture at the Johns Hop­
kins," March 16,1888, PWW 5:713-14.
76. "A Lecture on Democracy," PWW 7:354.
77. "The English Constitution," 1890-91, PWW 7:36-37.
78. Homer Zink notes.
79. "The Study of Administration," 1887, PWW 5:363,365-66,376,367,378.
80. In the 1887 essay Wilson described it as "not fully" self-government; ibid.,
380.
81. "Notes for Lectures on Public Law," 1894-95, PWW 9:24.
82. See "Random Notes for The Philosophy of Politics/" January 25,1895,
PWW 9:130.
83. See, for example, "A Newspaper Report of a Lecture at Brown Univer­
sity," November 12,1889, PWW 6:417-23; also "Marginal Note to 'The Labor
Movement in America' by Richard Ely," PWW 5:560; and "Socialism and
Democracy," August 22,1887, PWW 5:560-63.
84. "Notes For Lectures on Public Law," September 1894, PWW 9:26-27. In
Wilson's day the British Crown, held by Victoria, did not appear as lame as it
does today, and the negative image of Victoria's grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm, was
yet to crystallize fully.
85. Ibid., 27.
86. Wilson, The State, 254.
87. "The English Constitution," October 1890, PWW 7:41.
88. "A Newspaper Report of a Lecture on 'Systems of City Government,'"
April 8,1890, PWW 6:612-13.
89. "Notes for a Classroom Lecture," February 14,1889, PWW 6:91.
90. "Notes for Lectures at the Johns Hopkins," February 1892, PWW 7:388-91.
91. "A Newspaper Report of a Lecture on Municipal Government," January
19,1889, PWW 6:53.
92. "Notes for a Public Lecture at Johns Hopkins," March 16,1888, PWW 5:712.
93. "A Newspaper Report of a Lecture on Municipal Government," PWW
6:53-54.
94. Congressional Government.
95. Jonas, United States and Germany, 55-60.
96. See Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and (J.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1987), 128-29; "Edward G. Elliot Memorandum of a Conver­
sation with Wilson," PWW 14:324.
97. "Democracy and Efficiency," PWW 12 :13,7 /1 7-
98. With regard to France, Wilson's swing toward nationalism did not arouse
the kind of quandary that it did with regard to Germany and Britain. In "Democ­
racy and Efficiency" Wilson continued to depict French democratic institutions
as mere "intoxicants," and France as a democracy in form only; ibid,, 6.
99. Ibid., 15 -17 .
100. Walter J. Shepard, "The German Doctrine of the Budget," APSR 4 (1910):
52-62.
101. Raymond G. Gettell, Introduction to Political Science (Boston: Ginn, 1910),
I 75-
102. Frank Goodnow, Municipal Government (New York: Century, 1909), 386.
103. See, e.g., Joseph T. Bishop, "The Bürgermeister, Germany's Chief Mu­
nicipal Magistrate," APSR 2 (May 1908): 396-410; J. W. Garner, "A Review of
'The German Empire' by Burt E. Howard," APSR 2 (1908): 105-8. Several years
earlier Gamer (who would serve as the APSA's nineteenth president) published
two admiring essays on the German judiciary: "The Judiciary of the German
Empire I," Political Science Quarterly 17 (1902): 490-516; and 'The Judiciary of
the German Empire II," Political Science Quarterly 18 (1903): 512-30.
104. David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 58. The "war issues" courses
evolved after 1918 into "contemporary civilization" curricula. See "Columbia to
Celebrate 75 Years of Great Books," New York Times, November 16,1994.
105. Ross, Origins of American Social Science, 454.
106. E.g., Karl F. Geiser, Democracy versus Autocracy (Boston: Heath, 1918).
Geiser was professor of political science at Oberlin College. On the role of lead­
ing historians in the propaganda effort at home and abroad see George T. Blakey,
Historians on the Homefront: American Propagandists for the Great War (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1970). See also Jarausch, "Huns, Krauts, or Good
Germans?" 150.
107. Simon Litman, "Revolutionary Russia," APSR 12 (1918): 18 1-9 1; quota­
tions from 187,182.
108. Quoted in N. Gordon Levin Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics (Lon­
don: Oxford University Press, 1968), 42-43.
109. Charles McLaughlin, A Short History of the Department of Political Science
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1977). At the University of Minnesota,
recording machines were placed in classrooms, and the desks of allegedly un­
patriotic professors were rifled at night. See Robert Morían, "The Reign of Ter­
ror in the Middle West," in The Impact of World War I, ed. Arthur S. Link (New
York: Harper and Row, 1969), 76.
110. See "The Case of the Columbia Professors," Nation, October 11, 1917,
388-89, reprinted in David F. Trask, World War I at Home (New York: Wiley,
19 70)/159-62.
11 1. Somit and Tanenhaus, Development of American Political Science, 3.
112. Howard Odum, American Masters of Social Science (New York: Henry Holt,
1927), 108.
 113. Herbert B. Adams, The Germanic Origins of New England Towns (Balti­
more: Johns Hopkins Press, 1882).
114. Quoted in John G. Gunnell, The Descent of Political Theory (Chicago: Uni­
versity of Chicago Press, 1993), 38. On Adams's Teutonism see also Ross, Ori­
gins of American Social Science, 72-73.
115. Gettell, Introduction to Political Science, 39,37.
116. Wilson, The State.
117 . Charles Beard, "The Teutonic Origins of Representative Government,"
APSR 26 (1932): 28-44.
118. Burgess, Foundations, 56.
119. In addition to Wilson's The State and Burgess's writings, major exposi­
tions of the doctrine of the state included Theodore Woolsey, Political Science, or
the State Theoretically and Practically Considered (New York: Scribner, Armstrong,
1877); and Westei W. Willoughby, An Examination of the Nature of the State (New
York: Macmillan, 1896).
120. Walter J. Shepard, "Review of 'Authority in the Modem State' by Harold
Laski," APSR 13 (1919): 494.
121. Walter J. Shepard, "Review of Laski's 'The Foundations of Sovereignty/"
APSR 16 (1922): 131; idem, "Review of 'Authority in the Modem State/" 491.
See John G. Gunnell, "The Declination of the 'State' and the Origins of Ameri­
can Pluralism," in Political Science in History: Research Programs and Political Tra­
ditions, ed. James Farr, John S. Dryzek, and Stephen T. Leonard (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1995).
122. Paul Bourke, "The Pluralist Reading of James Madison's Tenth Federal­
ist," Perspectives in American History 9 (1975): 277.
123. Ellen D. Ellis, "The Pluralist State," APSR 14 (1920): 399.

CHA P T E R 2. NAZI GERMANY

1. The transcripts of the APSA oral history interviews are archived at the Uni­
versity of Kentucky Library. The quotations are from p. 34 of the Dahl transcript.
2. Charles Merriam, William E Willoughby, and William B. Munro served as
president before 1933; James Pollock and Carl Friedrich were elected to the post
after World War II.
3. Dahl oral history transcript, 34.
4. See Lewis S. Feuer, "American Travelers to the Soviet Union, 1917-1932:
The Formation of a Component of New Deal Ideology," American Quarterly 14
(summer 1961): 119-49; Peter Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 19 17 -
1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967); Robert A. Skotheim,
Totalitarianism and American Social Thought (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Win­
ston, 1971); John Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Prince­
ton: Princeton University Press, 1972).
5. Stefan Kuhl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German
National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
6. Marie Kopp, "Legal and Medical Aspects of Eugenic Sterilization in Ger­
many," American Sociological Review 1 (1936): 761-70; quotations from 770.
7. Leonard Dinnerstein, Anti-Semitism in America (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1994); John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism,
1860-1925 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 277-86.
8. Robert E. Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler: Prelude to War (New York: Paragon,
1989), 122.
9. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 277-86.
10. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the Ameri­
can Historical Profession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 173. See
also Andrew Winston, "'A s His Name Indicates': R. S. Woodworth's Letters of
Reference and Employment of Jewish Psychologists in the 1930s," Journal of the
History of the Behavioral Sciences 32 (1996): 30-43.
11. Harold Lasswell to his parents, March 29,1923, Harold Dwight Lasswell
Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, box 56.
12. Lasswell to his parents, July 2,1924, and November 14,1928, Lasswell Pa­
pers, box 56.
13. Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, to Lass­
well, December 3,1963, Lasswell Papers, box 34.
14. Kate Pinsdorf, "Nature and Aims of the National Socialist German Labor
Party," American Political Science Review (hereafter APSR) 25 (May 1931): 377-88;
quotations from 377,378,384.
15. Ibid., 381,387,378-79,380.
16. Marion Pinsdorf, German-Speaking Entrepreneurs: Builders of Business in
Brazil (New York: Peter Lang, 1990).
17. During the 1930s APSR submissions were not peer-refereed; the journal's
current peer-review system was not systematized until the late 1960s. Ogg was
relieved of his editorship as a result of mounting dissatisfaction with his quasi-
autocratic style. But in none of the accounts of the episode that I have read is
there an indication that the discontent with Ogg and his eventual departure had
anything to do with his acceptance of uncritical articles about Nazi Germany
See Samuel Patterson, Brian Ripley, and Barbara Trish, "The American Political
Science Review: A Retrospective," PS: Political Science and Politics 21 (1988): 908-
25; oral history interviews with Taylor Cole and Austin Ranney, in Michael Bear,
Malcolm Jewell, and Lee Sigelman, eds., Political Science in America: Oral Histo­
ries of the Discipline (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991).
18. See American Political Science Association (APSA), Biographical Directory
(Washington, D.C: APSA, 1968); George Carey, "Obituary: Francis Graham Wil­
son," PS: Political Science and Politics 9 (1976): 393«
19. See John G. Gunnell, The Descent of Political Theory (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1993), 136.
20« Carey, "Obituary: Francis Graham Wilson/'
21. Francis G, Wilson, The Elements ofModem Politics: An Introduction to Polit­
ical Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936), 650-51.
22. Ibid., 653.
23. Ibid., 655.
24. Ibid,, 662.
25. APSA, Biographical Directory (1968); Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus,
The Development of American Political Science (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1967),
105-8.
26. Carey, "Obituary: Francis Graham Wilson,"
27. Social Science Research Council, Fellows of the SSRQ 1925-1951 (New
York, 1951)/ 439; Carey, "Obituary: Francis Graham Wilson,"
28. Remarks Made at the Presentation of the Seymour Thomas Portrait of William
Bennett Munro (Pasadena: California Institute of Technology, 1947).
29. William Bennett Munro, The Governments of Europe, 3d ed. (New York:
Macmillan, 1938); Munro to Carl Friedrich, December 2,1931, Carl Friedrich Pa­
pers, Harvard University Archives.
30. Munro, Governments ofEuroper 633-35.
31. Ibid., 635.
32. Ibid., 635-36,
33. Ibid., 636.
34. Woodrow Wilson, "The Study of Administration," 1887, in The Papers of
Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur S. Link et al., 69 vols. (Princeton: Princeton Univer­
sity Press, 1966-94), 5:359-80.
35. Vincent Ostrom, The Intellectual Crisis of American Public Administration,
rev. ed. (University: University of Alabama Press, 1974)/ 9.
36. Frank Goodnow, Municipal Government (New York: Century, 1909), 387,
386. On Goodnow's career, see Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Sci­
ence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chap. 8.
37. Albert Shaw, Municipal Government in Continental Europe (New York: Cen­
tury, 1895), 290,289.
38. Wilson, "Study of Administration," 379.
39. See Roger Wells, German Cities: A Study of Contemporary Municipal Politics
and Administration (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932), 3.
40. William Bennett Munro, The Government of European Cities (New York:
Macmillan, 1909; rev. ed., 1927); both editions cited in Bertram Maxwell, Con­
temporary Municipal Government of Germany (Baltimore: Warwick and York,
1928), 129.
 41. Frederick Blachly and Miriam Oatman, The Government and Administra­
tion of Germany (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928), 641. Other complimen­
tary, though less comprehensive, studies of Weimar administration included
Maxwell, Contemporary Municipal Government of Germany; and Wells, German
Cities.
42. E.g., by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship
and Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956).
43. See, e.g., John Diggins, "Flirtation with Fascism: American Pragmatic Lib­
erals and Mussolini's Italy," American Historical Review 71 (1966): 487-306; Fi-
lene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment; Skotheim, Totalitarianism and American
Social Thought.
44. 1 elaborate on the uncritical attitudes of American political scientists to­
ward Fascist Italy in Ido Oren, "Uncritical Portrayals of Fascist Italy and of
Iberic-Latin Dictatorships in American Political Science," Comparative Studies in
Society and History 42 (2000): 87-117.
45. Somit and Tanenhaus, Development ofAmerican Political Science, 105.
46. Barry Karl, Charles Merriam and the Study of Politics (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1972); oral histories of David Easton and Heinz Eulau, in Bear,
Jewell, and Sigelman, Political Science in America.
47. See, e.g., Herbert Simon, Models of My Life (New York: Basic, 1991), chap.
4; Gabriel A. Almond, A Discipline Divided: Schools and Sects in Political Science
(Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990), app. B.
48. Charles E. Merriam, New Aspects of Politics (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1925); quoted in Ross, Origins of American Social Science, 455.
49. Merriam, New Aspects.
30. Merriam privately characterized his wartime experience as a "ship­
wreck," which led him toward an intellectual "reorientation." See Karl, Charles
Merriam, 184.
31. See Higham, Strangers in the Land, chaps. 8,9.
32. See George Blakey, Historians on the Homefront: American Propagandists
for the Great War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970); David M.
Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1980).
33. Charles E. Merriam, "American Publicity in Italy," APSR13 (1919): 341-33.
34. Ross, Origins of American Social Science, 434.
33. Charles Merriam to Paul Kosok, April 3,1927, Charles E. Merriam Papers,
Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library (hereafter
MP), box 33.
36. Merriam to Shepard Clough, April 9,1928, MP, box 37.
37. Merriam to Paul Kosok, April 3,1927, MP, box 33.
38. Draft of Merriam's remarks in SSRC conference, undated, p. 131, MP, box
139.
 59. Charles E. Merriam, The Making of Citizens: A Comparative Study of Meth­
ods cf Civic Training (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), ix.
60. Merriam to Herbert Schneider, December 23,1927, MP, box 39; Merriam
to Shepard Clough, April 9,1928, MP, box 37.
61. Paul Harper, edv The Russia I Believe In: The Memoirs cf Samuel Harper
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945).
62. Samuel N. Harper, Civic Training in Soviet Russia (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1929), xiv.
63. Harper, Russia I Believe In, 156.
64. Herbert W. Schneider and Shepard Clough, Making Fascists (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1929).
65. Herbert W. Schneider, "Italy's New Syndicalist Constitution," Political
Science Quarterly 42 (1927): 161-202; Herbert W. Schneider, Making the Fascist
State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1928).
66. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, 226.
67. Schneider, Making the Fascist State, v; Merriam to Schneider, July 26,1929,
and October 11,19 27 , and Schneider to Merriam, January 3,1928, MP, box 39;
Merriam to Schneider, December 13,1927, Schneider Papers, Columbia Univer­
sity Library.
68. Charles E. Merriam, "Review of 'Making the Fascist State/" Journal of Po­
litical Economy 39 (1931): 132-33.
69. Schneider and Clough, Making Fascists, 203-4,74-75,204.
70. Merriam to Schneider, February 27,1929, MP, box 39; Merriam to Clough,
November 14,1929, MP, box 37.
71. Merriam, Making of Citizens, 222,224,223,232.
72. Ibid., 220,227,349,310.
73. Harper, Russia I Believe In, 181.
74. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, 147; William Dodd Jr. and Martha Dodd,
eds., Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 1933-1938 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941),
13 1; Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler, 128.
75. Charles E. Merriam, Political Power: Its Composition and Incidence (New
York: Whittlesey, 1934), 325.
76. Ibid., 184.
77. Ibid., 229,286-87,293,292-93.
78. Ibid., 299.
79. Merriam was conspicuously inspired by Karl Mannheim's Ideologie und
Utopie; see ibid., 73 n., 243 n. On the legal realists, Mannheim, and the historical
profession in the 1930s, see Novick, That Noble Dream, chap. 6.
80. Ibid., 3 11,3 16 .
81. Ibid., 303,42,41,95,39.
82. Ibid., 310,305,237,311.
83. In the book, Merriam explicitly repudiated Machiavelli's ideas. Machia-
velli entered Florentine politics shortly after the execution of Savonarola, and
his counsel that the prince must rely on arms was a reaction to the preacher's
downfall. I thank Mary Dietz for clarifying this matter to me.
84. Gulick to Merriam, September 18,1933, and Merriam to Gulick, October
4,1933, MP, box 99.
85. Dodd and Dodd, Ambassador Dodd's Diary; 114.
86. Chicago Tribune, August 16,1934.
87. Merriam to William Dodd, August 17,1934, MP, box 34.
88. Charles Merriam, Spencer Parratt, and Albert Lepawsky, The Government
of the Metropolitan Region of Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933).
89. See Karl, Charles Merriam.
90. Louis Brownlow, A Passion for Anonymity, vol. 2 of The Autobiography of
Louis Brownlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 472,225. See also
Karl, Charles Merriam, 147; Simon, Models of My Life; Leonard White, "Training
for Public Service at the University of Chicago," National Municipal Review 28
(July 1939): 570-72.
91. Brownlow, Passion for Anonymity, 262.
92. Ibid., 302,307.
93. Louis Brownlow, "Planning and Cooperation among International Orga­
nizations," National Municipal Review 25 (September 1936): 480.
94. Brownlow, Passion for Anonymity, 307.
95. Dodd and Dodd, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 155.
96. Brownlow, Passion for Anonymity, 310.
97. Roger Wells, "Review of Dr. Jeserich's 'Jahrbuch,'" National Municipal Re­
view 23 (November 1934): 639.
98. Brownlow, Passion for Anonymity, 231-32.
99. Rowland Egger, "Review of Dr. Jeserich's 'Jahrbuch,'" National Municipal
Review 24 (May 1935): 286.
100. Rowland Egger, "Hinky, Dinky, Parlez Vous?" National Municipal Review
26 (October 1937): 478.
101. APSA, Biographical Directory (1973); Paul David, "Obituary: Rowland
Egger," PS: Political Science and Politics 12 (1979): 545-46.
102. Lepawsky to Hy (probably Hyman Cohen, another student and assis­
tant of Merriam), August 6,1934, MP, box 34.
103. Lepawsky to Merriam, August 7,1933, MP, box 34.
104. Gabriel A. Almond, "Obituary: Albert Lepawsky," PS: Political Science
and Politics 27 (1994): 282-84. Lepawsky was Almond's brother-in-law.
105. Ibid.; Albert Lepawsky, "The Nazis Reform the Reich," APSR 30 (April
1936): 324-50. See 331 n. 44, referring to material published in "Sept.-Oct., 1935."
106. Lepawsky, "The Nazis Reform the Reich," 324,348, 349,350,342, 345.
107. Harold D. Lasswell and Dorothy Blumenstock, World Revolutionary Pro­
paganda: A Chicago Study (New York: Knopf, 1939).
 108. Almond, "Obituary: Albert Lepawsky"; APSA, Biographical Directory
(1968); APSA, APSA Membership Directory (Washington, D.C.: APSA, 1988).
109. Brownlow, Passion for Anonymity, 222; Simon, Models of My Life; White,
"Training for Public Service," 571,
110. Clarence Ridley, "The Information Bureau in German Cities," National
Municipal Review 23 (April 1934): 209-11,214.
1 1 1 . Brownlow, Passion for Anonymity, 465-66.
112. See Michael Zalampas, Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich in American Mag­
azines, 1923 -1939 (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1989),
96-97.
113. Brownlow, Passion for Anonymity, 360-61.
114. Ibid., 362-70.
115. See Tang Tsou, "Fact and Value in Charles E. Merriam," Southwestern So­
cial Science Quarterly 36 (1955): 9-26.
116. "Civil Service Assembly Makes Chicago Its Headquarters," National
Municipal Review 24 (March 1935): 175.
117. James K. Pollock and Alfred Boerner, The German Civil Service Act
(Chicago: Civil Service Assembly of the U.S. and Canada, 1938).
118. Dennis Anderson, James Kerr Pollock: His Life and Letters (Ann Arbor:
Michigan Historical Society, 1972).
119. About fifty academics participated in the tour, including professors from
the University of Chicago, Columbia, and Princeton. The tour's itinerary is in
the James Pollock Papers, Bentley Library, University of Michigan (hereafter
PP), box 85; Pollock to Dr. K. O. Bertling, May 22,1934, PP, box 1. On the Carl
Schurz society see Dodd and Dodd, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 156,261.
120. Pollock to Arnold B. Hall, August 30,1934, PP, box 1.
121. Kurt Wilk, "Review of Pollock's 'The Government of Greater Ger­
many/" National Municipal Review 28 (June 1939): 485.
122. Henry Lichtenberger, The Third Reich (New York: Greystone, 1937).
123. James K. Pollock, "Review of Lichtenberger's 'The Third Reich,'" APSR
33 (February 1939): 120-21.
124. Newspaper clip titled "Declares Elimination of Spoils System Essential,"
PP, box 95. Neither the name of the newspaper nor the date appears on the clip.
125. Pollock to Belsley, June 30,1937, and Belsley to Pollock, July 9,1937, PP,
box 3.
126. Pollock and Boerner, German Civil Service Act, 6 ,9 ,11.
127. James K. Pollock, The Government of Greater Germany (New York: Van
Nostrand, 1938), 105.
128. Roger Wells, "Review of 'The German Civil Service Act/" APSR 32 (Oc­
tober 1938): 1008; Pollock to Wells, July 18,1938, PP, box 7.
129. Wells to Pollock, September 13,1938, PP, box 7.
 130. Alfred V. Boemer, "Towards Reichsreform — The Reichsgau," APSR 33
(October 1939): 853-59; quotations from 853,854,858-59.
131. William Shirer, Twentieth Century Journey; vol. 2 (Boston: Little, Brown,
1984), 204.
132. Boerner was last listed, with no academic affiliation, in the APSA's Bio­
graphical Directory of 1945.
133. Anderson, James Kerr Pollock
134. Rowland Egger, "Review of 'German Cities/" National Municipal Review
22 (February 1933): 75.
135. Wells, German Cities, 13.
136. Wells to James Pollock, June 21,1934, PP, box 3.
137. Frederick L. Schuman, The Nazi Dictatorship: A Study in Social Pathology
and Politics of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 1935); Roger Wells, "Review of 'The
Nazi Dictatorship/" APSR 29 (August 1935): 678.
138. Roger Wells, "Municipal Government in National Socialist Germany,"
APSR 29 (August 1935): 653-59; quotations from 658,653.
139. Roger Wells, "The Liquidation of the German L ä n d erAPSR 30 (April
1936): 350-61; editor's note on 324.
140. Ibid., 350,357.
141. Elsa Wells Kormann, "Obituary: Roger Wells," PS: Political Science and
Politics 28 (1995): 123.
142. Roger Wells, "The Revival of the German Union of Local Authorities af­
ter World War II," APSR 41 (1947): 1182-87; quotation from 1182.
143. Kormann, "Obituary: Roger Wells."
144. Donald Critchlow, The Brookings Institution, 1916-1952 (De Kalb: North­
ern Illinois University Press, 1985), 30-40; quotations from 40.
145. W. F. Willoughby, The Government of Modern States, rev. ed. (New York:
D. Appleton, 1936), vi, 111,18 2 -8 3.
146. "History of the Kennedy School of Government," www.ksg.harvard.
edu /kennedy / history.
147. Friedrich and Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, 5, 3.
148. Carl J. Friedrich, "Review of Michels' 'Sozialismus und Faschismus in
Italien/" APSR 22 (1928): 197-99; quotation from 199.
149. Carl J. Friedrich, "Review of Emil Lengyel's 'Hitler,'" APSR 27 (Febru­
ary 1933)* MS-
150. Carl J. Friedrich, "The Development of the Executive Power in Ger­
many," APSR 27 (April 1933): 185-203; quotations from 200, 203.
151. Quoted in Gunnell, Descent of Political Theory, 138.
152. Carl J. Friedrich, "Responsible Government Service under the American
Constitution," in Problems of the American Public Service: Five Monographs on Spe­
cific Aspects of Personnel Administration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1935), 74*
 153. Karl F. Geiser, Democracy versus Autocracy (New York: D. C. Heath, 1918).
154. Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler, 78.
155. Karl F. Geiser, "Review of 'Germany Twilight or Dawn?' by Anonymous,
and 'My Battle' by Adolph Hitler," APSR 28 (February 1934): 136-38.
156. Anonymous, Germany: Twilight or Dawn? (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1933)/ 7-
157. Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler, 123,130.
158. Johannes Mattem, "Review of Lichtenberger's 'The Third Reich,"' APSR
31 (October 1937): 962-64.
139. APSA, Biographical Directory (1933).
160. James Miller, "Youth in the Dictatorships," APSR 32 (October 1938): 963 -
70.
161. APSA, Biographical Directory (1968).
162. Alfred V. Boerner, "The Position of the NSDAP in the German Constitu­
tional Order," APSR 32 (December 1938): 1060-81; quotations from 1081,1061,
1063,1071,1076.
163. John D. Lewis, "Review of 'Staats und Verwaaltungsrecht im Dritten
Reich,'" APSR 30 (Febmary 1936): 172-73.
164. Harlan Wilson et al., "Obituary: John D. Lewis," PS: Political Science and
Politics 21 (1988): 307-8.
163. Gerhard Krebs, "Review of Huber's 'Verfassung,'" APSR 32 (December
1938): 1171-73.
166. APSA, Biographical Directory (1933).
167. Boerner, "Towards Reichsreform — The Reichsgau/'
168. Donald Kettl, "Public Administration: The State of the Field," in Politi­
cal Science: The State of the Field, ed. Ada Finifter (Washington, D.C.: APSA, 1993),
407-28.
169. Ostrom, Intellectual Crisis of Public Administration, 26-28.
170. Browrdow, Passion for Anonymity, 463-66.
171. "History of the Kennedy School of Government."
172. Kettl, "Public Administration," 4 11-12 . The quotation is attributed to
Dwight Waldo.
173. Ostrom, Intellectual Crisis of Public Administration, 7; Herbert Simon, Ad­
ministrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Or­
ganizations, 4th ed. (New York: Free Press, 1997), 29.
174. Ostrom, Intellectual Crisis of Public Administration; Waldo quoted on 10.
173, Kettl, "Public Administration," 408.
176. Ibid., 411.
177. Ostrom, Intellectual Crisis of Public Administration, 6.
178. As Ross, Origins ofAmerican Social Science, 432, observed, "Max Weber's
pessimistic vision of bureaucracy had no impact on American students of ad­
ministration until the 1930s."
 C HA P T E R 3. S T AL I N ’S SOVI ET UNION

1. Ira Katznelson, "The Subtle Politics of Developing Emergency: Political

Science as Liberal Guardianship/' in The Cold War and the University: Toward an
Intellectual History of the Postwar Years, ed. Noam Chomsky et al. (New York:
New Press, 1997), 255.
2. The transformation of America's leading universities from "ivory towers"
to government-dependent service institutions is ably analyzed in Rebecca S.
Lowen, Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation ofStanford (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997); and R. C. Lewontin, "The Cold War and
the Transformation of the Academy," in Chomsky et aL, The Cold War and the
University, 1-34.
3. According to Christopher Simpson, ed., Universities and Empire: Money and
Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War (New York: New Press, 1998), xii,
"military, intelligence, and propaganda agencies provided by far the largest part
of the funds for large research projects in the social sciences in the United States
from World War II until well into the 1960s." I elaborate on the ties between lead­
ing political scientists and national security agencies in chapter 4.
4. Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 16.
5. Ibid., chap. 2.
6. Carl Friedrich, ed., Totalitarianism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1954), 2; quoted in Les K. Adler and Thomas G. Paterson, "Red Fascism:
The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of To­
talitarianism, 1930S-1950S," American Historical Review 75 (1970): 1048.
7. Gleason, Totalitarianism, 73-75.
8. Ibid., chaps. 6-7; quotation from 121. See also Stephen Cohen, "Scholarly
Missions: Sovietology as a Vocation," in his Rethinking the Soviet Experiment: Pol­
itics and History since 1917 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 3-37. Sig­
mund Diamond, Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the
Intelligence Community, 1945-1955 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992),
offers a detailed account of the government's involvement in the work of Har­
vard's Russian Research Center.
9. Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer­
sity Press, 1953); Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dicta­
torship and Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956).
10. Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled, x; Diamond, Compromised Campus, chap. 4;
Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the So­
viet Bloc, 1947-1956 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 117.
11. Norman Naimark, "On the 50th Anniversary: The Origins of the AAASS,"
NewNet: The Newsletter of the AAASS 38 (November 1998): 3.
12. Gleason, Totalitarianism, 122.
 13. Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled, 59,102,354,482.
14. Ibid., 477.
15. Friedrich and Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, vii, viii.
16. Gleason, Totalitarianism, 123-25; quotation from 125.
17. Friedrich and Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, 10 ,3 ,13 ,
63,68.
18. Ibid., 9-10.
19. Alfred G. Meyer, "Coming to Terms with the Past. . . and with One's
Older Colleagues," Russian Review 45 (1986): 401-8; Diamond, Compromised
Campus, chaps. 3-4; Cohen, "Scholarly Missions," 8-19. Cohen reports, for ex­
ample, that until 1977 contributors to the journal Problems of Communism were
secretly "security-cleared" before their articles were published. See also my dis­
cussion of the career of Frederick Schuman later in this chapter.
20. See, e.g., H. Gordon Skilling and Franklyn Griffiths, Interest Groups in So­
viet Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973); Jerry F. Hough, The
Soviet Union and Social Science Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1977).
21. Meyer, "Coming to Terms with the Past," 401.
22. The contours of these debates were captured by a "Discussion," triggered
by Sheila Fitzpatrick's work, published in Russian Review 45 (October 1986).
More controversy on the subject followed in ibid., 46 (October 1987). See also
Cohen, "Scholarly Missions"; and Gleason, Totalitarianism, 128-42.
23. Katznelson, "Subtle Politics of Developing Emergency," 236-37.
24. This irony is noted in Terence Ball, "American Political Science in Its Post­
war Political Context," in Discipline and History: Political Science in the United
States, ed. James Farr and Raymond Seidelman (Ann Arbor: University of Michi­
gan Press, 1993), 218; and Timothy Mitchell, "The Limits of the State: Beyond
Statist Approaches and Their Critics," American Political Science Review (here­
after APSR) 85 (1991): 79.
25. See John G. Gunnell, "The Declination of the 'State' and the Origins of
American Pluralism," in Political Science in History: Research Programs and Polit­
ical Traditions, ed. James Farr, John S. Dryzek, and Stephen T. Leonard (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 19-40.
26. David B. Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public
Opinion (New York: Knopf, 1951); Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).
27. Truman, Governmental Process, 505,50-51.
28. Hans Morgenthau's In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examina­
tion of American Foreign Policy (New York: Knopf, 1951) was published in the
same year, by the same publisher, as Truman's Governmental Process.
29. Gunnell, "Declination of the 'State,'" 40.
30. Katznelson, "Subtle Politics of Developing Emergency," 255.
 31. Truman, Governmental Process, 516.
32. Robert A. Dahl, "Further Reflections on the 'Elitist Theory of Democ­
racy/" APSR 60 (1966): 301 n.; quoted in Terence Ball, "An Ambivalent Alliance:
Political Science and American Democracy," in Farr, Dryzek, and Leonard, Po­
litical Science in History, 58.
33. Truman, Governmental Process, 22-23;see Katznelson, "Subtle Politics of
Developing Emergency," 252-53.
34. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York:
Harper, 1942). Dahl, Preface to Democratic Theory; 131, described Schumpeter's
analysis of democracy as "excellent," with the caveat that he disagreed with
Schumpeter's claim that elections were of trivial importance in shaping public
policy. Schumpeter's influence on Dahl is stressed by Katznelson, "Subtle Poli­
tics of Developing Emergency," 244.
35. Dahl, Preface to Democratic Theory, 67-69.
36. Robert D. Putnam, "Striving for Tocqueville's America," Los Angeles
Times, June 4,1990.
37. The notion of the "Other" is from Edward Said, Orientalism (New York:
Vintage, 1978).
38. Dahl, Preface to Democratic Theory, 151.
39. Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, The Development of Political Science:
From Burgess to Behavioralism (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1967), 105-8.
40. See Lewis S. Feuer, "American Travelers to the Soviet Union, 1917-1932:
The Formation of a Component of New Deal Ideology," American Quarterly 14
(1962)1119-49; Peter Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 1917-1933
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967); Paul Hollander, Political
Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, 1928-
1978 (New York:, Oxford University Press, 1981); Frank A. Warren, Liberals and
Communism: The "Red Decade" Revisited, 2d ed. (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993); David Caute, The Fellow Travelers: Intellectual Friends of Communism,
rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Eduard Mark, "October or
Thermidor: Interpretations of Stalinism and the Perception of Soviet Foreign
Policy in the United States, 1927-1947," American Historical Review 94 (1989):
937-62; Jacob Heilbrunn, "The New York Times and the Moscow Show Trials,"
World Affairs 153 (winter 1991): 87-101.
41. Thomas R. Maddux, Years of Estrangement: American Relations with the So­
viet Union, 1933-194.1 (Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1980), 70.
42. Paul Harper, ed., The Russia I Believe In: The Memoirs of Samuel N. Harper,
1902-1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945), 240-41.
43. W. Ladejinsky, "Soviet State Farms, I," Political Science Quarterly 53
(March 1938): 60-82, quotation from 60; idem, "Soviet State Farms, II," ibid.
(June 1938): 207-32. Ladejinsky became a leading expert on Asian agrarian de­
velopment.
 44. William B. Munro, The Governments of Europe, 3d ed. (New York: Macmil­
lan, 1938), 757.
45. Friedrich and Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, 3.
46. Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961)*
47. Another indicator of Hopper's relative seniority is the number of book re­
views he contributed to the APSR in the 1930s, which significantly exceeded the
number of Fainsod's.
48. "Notes for a Talk to the Legion of Honor Dinner: Privilege of Being a Stu­
dent during World War I," February 14,1963; Hopper to Richard Nolte, No­
vember 9,1967; both in Bruce C. Hopper Papers, box 27.6, Harvard University
Archives.
49. Hopper to Richard Nolte, November 9,1967; Thomas Maddux to Richard
Nolte, April 11,1968; Hopper Papers, box 27.6. The official history of the Insti­
tute of Current World Affairs is at www.icwa.org/history.
50. Hopper to Nolte, November 9, 1967; various letters from A. Lawrence
Lowell to Hopper, 1934-1940; Hopper Papers, box 27.6.
51. Bruce C. Hopper, What Russia Intends: The Peoples, Plans and Policy of So­
viet Russia (London: Jonathan Cape, 1931); idem, Pan Sovietism: The Issue before
America and the World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931). The two books are iden­
tical, save for an introductory chapter omitted from the London edition.
52. Hopper, What Russia Intends, 17 ,19 ,11,2 8 3 .
53. Ibid., 12-16,20,19,22,22-23.
54. Ibid., 35.
55. Ibid., 200-201,133, 240-41.
56. Ibid., 240,259.
57. The term romance of economic development was coined by George Kennan
to describe the fascination of many foreign observers with Stalin's massive in­
dustrialization effort. See David C. Engerman, "Modernization from the Other
Shore: American Observers and the Costs of Soviet Economic Development,"
American Historical Review 105 (2000): 383-416. On this theme see also Heil-
brunn, "New York Times and the Moscow Show Trials."
58. Bruce Hopper entry in "Fiftieth Anniversary Report, Harvard Class of
1918," Hopper Papers, box 27,6.
59. Hopper to Richard Nolte, September 11,19 6 7, Hopper Papers, box 27.6.
60. Notes for a lecture at the Naval War College, March 3,1933; Thomas Mad­
dux to Richard Nolte, November 4,1968; Hopper Papers, box 27.6.
61. Maddux, Years of Estrangement, 70.
62. Harvard University news release announcing Hopper's retirement, May
28,1961; "Fiftieth Anniversary Report"; Hopper to Richard Nolte, September 11,
1967; Brig. General Harold Clark to Hopper, February 24,1961; "personal and
confidential" memo from Hopper to General Spaatz, May 23,1947; Hopper Pa­
pers, box 27.6.
63. Bruce C. Hopper, "Review of Julian Towster's 'Political Power in the
USSR/" APSR 43 (1949): 371-72.
64. Lecture draft, "Background on Colonialism, Civilization and Freedom,"
December 29,1966, Hopper Papers, box 27.6.
65. Merle Fainsod, International Socialism and the World War (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935).
66. Arnold J. Zürcher, "Review of Fainsod's 'International Socialism and the
World War/" APSR 29 (1935): 897-98.
67. See Merle Fainsod and Lincoln Gordon, Government and the American
Economy (New York: Norton, 1941).
68. Arnold Lien and Merle Fainsod, The American People and Their Govern­
ment: A Textbookfor Students in Introductory College Courses andfor the Active Elec­
torate (New York: Appleton-Century, 1934).
69. Merle Fainsod, "Review of 'Political and Economic Democracy/" APSR
31 (1937): 729-31-
70. Lien and Fainsod, American People and Their Government, v.
71. William Bennett Munro, The Government of the United States, National,
State, and Local, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1931).
72. Lien and Fainsod, American People and Their Government, 74,363.
73. Ibid., 441.
74. Ibid., 492.
75. Ibid., 497,499-500,498.
76. Ibid., 501-2. This paragraph is as striking for its idealization of French
colonial policy as for its idealization of the Soviet Union. As Brian Schmidt, The
Political Discourse ofAnarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations (Al­
bany: State University of New York Press, 1998), chap. 4, shows, uncritical atti­
tudes toward Western imperialism were common in international relations
discourse in the early twentieth century.
77. Lien and Fainsod, American People and Their Government, 357,358,507.
78. Friedrich and Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, 3-5.
79. Carl J. Friedrich, "Some Thoughts on the Politics of Government Con­
trol," Journal of Social Philosophy 1 (1936): 122-33; quotations from 122,124-25.
80. Ibid., 127-28.
81. Ibid., 131-33.
82. Ibid., 132.
83. John B. Poster, "A Warmth of Soul: Samuel Northrup Harper and the Rus­
sians, 1904-43," Journal of Contemporary History 14 (1979): 235-51; John C. Chal-
berg, "Samuel Harper and Russia under the Tsars and Soviets, 1905-1943"
(Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1974).
 84. Chalberg, "Samuel Harper/' chap. 9.
85. Harper, Russia I Believe In, 138.
86. Ibid., 6 1,157,197; Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 382,420-22.
87. Merriam to Harper, November 26,1926, Charles E. Merriam Papers, Spe­
cial Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library (hereafter MP),
box 31.
88. Poster, "Warmth of Soul"; Chalberg, "Samuel Harper."
89. Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 46-47.
90. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the Ameri­
can Historical Profession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 125;
Poster, "Warmth of Soul"; Chalberg, "Samuel Harper."
91. Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 276-77; Harper, Russia I Believe In, 222.
92. Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 283-85.
93. Samuel N. Harper, Civic Training in Soviet Russia (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1929); the Beard and Times reviews are quoted in Chalberg,
"Samuel Harper," 451-52.
94. Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 448-49.
95. Ibid., 451-52; Poster, "Warmth of Soul," 245.
96. Merriam to Harper, November 12,1926, MP, box 31; Chalberg, "Samuel
Harper," 285; Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 258.
97. Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 292-94,302.
98. Harper, Russia I Believe In, 186.
99. Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 303-5,329.
100. Ibid., chap. 6; Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 207.
101. Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 359-62.
102. Samuel N. Harper, The Government of the Soviet Union (New York: Van
Nostrand, 1937).
103. Quoted in Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 459.
104. Harper, The Government of the Soviet Union, 62,69.
105. Ibid., 189-91; Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," chap. 8.
106. Harper, Russia I Believe In, 259.
107. Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 392, 492-99; Warren, Liberals and Commu­
nism, 184.
108. Chalberg, "Samuel Harper," 537-44.
109. Schmidt, Political Discourse of Anarchy, 2 11; Chalberg, "Samuel Harper,"
422-23; Frederick L. Schuman, American Policy toward Russia since 1917: A Study
of Diplomatic History, International Law, and Public Opinion (New York: Interna­
tional, 1928); James P. Baxter, "Review of Schuman's 'American Policy toward
Russia/" APSR 23 (1929): 216-17; Merriam to Harold Dodds, July 3 1,19 4 1, MP,
box 47.
110. Herbert A. Simon, Charles E. Merriam and the "Chicago School" of Political
Science (Urbana: University of Illinois Department of Political Science, 1987), 4-5.
 11 1. Frederick L. Schuman, War and Diplomacy in the French Republic: An In­
quiry into Political Motivations and the Control of Foreign Policy (New York: Mc­
Graw-Hill, 1931); Graham Stuart, "Review of 'War and Diplomacy in the French
Republic/" APSR 26 (1932): 569-70.
112. Frederick L. Schuman, International Politics: An Introduction to the West­
ern State System, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937); quoted in Schmidt, Po­
litical Discourse of Anarchy, 2 11-14 ; George Blakeslee, "Review of Schuman's
'International Politics,'" APSR 27 (1933): 840-41.
113. Frederick L. Schuman, The Nazi Dictatorship: A Study in Social Pathology
and Politics of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 1935).
114. "Obituary: Frederick L. Schuman," New York Times, May 30,1981.
115. Simon, Charles £. Merriam, 7; Barry Karl, Charles Merriam and the Study of
Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 286-87.
116. Karl, Charles Merriam, 287-88; Ellen W. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: Mc­
Carthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 70.
117. My definition of "fellow travelers" and my classification of Schuman as
an important member of this camp follow the analysis of Warren, Liberals and
Communism.
118. Ibid., 103.
119. Frederick L. Schuman, "Liberalism and Communism Reconsidered,"
Southern Review (autumn 1936): 326-28; idem, "Give Me Liberty," New Republic,
June 23,1937, 201; both quoted in Warren, Liberals and Communism, 109-10.
120. Frederick L. Schuman, "Leon Trotsky: Martyr or Renegade?" Southern
Review (summer 1937): 53-74; quoted in Warren, Liberals and Communism, 164-
66.
121. "Letter to the Editor: To All Active Supporters of Democracy and Peace,"
Nation, August 26,1939,228.
122. See Warren, Liberals and Communism, 145-46.
123. Frederick L. Schuman, "Machiavelli in Moscow," New Republic, No­
vember 29,1939,158-60; quoted in Warren, Liberals and Communism, 200.
124. Frederick L. Schuman, "Machiavelli Gone Mad," New Republic, Decem­
ber 27,1939,290; quoted in William L. O'Neill, A Better World: The Great Schism:
Stalinism and the American Intellectuals (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 28.
125. Frederick L. Schuman, "Review of Bernard Pares's 'Russia and the
Peace,'" APSR 38 (1944): 1017-18.
126. Frederick L. Schuman, "Review of Victor Krevchenko's 1 Chose Free­
dom/" New Republic, May 6,1946,668; quoted in Novick, That Noble Dream, 342.
127. Frederick L. Schuman, Soviet Politics at Home and Abroad (1946; reprint,
New York: Knopf, 1953), 583; quoted in O'Neill, Better World, 126.
128. Heinz Eulau, "New Beginnings," New Republic, February 11,19 4 6 ,19 1-
93; discussed in O'Neill, Better World, 127; Merle Fainsod, "Review of Schuman's
'Soviet Politics at Home and Abroad/" APSR 40 (1946): 598-600.
 129. O'Neill, Better World, 130 -31,149 ; Frederick L. Schuman, "The Neuroses
of the Nations," in The Searchfor World Order: Studies by Students and Colleagues
of Quincy Wright, ed. Albert Lepawsky, Edward H. Buehrig, and Harold D. Lass-
well (New York: Appleton-Century, 1971), 312-23.
130. Leland Goodrich, "Review of Schuman's 'International Politics/ Fourth
Edition," APSR 43 (1949): 153-56.
131. Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 125.
132. Disapproval of McCarthyism is expressed, for example, in the APSA
presidential address delivered by Pendleton Herring in 1953; see "On the Study
of Government," APSR 47 (1953): 961-74.
133. Gleason, Totalitarianism, 122.
134. Lasswell to Roger W. Shugg, May 20,1947, Harold Dwight Lasswell Pa­
pers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, box 52; Lowen, Creat­
ing the Cold War University, 218,286.
135. O'Neill, Better World, 164.
136. "Obituary: Frederick L. Schuman"; Pravda is quoted in Elliot R. Good­
man, The Soviet Design for a World State (New York: Columbia University Press,
i960), 411.
137. Charles E. Merriam, The Making of Citizens: A Comparative Study of Meth­
ods of Civic Training (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 222,216 ,221-
22.
138. Karl, Charles Merriam, 288.
139. Charles E. Merriam, What Is Democracy? (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1941).
140. Charles E. Merriam, The New Democracy and the New Despotism (New
York: Whittlesey, 1939).
141. Merriam, What Is Democracy? 6,92.
142. Ibid., 8; Merriam, New Democracy and the New Despotism, 37; Charles E.
Merriam, "Planning Agencies in America," APSR 29 (1935): 209.
143. Charles E. Merriam, On the Agenda of Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1941), 98-99.
144. Merriam, "Planning Agencies in America," 209; Karl, Charles Merriam;
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New
York: Vintage, 1995), esp. 246-48.
145. Merriam, New Democracy and the New Despotism, 6.
146. Karl, Charles Merriam, 278-79,289.
147. Ibid., 290-92; Charles E. Merriam, "Review of Herman Finer's 'Road to
Reaction/" APSR 40 (1946): 133-36.
148. Brinkley, The End of Reform, 157-6 1; Theodore Rosenof, "Freedom, Plan­
ning and Totalitarianism: The Reception of F. A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom," Cana­
dian Review of American Studies 5 (1974): 149-65.
 149. Frank Knight, "Economic and Social Policy in a Democratic Society,"
Journal of Political Economy 58 (1950): 513.
150. Quoted in Brinkley, The End of Reform, 162-63.
151. Ibid., 162,164.
152. Friedrich and Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy; 9-10.
153. Transcript of Robert Dahl interview, APSA Oral History Project Collec­
tion, University of Kentucky Library; quotation from 97.
154. Robert A. Dahl and Charles Lindblom, Politics, Economics, and Welfare:
Planning and Politico-Economic Systems Resolved into Basic Social Processes (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), 3-4; Dahl oral history interview.
155. Dahl, Preface to Democratic Theory; 13 1; Samuel P. Huntington, The Third
Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Ok­
lahoma Press, 1991), 6.

C HA P T E R 4. COLD WAR POLI TI CS

1. Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1956), 151; Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases
of Politics (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, i960), quoted in How Harvard Rules:
Reason in the Service of Empire, ed. John Trumpbour (Boston: South End, 1989),
104.
2. Michael Klare, The University-Military-Police Complex: A Directory and Re­
lated Documents (New York: North American Congress on Latin America, 1970),
5 0 ,5 7 -
3. See Michael Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and
"Nation Building" in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2000), 27.
4. Finding aid, James William Fesler Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale
University Library (hereafter FP); conversation with Fesler, June 26,1998, Ham­
den, Conn.; David Easton to Fesler, October 9,1969, FP.
5. Remarks to the Yale and Government Committee of the Yale Club of Wash­
ington, February 25,1958, FP.
6. On Rowe see Robin Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-
1961, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 104; "David Nelson
Rowe," in The Complete Marquis Who's Who, www.galenet.com; Sigmund Dia­
mond, Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence
Community, 1945-1955 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 234.
7. Bruce Russett curriculum vitae, www.library.yale.edu/un/brusset.
8. Klare, University-Military-Police Complex, 61.
9. Robert Dahl, "The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a
Monument to a Successful Protest," American Political Science Review (hereafter
APSE) 55 (1961): 763-72; "Gabriel Abraham Almond/' in Writers Directory, 1998,
www.galenet.com; "Karl W. Deutsch/' Contemporary Authors Online, ibid.
10. Robert Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).
11. Allan Richards to James Fesler, undated; Fesler to Richards, December 2,
1958, FP.
12. "Fred Warren Riggs," in The Complete Marquis Who's Who.
13. Riggs to Fesler, July 10,1958; see also Walter Mode (from Djakarta) to Fes­
ler, August 13, i960, FP.
14. Riggs to Fesler, June 5, 1957; Riggs to Fesler (from Manila), October 7,
1958; Riggs to Fesler, December 16,1959, FP.
15. "Fred Warren Riggs"; Fred W. Riggs, Thailand: The Modernization of a Bu­
reaucratic Polity (Honolulu: East-West Center, 1966).
16. Fitzhugh Green, American Propaganda Abroad (New York: Hippocrene,
1988), 101; letterhead copied from Edward Weidner to Fesler, December 21,
1964, FP.
17. Quotation from Fesler to Red Somers, April 6,1956, FP; conversation with
Fesler.
18. Warren Hinckle, Robert Scheer, and Sol Stem, "The University on the
Make," Ramparts, April 1966, 52-60, quotation from 54; John Ernst, "Tutoring
Democracy: Michigan State University and the Politics of Reform in South Viet­
nam," in America's Wars in Asia: A Cultural Approach to History and Memory, ed.
Philip West, Steven Levine, and Jackie Hiltz (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998),
233- 44-
19. Hinckle, Scheer, and Stern, "University on the Make"; Ernst, "Tutoring
Democracy"; Kenneth J. Heineman, Campus Wars: the Peace Movement at Ameri­
can State Universities in the Vietnam Era (New York: New York University Press,
1993)/ 46-48.
20. Hinckle, Scheer, and Stem, "University on the Make."
21. Ibid.; Ernst, "Tutoring Democracy"; conversation with Fesler.
22. Ernst, "Tutoring Democracy"; conversation with Fesler; Arthur Naftalin
to Fesler, September 9,1957; Fesler to Naftalin, September 16,1957; Walter Mode
to Fesler, September 24,1956, FP; John D. Montgomery, Cases in Vietnamese Ad­
ministration (Saigon: National Institute of Administration, 1959).
23. Fesler to Red Somers, April 6,1954, FP.
24. Fesler to Allan Richards, September 13,1956, FP.
25. Conversation with Fesler; "Some Reflections on Administrative Organi­
zation," Administrative Research (Saigon), September 1957, FP; "Field Adminis­
tration in Vietnam: A Memorandum to the President," August 21,1956, FP.
26. Fesler to M. A. Anderson Jr., March 17,1961; see also Fesler to Fred Riggs,
November 19,1958, FP.
 27. Conversation with Fester.
28. Transcript of "Scholars View the World/' broadcast on WTIC radio, De­
cember 12,1956, FR
29. John W. O'Daniel, chairman of American Friends of Vietnam (AFVN), to
Fesler, September 6,1957; Fesler to O'Daniel, November 9,1957; Fesler to Luis
Andretta, executive secretary of AFVN, July 5, i960; Fesler to Anderson, March
17,1961, FP.
30. Ernst, "Tutoring Democracy," 239-40.
31. Heineman, Campus Wars, 132,137-38; Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Net­
work: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee, and the CIA (Armonk, N.Y.:
M. E. Sharpe, 1995), 163,156,176.
32. "Gabriel Abraham Almond," in The Complete Marquis Who's Who, 1999.
33. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes
and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963);
David Laitin, "The Civic Culture at 30," APSR 89 (1995): 168-73.
34. Laitin, "The Civic Culture at 30"; Carole Pateman, "Political Culture, Po­
litical Structure and Political Change," British Journal of Political Science 1 (1971):
291-305; Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, eds., The Civic Culture Revisited
(Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1980).
35. Ellen Herman, "The Career of Cold War Psychology," Radical History Re­
view, no. 63 (fall 1995): 70.
36. Notable exceptions are Irene L. Gendzier, Managing Political Change: So­
cial Scientists and the Third World (Boulder: Westview, 1985); and Michael D.
Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure ofU.S, Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988).
37. Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, 4.
38. Ibid., 503; Samuel P. Huntington, Instability at the Non-Strategic Level of
Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Defense Analysis, 1961). Huntington's
study was commissioned by the State Department. The Kennedy administra­
tion's focus on the Third World is nicely captured by David Halberstam, The Best
and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972).
39. Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, vii.
40. Gabriel A. Almond, "The Civic Culture; Prehistory, Retrospect, and
Prospect," paper presented at the Center for the Study of Democracy, Univer­
sity of California at Irvine, 1995,4; idem, Plutocracy and Politics in New York City
(Boulder: Westview, 1998), preface.
41. Almond, "Civic Culture: Prehistory," 2.
42. See Gendzier, Managing Political Change; and Shafer, Deadly Paradigms.
43. Harold D. Lasswell, Propaganda Techniques in the World War (New York:
Knopf, 1927); quoted in Michael J. Sproule, Propaganda and Democracy: The Amer­
ican Experience of Media and Mass Persuasion (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 68. A compelling interpretation of Lasswell as a master propagan­
dist is provided by Robert Horwitz, "Scientific Propaganda: Harold Lasswell,"
in Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, ed. Herbert J. Storing (New York: Holt,
Rinehart, 1962), 227-304.
44. Harold Lasswell, "The Function of the Propagandist," International Jour­
nal of Ethics 38 (1928): 258-68; quoted in James Farr, "The New Science of Poli­
tics: Democracy, Propaganda, and Civic Training," mimeograph, University of
Minnesota, 1998; see also Sproule, Propaganda and Democracy, 69.
45. Lasswell, "Function of the Propagandist," quoted in Dorothy Ross, The
Origins ofAmerican Social Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
456; Lasswell, Propaganda Techniques, quoted in Farr, "New Science of Politics,"
10; Horwitz, "Scientific Propaganda," 277.
46. Harold Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1930), 173,178,179,197,203.
47. Harold D. Lasswell, World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York:
Whittlesey, 1935), 25,237.
48. Ibid., 283.
49. Christopher Simpson, Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psy­
chological Warfare, 1945-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 22-23;
Sproule, Propaganda and Democracy, 193-94.
50. Lasswell to his parents, July 12,1941, Harold Dwight Lasswell Papers, Man­
uscripts and Archives, Yale University Library (hereafter LP), box 56, folder 787.
51. Gabriel A. Almond, A Discipline Divided: School and Sects in Political Sci­
ence (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990), 299; Lasswell to his parents, May 25,
1941, LP, box 56, folder 787.
52. Farr, "New Science of Politics"; Sproule, Propaganda and Democracy, 196;
Marc C. Smith, "Lasswell, Harold Dwight," in American National Biography On­
line, www.anb.org; Nathan Leites to Lasswell, October 3,1941, LP, box 57, folder
790.
53. Shils, Janowitz, Janis, Pool, Leites, and George are mentioned in Simpson,
Science of Coercion. Eulau is mentioned in Bruce Cumings, "Boundary Displace­
ment: Area Studies and International Studies during and after the Cold War," in
Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold
War, ed. Christopher Simpson (New York: New Press, 1998), 186.
54. Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom
and the Strugglefor the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: Free Press, 1989), 160;
Albert Lepawsky to Lasswell, February 23,1953, LP, box 57, folder 793.
55. Simpson, Science of Coercion.
56. Lasswell to Bill Fox, November 7,1951, LP, box 35, folder 469; Lasswell to
Robert E. Lane, December 20,1967, LP, box 56, folder 774.
57. Lasswell to Almond, March 9,1967, LP, box 3, folder 29; Harold Lasswell,
Daniel Lerner, and Hans Speier, Propaganda and Communication in World History
(Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1979).
58. Gabriel A. Almond with Harold Lasswell, "Aggressive Behavior by
Clients on Public Relief/' APSR 28 (1934): 643-55; Almond, Plutocracy and Poli­
tics, preface.
59. Merriam refused to recommend publication of the dissertation unless the
psychoanalytic section, which was unflattering to major benefactors of social
science, was dropped, something that Almond was reluctant to do; see Almond,
A Discipline Divided, 317. Although at the time Almond was angered by Mer-
riam's censorship, it appears that Merriam may have done him a favor; the
Carnegie Corporation funded much of Almond's postwar research, including
The Civic Culture. The dissertation was finally published sixty years later; see Al­
mond, Plutocracy and Politics.
60. "The Nature of the Enemy in American Domestic Information Policy," a
1942 OFF memo signed by Gabriel Almond, LP, box 3, folder 29; "Davis Is the
Man," newspaper clip dated June 15,1942, LP, box 52, folder 727; Lasswell to
David Rowe, March 11,19 4 2, LP, box 83, folder 1033; Sproule, Propaganda and
Democracy, 188; "Gabriel Almond," in The Complete Marquis Who's Who, 1997.
61. Almond, "Civic Culture: Prehistory."
62. Robin Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961,2d ed.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 40-43; quotation from 43.
63. Gabriel A. Almond, "The Christian Parties of Western Europe," World Pol­
itics 1 (1948): 30-58; Gendzier, Managing Political Change, 54.
64. Gabriel A. Almond, ed., The Struggle for Democracy in Germany (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949); Gendzier, Managing Political
Change, 54.
65. Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Their Foreign Policy (New
York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950), 3.
66. Ibid., 1 5 9 - 5 9 , 1 6o, and in general chap. 9.
67. John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New
York: Pantheon, 1986),
68. Almond, American People, 49, 53, 69,3.
69. Ibid., 149-50.
70. Ibid., 10, 232-33, 234-35; see als° Gendzier, Managing Political Change,
34- 35-
71. Klaus Knorr obituary, New York Times, March 26,1990; John Ranelagh, The
Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986),
683-84.
72. Gabriel A. Almond, The Appeals of Communism (Princeton: Princeton Uni­
versity Press, 1954), foreword by Frederick Dunn, vii, ix, xiv; and 245,246-47.
73. Ibid., 394, chap. 13.
 74. Simpson, Science of Coercion, 166 n. 23; Scott Lucas, Freedom's War: Amer­
ica's Crusade against the Soviet Union (New York: New York University Press,
1999); Herman, "Career of Cold War Psychology," 59; Christopher Simpson,
"U.S. Mass Communication Research, Counterinsurgency and Scientific 'Real­
ity/" in Ruthless Criticism: New Perspectives in U.S. Communication History; ed.
William S. Solomon and Richard McChesney (Minneapolis: University of Min­
nesota Press, 1993), 313-48.
75. Gabriel Almond entry, Writers Directory; and The Complete Marquis Who's
Who, 1997.
76. Cumings, "Boundaiy Displacement," 184-85 n. 18.
77. Simpson, Science of Coercion, 59-60; Diamond, Compromised Campus, 299-
300; Martin Oppenheimer, "Footnote to the Cold War: The Harvard Russian Re­
search Center," Monthly Review 48, no. 1 1 (1997): 7 -11.
78. Jeane M. Converse, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emer­
gence, 1890-1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 172-73, 408,
468; Simpson, "U.S. Mass Communication Research," 26,59,66.
79. They include (for The Appeals of Communism — see preface) Hadley Can-
tril, Frederick Dunn, Lucian Pye, Roger Hilsman, David Truman, Alexander
Geoige, and (for The Civic Culture — see preface) Klaus Knorr, Frank Bonilla,
Harry Eckstein, Herbert Hyman, and Alex Inkeles. Most of these names are
mentioned in Simpson, Science of Coercion.
80. Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political Devel­
opment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), vii; quoted in Herman,
"Career of Cold War Psychology," 71.
81. Conversation with Robert Holt, Minneapolis, May 7, 1999; Cumings,
"Boundary Displacement," 168-69. On the collaboration of Ford with the CIA
in those years see Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and
the World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 1999), 141-44.
82. Lucian W. Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya (Princeton: Princeton Uni­
versity Press, 1956). Pye expresses a "deep sense of indebtedness and obligation
to Gabriel Almond" on ix. His long list of debts to British colonial officials ap­
pears on ix-xi.
83. Gendzier, Managing Political Change, 99.
84. Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya, foreword by Frederick Dunn, and 8-9.
85. Ibid., 344,126,345,349.
86. Simpson, Science of Coercion, 84; Allan A. Needell, "Truth is Our Weapon':
Project TROY, Political Warfare, and Government-Academic Relations in the
National Security State," Diplomatic History 17 (1993): 399-420; David Wise and
Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Random House, 1964), 243;
John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military
Strength (New York: Dial, 1982), 46.
87. Dorothy Nelkin, The University and Military Research: Moral Politics at MIT
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 23; Lloyd Etheredge, "Ithiel de Sola
Pool," American National Biography Online.
88. Herman, "Career of Cold War Psychology," 85; Harry Eckstein, ed., In­
ternal War: Problems and Approaches (New York: Free Press, 1964).
89. Eric Wakin, Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsur­
gency in Thailand (Madison: University of Wisconsin Center for Southeast Asian
Studies, 1992), 24-25.
90. Quoted from Background, August 1966, in Loch Johnson, Americas Secret
Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989),
302 n. 31. According to Johnson, Pool actually severed his ties to the CIA in 1965
on grounds that the agency's insistence on keeping the ties secret was unethi­
cal.
91. Conversation with Kenneth Waltz, Boston, September 5,1998,
92. Latham, Modernization as Ideology, 7; Simpson, Science of Coercion, 190.
93. Lucian W. Pye, Observations on the Chieu Hoi Program: Memorandum Pre­
paredfor the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense,/International Security Affairs
and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation,
1969).
94. Simpson, "U.S. Mass Communication Research," 3 13 -15 ; Cumings,
"Boundary Displacement," 186. On Phoenix, see Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix
Program (New York: Morrow, 1990).
95. Etheredge, "Ithiel de Sola Pool"; Ithiel Pool sketch in "About Our Au­
thors," American Behavioral Scientist 8 (May 1965): 44; Sig Mickelson, America's
Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (New York: Praeger,
1983), 2 11; quotation from Etheredge.
96. Seymour Deitchman, The Best-Laid Schemes: A Tale of Social Research and
Bureaucracy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976), 310-20; Klare, University-Mil­
itary-Police Complex, 55; Ithiel de Sola Pool and Robert Abels on, "The Simul-
matics Project," in The New Style in Election Campaigns, ed. Robert Agranoff
(Boston: Holdbrook, 1972), 232-52.
97. James O. Whittaker, "Psychological Warfare in Vietnam," Political Psy­
chology 18 (1997): 165-79.
98. The dissertation was published as a book; see Paul Berman, Revolutionary
Organization: Institution Building within the People's Liberation Armed Forces (Lex­
ington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1974).
99. Conversation with Samuel Popkin, Washington, D.C., June 22,1998; Walt
W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cam­
bridge: Cambridge University Press, i960).
100. Conversation with Popkin; Samuel Popkin, "The Myth of the Village:
Revolution and Reaction in Vietnam" (Ph.D. diss., MIT, 1969); "Ellsberg Denies
Guilt, Will Fight," New York Times, August 17,1971; "Scholars Seeming Right Not
to Disclose Sources," ibid., October 25, 1971; "Harvard Specialist on Vietnam:
Samuel Lewis Popkin," and "Harvard Professor Jailed in Pentagon Papers
Case," ibid., November 22,1972.
101. Samuel Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Soci­
ety in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
102. Emily Eakin, "Political Scientists Leading a Revolt, Not Studying One,"
New York Times, November 4, 2000; Kurt Jacobsen, "Unreal, Man: Political Sci­
entists Have Turned Guerrillas," Guardian (London), April 3, 2001.
103. William Griffith obituary, Independent (London), October 15, 1998;
"Standing Firm against Communism," letter to the editor from Pool, Pye, Wood,
and Griffith, New York Times, July 11,1965; David M. Barrett, ed., Lyndon B. John­
son's Vietnam Papers: A Documentary Collection (College Station: Texas A&M Uni­
versity Press, 1997), 2 11; letter to the editor from Bloomfield, New York Times,
July 25,1965; "Lincoln P. Bloomfield," Writers Directory, www.galenet.com.
104. Nelkin, University and Military Research, 11 0 - 11; Caroll Bowen to Pool,
with a handwritten comment by Pool, 1971 (no exact date), LP, box 35, folder 473.
105. Hans Morgenthau, Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960-1970 (New
York: Praeger, 1970); Stanley Hoffmann, "A Retrospective," in Journeys through
World Politics: Autobiographical Reflections of Thirty-four Academic Travelers, ed.
Joseph Kruzel and James Rosenau (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989),
271; George M. Kahin and John W. Lewis, The United States in Vietnam (New
York: Dial, 1967); George Kahin obituary, New York Times, February 2,2000.
106. "McCarthy Sets Up Foreign Policy Unit," New York Times, August 5,
1968; "Humphrey Backs Draft Lottery as Fair to Youth," ibid., July 16,1968.
107. Barrett, Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam Papers, 2 11; "67 Professors Back Pol­
icy in Vietnam," New York Times, July 19,1965.
108. Morgenthau, Truth and Power, 24,26.
109. Charles Kadushin, The American Intellectual Elite (Boston: Little, Brown,
1974). 135-
110. Austin Ranney, "In Memoriam: Evron Kirkpatrick," PS: Political Science
and Politics 28 (1995): 543-44.
1 1 1 . Evron Kirkpatrick obituary, New York Times, May 9,1995; Albert Somit
and Joseph Tanenhaus, The Development of Political Science: From Burgess to Be-
havioralism (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1967), 154; Ranney, "Evron Kirkpatrick";
interviews with E. Pendleton Herring and Warren Miller, in Political Science in
America: Oral Histories of the Discipline, ed. Michael Baer, Malcolm Jewell, and
Lee Sigelman (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1991), 39, 246; David
Easton, "Remembering Herb: A Tribute to Herb Simon," www.apsanet.org/
new/simon.
112. "Evron M. Kirkpatrick," Contemporary Authors Online, 1999; transcript of
David Easton interview, APSA Oral History Collection, University of Kentucky
Library, folder 5.
 113. "Evron M. Kirkpatrick/' Contemporary Authors Online; Kirkpatrick obit­
uary, New York Times.
114. Chester, Covert Network, 76-77; Diamond, Compromised Campus, 98-108;
Lucas, Freedom's War, 117.
115. "Kahns Establish KSG Professorship to Honor Kirkpatricks," Harvard
University Gazette, October 9,1997, www.news.harvard.edu/gazette,
116. Alan Wolfe, "Practicing the Pluralism We Preach: Internal Processes in
the American Political Science Association," Antioch Review 29 (1969): 353-74.
117. Ibid., 371-72; Albert Somit and Joseph Tannenhaus, American Political
Science (New York: Atherton, 1964), 10 1-2; quoted in ibid., 365.
118. David Easton, The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Sci­
ence (New York: Knopf, 1953).
119. Easton oral history interview, folder 5; Heinz Eulau, "Good Bye to Two
Dear Friends: Warren Miller and Dwaine Marvick; A Personal Memoir," PS: Po­
litical Science and Politics 32 (1999): 279; LP, box 52.
120. Charles Lichtenstein, "Howard R. Penniman," PS: Political Science and
Politics 28 (1995): 547-48.
121. Easton oral history interview, folder 5; Wolfe, "Practicing the Pluralism
We Preach."
122. Max Kampelman, "Hubert H. Humphrey: Political Scientist," PS: Polit­
ical Science and Politics 1 1 (1978): 228-36; idem, Entering New Worlds: The Mem­
oirs of a Private Man in Public Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 54,59-60.
123. David Remnick, "The Evolution of Max Kampelman," Washington Post,
January 23,1985; Kampelman, Entering New Worlds, 65.
124. Kampelman, "Hubert H. Humphrey," 236.
125. Ibid., 230; Easton oral history interview, folder 5; interview with Austin
Ranney, in Baer, Jewell, and Sigelman, Political Science in America, 230; "Hum­
phrey Backs Draft Lottery as Fair to Youth."
126. John Ehrman, The Rise ofNeoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs,
1945-1994 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Michael Lind, Up from
Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America (New York: Free Press, 1996);
Seymour M. Lipset, "Out of the Alcoves," Wilson Quarterly, winter 1999.
127. See Ido Oren, "Uncritical Portrayals of Fascist Italy and of Iberic-Latin
Dictatorships in American Political Science," Comparative Studies in Society and
History 42 (2000): 87-118; Juan Linz, "An Authoritarian Regime: Spain," in Cleav­
ages, Ideologies, and Political Systems, ed. Erik Allardt and Yrjo Littunen (Helsinki:
Academic Bookstore, 1964); Jeane Kirkpatrick, Leader and Vanguard in Mass So­
ciety: A Study of Peronist Argentina (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971); idem,
"Dictatorship and Double Standards," Commentary 68 (November 1979): 34-45*
128. Neil Sheehan, "Aid by CIA Put in the Millions: Group Total Up," New
York Times, February 19,1967; William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History (Lon­
don: Zed, 1986), 4 10 -11; Kampelman, Entering New Worlds, 161-62; Klare, Uni­
versity-Military-Police Complex, 60.
129. Marvin Surkin, "Political Science: The Battle for Integrity/' Nation, Sep­
tember 2,1968,180; David Horowitz, "Billion Dollar Brains: How Wealth Puts
Knowledge in Its Pockets," Ramparts 7 (May 1969): 43.
130. Surkin, "Political Science," 180; Easton oral history interview, folder 6;
Evron Kirkpatrick to James Fesler, 1969 (no exact date), FP.
131. Surkin, "Political Science," 181; David Easton, "The New Revolution in
Political Science," APSR 63 (1969): 1051,1057; Kirkpatrick to Fesler, 1969.
132. Surkin, "Political Science," 180; APSAmemo, "Attendance Data in 1968
Annual Meeting," FP; Easton oral history interview, folder 6♦
133. Easton oral history interview, folders 6-7; "Unconventional," Newsweek,
September 15,1969,69-71.
134. Announcement of Results of the 1969 Elections, APSR 63 (1969): 1354;
conversation with Kenneth Waltz; transcript of Austin Ranney interview, APSA
Oral History Collection, University of Kentucky Library, 230.
135. Ranney oral history interview, 230.
136. Eakin, "Political Scientists Leading a Revolt"; Jacobsen, "Unreal, Man."
137. See Ronald Chilcote, "Dependency: A Critical Synthesis of the Litera­
ture," Latin American Perspectives 1 (1974): 4-29; idem, "A Question of Depen­
dency," Latin American Research Review 12 (1978): 55-68; James A. Caporaso,
"Dependence, Dependency, and Power in the Global System: A Structural and
Behavioural Analysis," International Organization 32 (1978): 13-4 3; Raymond D.
Duvall, "Dependency and Dependencia Theory: Notes toward Precision of Con­
cept and Argument," International Organization 32 (1978): 51-78; Steven Jack-
son, Bruce Russett, Duncan Snidal, and David Sylvan, "An Assessment of
Empirical Research on Dependencia," Latin American Research Review 14 (1979):
7-28.
138. Michael Steinberger, "The China Syndrome," Lingua Franca, May /June
1998,47-56; Edward Friedman, "The Innovator," in Mao Tse Tung in the Scale of
History: A Preliminary Assessment, ed. Dick Wilson (New York: Cambridge Uni­
versity Press, 1977), 300; quoted in Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Western In­
tellectuals in Search of the Good Society, 4th ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction,
1998), 327; John K. Fairbank, "The New China and the American Connection,"
Foreign Affairs, October 1972; quoted in Hollander, 278.
139. Robert Dahl, After the Revolution? Authority in a Good Society, rev. ed.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 108-9; idem, After the Revolution: Au­
thority in a Good Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 130; quoted
in William R. Schonfeld, "The Meaning of Democratic Participation," World Pol­
itics 28 (1975): 149.
140. Charles Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic
Systems (New York: Basic, 1977); Joseph Lawrence, "Democratic Revisionism Re­
visited/' American Journal of Political Science 25 (1981): 169; Lindblom to Leon
Lipson, June 3,1966, FP.
141. Lindblom, Politics and Markets, 343.
142. Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge; Cam­
bridge University Press, 1970), 86,88,102.
143. Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie, and Jae-On Kim, Participation and Politi­
cal Equality: A Seven-Nation Comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978), 20; Sidney Verba and Goldie Shabad, "Workers' Councils and Po­
litical Stratification: The Yugoslav Experience," APSR 72 (1978): 70-85.
144. The most influential studies of European corporatism were Peter Katz­
enstein, Corporatism and Change: Austria, Switzerland, and the Politics of Industry
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); and Peter Katzenstein, Small States in
World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1985).
145. Philippe Schmitter, for example, studied corporatist patterns in Brazil
before exploring them in Europe. See his Interest Conflict and Political Change in
Brazil (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971); "Still the Century of Corpo­
ratism?" in The New Corporatism: Social-Political Structures in the Iberian World, ed.
Fredrick Pike and Thomas Stritch (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1974); and "Interest Intermediation and Regime Governability in Con­
temporary Western Europe and North America," in Organizing Interests in West­
ern Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Transformation of Politics, ed. Suzanne
Berger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
146. James Malloy, "Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America:
The Modal Pattern," in Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America, ed.
James Malloy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), 3. See Oren,
"Uncritical Portrayals."
147. Howard J. Wiarda, Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese Experi­
ence (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 6 ,10 -11.
148. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing
the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); see also Man-
cur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social
Rigidities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).
149. R. J. Rummel, "The Dimensionality of Nations Project," in Comparing
Nations, ed. Richard Merritt and Stein Rokkan (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1966); idem, "Roots of Faith II," in Kruzel and Rosenau, Journeys through
World Politics, 317-18.
150. Herbert Kaufman to James Fesler, December 17,1964, FP; Bruce Russett
et aL, "Quarterly Management Report, World Political Data and Analysis Pro­
gram," ARPA contract no. N0014-07-A-0097-007, September 30, 1972; Charles
L. Taylor and Michael C. Hudson, World Handbook of Political and Social Indica­
tors, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972).
 151. Russett to William Foltz, July 14 and December 7,1967, LP, box 83, folder
1038; Bruce Russett, Power and Community in World Politics (San Francisco: Free­
man, 1974), viii; Rummel, "Roots of Faith II."
152. Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, The Scientific Measurement of International Conflict
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1990).
153. Bruce Russett, "Warriors and Scholars: Fellow Professionals in Hard
Times," Naval War College Review 28 (1975): 87,89,91.
154. Johnson, America's Secret Power, 167; "Two Are Admonished on CIA Proj­
ect," New York Times, November 28,1984; "Scholar to Quit Post at Harvard over
CIA Tie," New York Times, January 2, 1986; "Secret CIA Research on Campus:
Harvard Reweighs Guidelines of 1970s," New York Times, February 21, 1986;
Trumpbour, How Harvard Rules, 68-69.
155. Chris Mooney, "For Your Eyes Only," Lingua Franca 10 (November 2000):
36.
156. Nicholas Lemann, "What Terrorists Want: Is There a Better Way to De­
feat A 1Qaeda?" New Yorker; October 29,2001.

CONCLUSI ON

1. Max Weber, "'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy," in Weber,

The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans, and ed. Edward Shils and Henry
Finch (New York: Free Press, 1949), 81.
2. Eric Foner, "American Freedom in a Global Age," American Historical Re­
view 106 (2001): 1-16 .
3. W. Wilson to Daniel Coit Gilman, April 13,1889, in The Papers of Woodrow
Wilson, ed. Arthur S. Link et al., 69 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1966-94) (hereafter PWW), 6:169-72.
4. "It is difficult to see why the most advantageous political system," Burgess
stated, "would not be a democratic [read: constitutional] state with an aristo­
cratic government, provided only the aristocracy be that of real merit, and not
of artificial qualities. If this be not the real principle of the republican [read:
American] form of government then I must confess that I do not know what its
principle is." John Burgess, The Foundations of Political Science (1933; reprint,
New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1994), 75-76.
5. "ALecture on Democracy," PWW 7:356; "Notes on Administration," 1892-
95, PWW 7:392-93.
6. Charles E. Merriam, What Is Democracy? (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1941), 92; idem, On the Agenda of Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1941), 98-99.
7. Arnold Lien and Merle Fainsod, The American People and Their Government:
A Textbookfor Students in Introductory College Courses and for the Active Electorate
(New York: Appleton-Century, 1934), 441; Gabriel Almond, Plutocracy and Poli­
tics in New York City (Boulder: Westview, 1998), xxii.
8. Frank Knight, "Economic and Social Policy in a Democratic Society," Jour­
nal of Political Economy 58 (1950): 513.
9. Terence Ball, "American Political Science in Its Postwar Political Context,"
in Discipline and History, ed. James Farr and Raymond Seidelman (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1993), 207.
10. Weber, "'Objectivity/" 84.
11. See David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the
Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 23,
12. See Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment,
trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 2000); Max Horkheimer, "Tradi­
tional and Critical Theory," in Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New
York: Continuum, 1995). Edward Said's Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979)
is a prominent example of reflexive thought in the humanities.
13. Three notable exceptions, all in international relations, are Campbell,
Writing Security; Roxanne Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation
in North-South Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996),
chap. 7; and Isabelle Grunberg, "Exploring the 'Myth' of Hegemonic Stability
Theory," International Organization 44 (1990): 431-77.
14. Jack Levy, "Domestic Politics and War," in The Origins and Prevention of
Major Wars, ed. Robert Rotberg and Theodore Rabb (New York: Cambridge Uni­
versity Press, 1989), 88.
15. Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War
World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 3.
16. See Ido Oren, "The Subjectivity of the 'Democratic' Peace: Changing U.S.
Perceptions of Imperial Germany," International Security 20 (1995): 147-84.
17. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and
Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 337;
Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Cul­
ture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Colum­
bia University Press, 1996).
18. Katzenstein, Culture of National Security; Ido Oren, "Is Culture Indepen­
dent of National Security? How America's National Security Concerns Shaped
'Political Culture' Research," European Journal of International Relations 6 (2000):
543- 73-
19. See, e.g., Philip E. Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass
Publics," in Ideology and Discontent, ed. David Apter (New York: Free Press,
1964); Ole Holsti, "Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the Al-
mond-Lippman Consensus," International Studies Quarterly 36 (1992): 439-66;
Robert Y. Shapiro and Benjamin Page, "Foreign Policy and Public Opinion," in
The New Politics ofAmerican Foreign Policy, ed. David Deese (New York: St. Mar­
tin's, 1994), 216-35; Richard Sobel, The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign
Policy since Vietnam: Constraining the Colossus (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001).
20. A history of survey research suggests that such government support was
indispensable. See Jeane M. Converse, Survey Research in the United States: Roots
and Emergence, 1890-1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
21. Quoted from Acton's History of Freedom (1907) in Edward H. Carr, The
Twenty Years Crisis: 1919-1939 (New York: Harper and Row, 1946), 71.
22. For a tentative confirmation of my suspicion see "Forum: Responses to
Ido Oren's 'Is Culture Independent of National Security,"' European Journal ofIn­
ternational Relations 7 (2001): 399-408.
23. Quoted in Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt
School and the Institute of Social Research, ip2^-ip^o (Berkeley: University of Cal­
ifornia Press, 1973), 50.
Acheson, Dean, 140 Amherst College, 27, 43
Acton, Lord, 18 1 anti-Semitism: in America, 4 8 -5 0 ; in polit­
Adam s, Herbert Baxter, 27, 4 4 -4 5 ical science, 4 8 , 5 0 - 5 5 , 1 1 2
A dvanced Research Projects A gen cy antitotalitarian program, 9 1 ,9 5 - 9 8
(ARPA), 16 8 -6 9 ; Russett and, 12 9 ,16 8 ; Appeals of Communism (Almond), 1 3 , 1 4 3 -
Simulmatics contract with, 1 5 0 - 5 1 4 6 ,2i8 n . 79
A gen cy for International Development, Arendt, Hannah, 92
149 Argentina, 1 6 1 ,1 6 7
A ir Force, 1 3 , 1 0 5 , 1 6 1 ; Academy, 4; Oper­ A rm s Control and Disarmament Agency,
ations Evaluation Board, 150; and re­ 129
search on developing nations, 126; Arnold, Thurman, 6 4 ,12 4
Science A d viso ry Board of, 145; and A sia Foundation, 1 2 9 ,1 6 1
Soviet studies, 9 2 -9 3 Australia, 3 7 ,4 2
A ir University, 1 3 , 1 2 9 , 1 4 5 Austria-Hungary, 25, 36
A ir War College, 4 ,1 2 9
Alm ond, Gabriel, 2 5 ,5 0 ,1 4 8 ,1 5 3 ,1 5 6 , Bachrach, Peter, 163
1 6 6 ,1 7 5 ; career of, 1 3 - 1 4 , 1 8 , 1 2 9 , 1 3 4 - Bagehot, Walter, 3 1
47, 2 17m 59; on political/civic culture, Ball, Terence, 1 2 ,1 7 6
1 8 - 1 9 , 9 8 /179 ; on political development Banfield, Edw ard, 156
2 3 -2 4 ,15 4 Barclay, Thomas, 120
American Friends of Vietnam (A FVN ), Barghoom, Frederick, 128
*3 3 - 3 4 Bay, Christian, 16 2 -6 3
American People and Foreign Policy (Al­ Beard, Charles, 6 4 ,1 0 0 ,1 1 3
mond), 1 4 1 - 4 3 behavioral (scientific) revolution, 15 , 58,
Am erican Political Science Association 1 1 9 ,1 2 6 ; Kirkpatrick's support of, 15 5,
(A P SA ), 7 4 , 1 5 3 , 1 7 7 ; annual meetings 1 5 7 - 5 8 ; slowing momentum of, 16 8 -7 0 ;
of, 1 1 1 , 1 2 4 , 1 2 8 ,1 6 2 - 6 3 ; core subfields Yale's role in, 1 2 9 -3 0
of, 8 8 - 8 9 , 1 2 7 / Executive Council of, Belsley, G. Lyle, 7 6 -7 8
53, 73; Kirkpatrick's leadership of, 14, Bendix Aerospace Division, 129
1 5 4 -6 4 ; oral history project of, 47; presi­ Bentley, Arthur, 45
dents/presidency of, 1 , 4 , 1 8 , 4 3 , 4 7 , 5 3 , Berle, Adolph, 124
5 5 - 5 6 ,5 8 , 66, 79, 81, 82, 88, 99,100, Berlin, 5 1 , 70, 75; Brownlow in, 69, 75;
1 1 9 , 1 2 8 , 1 3 4 , 1 4 8 , 1 5 2 , 1 6 0 , 1 6 1 , 184m Burgess in, 28; Geiser in, 85; Lepaw sky
2 1 , 196m 2; vice-presidents of, 73, 86, in, 67, 7 0 - 7 1 ; Merriam in, 6 1 -6 2 , 68, 75;
128; Vietnam-era turmoil in, 15 6 -5 8 , municipal government of, 4 0 - 4 1
16 1-6 3 Berman, Paul, 150
American Political Science Review A P S R ( ), Bismarck, Otto von: compared to Stalin,
4 4 , 1 0 5 , 1 1 6 , 1 2 0 , 1 2 3 , 12 8 ,16 0 , 162; be- 119 ; Merriam on, 65; Wilson on, 34
havioralists' editorship of, 1 5 5 ,1 5 8 , Blachly, Frederick, 57
16 3; founding of, 43; O gg's editorship Blackboum, David, 24
of, 4 7 ,5 1 , 8 0 ,197m 17; view s of Impe­ Bloomfield, Lincoln, 15 2
rial Germ any in, 43; view s of N azi Ger­ Boemer, Alfred, 76, 7 8 -7 9 ,8 6
m any in, 8 - 9 , 4 8 - 4 9 ,5 1 , 7 2 - 7 3 , 7 7 - 8 1 , Bolivia, 130
8 3 - 8 7 ; view s of the Soviet Union in, Bonilla, Frank, 218
113 -14 ,119 Brinkley, Alan, 12 4
American politics subfield, 9 5 -9 8 ,16 8 ,18 0 Britain, 53, 6 3 ,1 0 7 ,1 4 3 - 4 4 , *75; Burgess
American Sociological Review, 49 on, 2 8 - 3 3 ; Friedrich on, 10 9 -10 ; Gettell
Britain (continued)
on, 43; political development of, 2 3 -2 6 ;
Wilson on, 3 4 - 3 9 ,4 3 , i93n . 72
Brookings Institution, 5 7 ,8 1
Brownlow, Louis, 6 8 - 7 0 ,7 4 - 7 6 ,8 8 ,1 2 8
Bryn M aw r College, 3 4 ,7 8 ,8 1
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 4 ,8 2 ,9 3 - 9 4 ,1 5 3 ,
160
Burgess, John W., 4 4 ,5 8 - 5 9 ,1 2 0 ; career of,
2 6 - 2 7 , 19 m . 24; on Germany, 8 ,2 7 - 3 3 ,
4 3 / 17 3 ; political theory of, 2 8 - 3 1 , 4 1 ,
17 4 - 75 / 224 n. 4
Burke, Edm und, 3 4 ,3 8
Butler, Nicholas M ., 77
California Institute of Technology, 53,
100
Cambridge Project (MIT), 1 5 2
Cantril, Hadley, 1 4 5 , 2i8n . 79
Carnegie, Andrew, 140
Carnegie Corporation, 13 1 ; and Almond,
1 4 6 ,2 17m 59; and Soviet studies, 9
Carr, Edw ard H., 5 - 6
Carter, Jimmy, 16 0 - 6 1
Caucus for a N e w Political Science, 1 6 2 -
63
Central Intelligence A gen cy (CIA), 4 ,1 5 ,
10 4 ,12 9 ,13 2 ,13 9 ,1 4 3 ,14 7 ,1 4 9 ,15 8 ,16 1,
1 7 0 - 7 1 , 219m 90; and C EN IS, 14 ,1 4 8 ,
152; and Soviet studies, 92
Cerny, Karl, 1 5 3 , 1 5 8
Chicago Tribune, 67
China, 2 0 , 3 2 , 5 9 , 1 0 7 ,1 2 9 ,1 4 7 ,1 6 4 - 6 5
C ivic Culture, The (Almond and Verba),
1 3 - 1 4 , 1 8 - 1 9 , 98 , 13 4 - 37 / 1 4 5 - 5 6 , 179 /
2i8 n . 79
Civil War, impact on political science, 10,
27 / 3 3 - 34 / 59
Clay, General Lucius, 79
Clough, Shepard, 60
Coetzee, Johan, 3
Cold War, 20; impact on political science,
1 2 ,1 6 ,9 1 - 9 8 ,1 0 0 ,1 2 0 - 2 1 ,1 2 3 - 2 5 ,1 7 4 -
76; political scientists' involvement in,
13-14,91-93-126-35,139-54-158-
16 0 -6 1 ,17 0
Cole, G. D. H., 166
colonialism: British, 1 0 5 ,1 0 9 ,14 7 ; French,
10 8 ,209m 76
Columbia University, 4, 2 6 ,3 2 ,5 9 , 6 0 ,75,
7 7 , 1 1 1 , 1 6 5 , 202n. 119 ; fires professors,
44; political science department, 99; So­
viet studies at, 92
Committee of Concerned A sian Scholars,
164
comparative politics subfield, 14 , 2 4 ,13 4 ,
148
Congress for Cultural Freedom, 13 9
Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO), 1 4 1 , 1 5 9
Congressional Fellowship program, 154,
1 5 6 ,1 5 8 ,1 6 0
constructivism, 1 9 - 2 1 , 1 7 9
Cornell University, 2 , 1 5 2 - 5 3 , 1 7 0
corporatism, 1 5 ,1 6 7 - 6 8
counterinsurgency research: in M alaya,
14 7 -4 9 ; in Vietnam, 1 4 , 1 4 9 - 5 1
Crane, Charles R., 1 0 2 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 2
Curtis, Michael, 24
Dahl, Robert, 1 2 , 1 8 , 1 2 6 , 1 2 9 , 1 6 1 , 1 7 5 ;
democratic theory of, 9 5 - 9 8 , 1 2 2 , 1 2 5 ,
1 6 6 ,207n. 34; on N azi Germany, 4 7 -4 8 ;
on planning, 12 5; in urban politics, 128;
on urban politics, 10 1; on Yugoslavia,
165
democracy: Alm ond on, 1 3 5 , 1 7 5 ; attach­
ment of political science to, 1 - 3 , 7 , 1 5 ;
Burgess on, 2 9 , 1 7 4 , 224m 4; changing
concept of, 1 2 , 1 6 , 9 7 , 1 0 0 , 1 0 8 , 1 2 1 - 2 5 ,
1 7 4 -7 6 ; Dahl on, 1 2 ,9 6 - 9 8 , 1 2 2 , 1 2 5 ,
1 6 5 ,1 7 5 ; Fainsod on, 1 2 , 1 0 6 - 9 , 1 75 /
Harper on, 1 1 3 - 1 4 ; Huntington on, 1 - 3 ,
12 5; industrial, 10 7 ,10 9 ; Knight on, 124;
Lindblom on, 16 5 -6 6 ; M erriam on, 12,
1 2 1 - 2 5 , 1 7 4 ~ 75 / Pateman on, 166; quan­
titative data on, 25; Schuman on, 1 1 7 -
1 8 ,1 7 5 ; Schumpeter on, 1 2 , 9 7 , 1 2 3 , 1 2 5 ;
in the Soviet Union, 1 0 8 , 1 1 7 - 2 1 ; D. Tru­
man on, 1 2 ,9 6 - 9 8 ; W. F. W illoughby
on, 8 1; Wilson on, 3 6 - 3 8 , 4 0 - 4 1 , 1 7 4
Democratic Party, 1 4 , 1 5 5 , 1 5 8 - 6 1
democratic peace, 1 9 , 1 7 8 - 7 9
democratic social control. See social con­
trol
Denmark, 10 7
Department of Defense, 4 , 1 5 , 1 4 3 , 1 4 9 - 5 0 .
See also Advanced Research Projects
A gen cy
Department of State, 4 , 1 2 0 , 1 3 0 - 3 1 , 1 4 3 ,
1 4 5 , 1 4 9 , 1 5 2 , 1 5 8 , 2 1 5 n. 38; and Insti­
tute for International Studies, 140; intel­
ligence section of, 1 4 , 1 5 5 - 5 6 ; and
Soviet studies, 9 3 , 1 0 4 , 1 1 2 - 1 3 , 1 2 &
dependency theory, 164
Deutsch, Karl, 2 0 ,1 2 9 ,1 3 9 ,1 4 8
Dewey, John, 60 the Soviet Union, 1 0 9 - 1 1 ; on totalitari­
Diamond, Martin, 15 3 anism, 8 2 -8 4 ,9 3 “ 94 ^101' 10 9
Diggins, John, 60
Dimensionality of Nations (DON) Project, Gandhi, Mohandas K., 6 2 -6 3 , 66
16 8 -6 9 Gardner, John, 146
Dodd, William, 6 7,6 9 Geiser, Karl E, 8 4 - 8 5 , 195 m 106
Dulles, Allen, 14 7 General Electric Technical Military Plan­
Dunn, Frederick, 1 4 0 , 1 4 3 , 2 1 8n. 79 ning Operation, 129
Duranty, Walter, 99 George, Alexander, 1 3 ,1 3 9 , 218 n. 79
Germany, 1 , 1 1 , 5 7 , 9 6 , 1 0 7 , 1 4 1 ; "special
Easton, David, 1 8 , 1 3 7 - 5 8 , 1 6 2 path" interpretation of, 2 4 - 2 5 ,1 7 3 - 7 4 .
East-West Center, 1 3 1 See also Imperial Germany; N azi Ger­
Eckstein, H arry 2 5 , 1 4 8 - 4 9 ,1 5 4 ,1 5 6 ,1 6 6 , m any
2 1 8n. 79 Gerschenkron, Alexander, 2 3 -2 4 , i88n. 1
Egger, Rowland, 70, 79 Gettell, Raymond, 43
Egypt, 128 Gilbert, Charles, 160
Eley, Geoff, 24 Gleason, Abbott, 92
Ellsberg, Daniel, 1 5 1 Goebbels, Josef, 62, 6 7 - 6 8 ,7 1
England. See Britain Goldman, Emma, 50
epistemology, 17 7 -7 8 . See also reflexivity Goodnow, Frank, 4 3 ,5 5 ,8 1
eugenic science, 1 1 ,4 9 ,5 8 Gorer, Geoffrey, 1 4 1
Eulau, Heinz, 1 3 , 1 1 9 , 1 3 9 , 1 5 8 , 1 6 3 Gosnell, Harold, 1 1 6
Experimental Division for the Study of Gramsci, Antonio, 2 5 ,1 5 4 ,1 7 4
War-Time Communication (Lasswell), Griffith, William, 15 2
13-138-39/149 Guetzkow, Harold, 168
Gulick, Luther, 6 6 -6 7 ,6 9 ,8 8
Fainsod, Merle, 9 ,1 2 , 9 2 ,9 8 - 9 9 ,1 0 1 - 2 , Gunnell, John, 96
10 5 -9 ,119 -2 0 ,13 9 ,17 5 Gurr, Ted Robert, 2 5 ,1 7 1
Fairbank, John, 164
Fascist Italy, 7 ,1 2 4 ; political scientists' Hagen, Charles, 160
view s of, 8 , 9 , 1 9 ,4 9 ,5 8 - 6 1 , 6 3,8 2, 83, Halperin, Morton, 15 3
174 Hamburg, Lepawsky in, 7 0 -7 3
Fesler, James W., 1 2 8 - 3 4 Hannah, John, 1 3 1 - 3 2
Fishel, Wesley, 1 3 1 - 3 4 Harper, Samuel N., 9, 60, 6 2 ,10 0 ,10 2 ,
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 206m 22 1 11-16 ,11 8
Ford, Henry, 49 Harper, William Rainey, 1 1 1
Ford Foundation: and C IA , 14 7 -4 8 ; and H arvard University, 1 ,4 7 , 50, 5 3 ,7 5 ,7 6 ,
Soviet studies, 92 9 8 ,1 2 8 ,1 3 2 ,1 5 2 ,1 7 0 ; government de­
Foucault, Michel, 5 partment, 8 2 ,9 3, 9 9 - 1 1 1 ; Graduate
Fox, Guy, 13 2 School of Public Administration, 82, 88,
France, 56, 6 3 ,7 2 , 8 5 ,1 3 3 ; Burgess on, 2 8 - 12 7; L aw School, 1 5 1 ; Russian Research
30; communism in, 1 3 , 1 4 0 - 4 1 , 1 4 3 - 4 5 , Center, 9 2 -9 4 ,10 5
147; Gettell on, 43; political develop­ Hauss, Charles, 24
ment of, 2 3 - 2 6 ; Wilson on, 3 4 - 4 1 , 193m Hawkins, Ruth, 162
7 2 , 194m 98 H ayek, Friedrich, 1 2 3 - 2 5
Frankfurt School, 178 Herman, Ellen, 14 6 ,14 8
Freeman, Edw ard, 44 Herzberg, Donald, 1 5 3 , 1 5 8
Frick, Wilhelm, 79 Herzstein, Robert, 84
Friedman, Edw ard, 16 4 -6 5 Hess, Rudolf, 85
Friedrich, Carl J., 9 ,9 8 ,13 9 ; on adminis­ Hilsman, Roger, 218m 79
tration, 8 2 -8 4 ; career of, 82, 9 3 -9 4 , 99, Hitler, Adolf. See N azi Germany
196m 2; on Fascist Italy, 83; on N azi Ho Chi Minh, 1 5 1 , 1 6 3
Germany, 83; on N e w Deal, 1 0 9 - 1 1 ; on Hoffmann, Rolf, 85
Hoffmann, Stanley, 15 2 Italy, 1 ,1 0 ,1 9 ,3 9 , 4 4 , 5 9 , 9 6 , 1 3 6 , 1 7 9 ; com­
Holcombe, Arthur, 99 munism in, 1 3 , 1 4 0 - 4 1 , 1 4 3 - 4 5 , 1 4 7 . See
Holland, 28 also Fascist Italy
Hopf, Ted, 20
Hopper, Bruce, 9 8 - 9 9 ,1 0 2 - 5 ,1 1 4/ 2o8n. 47 Janis, Irving, 1 3 , 1 3 9
Horrigan, Fred, 130 Janowitz, Morris, 1 3 , 1 3 9 , 1 4 5
House, Edward M., 50 Japan, 1 3 3 , 1 4 0 , 1 4 1 ; political scientists'
Humphrey, Hubert, 134; ties to political view s of, 9 , 2 4 , 3 6 - 3 7 , 6 3 , 1 7 3 - 7 4
science, 1 5 3 , 1 5 5 , 1 5 8 - 6 1 Jeserich, Kurt, 6 7 - 7 2 ,7 5 ,9 0
Huntington, Samuel, 12 5, i84n. 1 4 , 215m Johns Hopkins University, 2 6 ,2 7 ,4 4 ,7 5 ,
38; career of, 4 - 5 , 1 5 3 , 1 6 0 ; C IA funding 8 5 ,1 0 9 ,192m 49
of, 170 ; presidential address of, 1 - 2 ; on Johnson, Lyndon B., 15 2 ; administration
South Africa, 1 - 3 , 1 6 1 of, 4
Hutchins, Robert, 1 1 7 Johnson, Willard, 3 , 183m 10
Hyman, Herbert, 2i8 n . 79 Jonas, Frank, 4 7
Hyneman, Charles, 1 5 9 -6 0 Journal o f Conflict Resolution, 12 9
Journal o f Political Economy, 60
ideology: concept of, 5 - 6 , 1 6 , 2 2 , 1 7 2 ; ex- Justice Department, 1 3 9 , 1 5 1
ceptionalist, 1 7 , 2 1 - 2 2 ,9 8 ,1 2 6 ; opposi­
tional, 1 7 , 1 6 4 - 6 5 ; oscillates between Kadushin, Charles, 1 5 3 - 5 4
accommodationism and nationalism, Kahin, George, 15 3
1 7 - 1 9 , 2 2 , 2 3 , 2 6 , 3 3 ,4 3 ,4 7 - 4 8 ,5 8 ,8 7 , Kampelman, M ax, 1 5 4 , 1 5 7 - 6 1
9 1 , 9 8 , 1 0 4 , 1 2 6 - 2 7 ,1 3 6 / 1 6 4 - 6 8 ,1 7 2 - 7 6 ; Kaplan, Abraham, 1 3 , 1 3 9
triumphal, 1 7 - 1 8 ,2 2 ,9 8 ,1 2 6 Katznelson, Ira, 9 5 -9 6
Imperial (Wxlhelmine) Germany, 7; Kennedy, John E : administration of, 4,
Burgess's view of, 8 ,2 6 - 3 3 ,4 3 ; conflict 1 4 9 ,1 5 0 ,2 15m 38; presidential cam­
w ith the U.S., 3 2 ,4 3 - 4 4 ; political scien­ paign of, 150
tists' current view of, 8 ,9 ,2 3 - 2 6 ,3 3 ,4 2 , Kettl, Donald, 89
17 3 ; public administration's view of, Kettler, David, 16 2
5 5 - 5 7 ; reputation of academia in, 27, Key, V. O., 96
3 2 ,3 9 ,4 3 ,4 6 , i9on. 18, i9on. 22; Wil­ Kirkpatrick, Evron, 1 5 3 - 6 3
son's view of, 9 , 2 6 - 2 7 ,3 4 - 4 3 , 5 5 -5 6 , Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 1 5 3 , 1 5 6 , 1 5 8 , 1 6 0 - 6 1
17 3 Kluckhohn, Clyde, 1 4 1 , 1 4 5
Indiana University, 130 Knight, Frank, 1 2 4 ,1 7 5
Indonesia, 130 Knorr, Klaus, 1 4 3 ,2 1 8 n. 79
Industrial College of the Arm ed Forces, 4, Krebs, Gerhard, 87
129 Kuhn, Thomas, 22
Inkeles, Alex, 2 1 8n. 79
Institute for Defense Analyses, 129 Lasswell, Harold D., 4 , 1 1 , 1 4 , 6 2 , 1 1 6 ,
Institute for Government Research, 81 1 4 3 - 4 5 ,1 4 8 - 4 9 / * 5 2/ * 5 8 /17 4 ; and anti-
Institute of Current World Affairs, 1 0 2 ,1 1 2 Semitic stereotypes, 50; and national se­
International Communism project (MIT), curity agencies during Cold War, 129,
15 2 1 3 9 ,1 4 5 ; on propaganda, 1 1 , 7 3 , 1 3 7 - 4 0 ;
International Cooperation Administration on Schuman, 120; World War II service,
(ICA), 1 2 7 , 1 3 0 - 3 2 13/138-39
International Political Science Association, Layne, Robert E v 16 3
79 Lee, Ivy, 62
international relations subfield, 6 , 1 9 - 2 1 , Leites, Nathan, 1 3 , 1 3 9
9 6 ,14 9 ,16 9 ,17 9 ,2 0 9 ; Schuman's contri­ Lelyveld, Joseph, 2 - 3 , 7
butions to, 1 1 6 ,1 2 0 LeMay, General Curtis, 14 5
Inter-university Consortium on Political Lenin, V. L, 6 6 ,1 1 2
and Social Research, 15 5 Lepawsky, Albert, 6 7 - 7 5 ,8 0 - 8 2
Isaacs, Harold, 2 0 - 2 1 , 187m 48 Lerner, Daniel, 1 3 , 5 0 , 1 4 5 , 1 4 9
Levinson, Sanford, 16 2 Michigan State University, 86; Vietnam
Lew is, John (Cornell), 15 3 mission, 1 3 1 - 3 4
Lew is, John D. (Oberlin), 86 M iddle East Studies Association, 170
Lichtenberger, Henri, 7 7 ,8 5 M idw est Political Science Association, 53,
Lien, Arnold, 10 6 -9 86
Lindblom, Charles, 1 2 5 ,1 6 5 - 6 6 Mill, John Stuart, 166
Linz, Juan, 160 Miller, James, 8 5 -8 6
Lipset, Seym our Martin, 1 8 ,9 8 ,1 2 6 ,1 3 9 , Miller, Warren, 1 5 8 ,1 6 0
14 8 ,15 3 ,15 6 ,16 6 Millikan, M ax, 1 4 8 ,1 5 2
Long, Norton, 160 Mitchell, Timothy, 185m 30
Lowell, A . Lawrence, 102 M ode, Walter, 13 2
Low i, Theodore, 12 8 ,1 6 2 Montgomery, John D., 13 2
Moore, Barrington, 2 4 ,3 3
Macalester College, 159 Morgenthau, Hans, 1 1 6 , 1 5 2 - 5 3 , 1 6 3
Machiavelli, Niccolö, 6 6 ,20on. 83 M oscow: Barghoom in, 128; Harper in, 62,
Maine, Sir Henry, 44, i93n. 59 1 1 1 - 1 3 , 1 15 / Hopper in, 9 9 ,10 2 ,10 4 ;
M alaya, 1 4 7 -4 9 Merriam in, 1 1 2 - 1 3
Mann, Thomas, 15 5 M oscow show trials, 1 0 0 , 1 1 5 , 1 1 8
Mannheim, Karl, 5 , 1 6 , 2 2 , 20on. 79 Munro, William B., 106; anti-Semitism of
Mansfield, H arvey Sr., 15 5 5 3 - 5 5 , career of, 5 3 ,9 9 ,196m 2; on
Marine Corps Education Center, 129 Prussian administration, 57; on Stalin,
M arx, Karl, 5 , 1 6 , 2 2 ,1 0 5 ; Friedrich on, 10 0 -10 1; on U.S. municipal govern­
110 ; M erriam on, 64; Schuman on, 1 1 7 ment, 10 1
Marxism, 1 8 ,9 7 Mussolini, Benito. See Fascist Italy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), 2 , 3 ; Center for International Naftalin, Arthur, 1 3 2 ,1 5 9
Studies (CENIS), 1 4 , 1 4 7 - 5 4 , 187m 48; Naimark, Norman, 93
political science department, 14 8 -4 9 ; Nathan, Andrew, 16 4 -6 5
project T R O Y at, 148 Nation, 9 9 ,1 1 8
M attem, Johannes, 85 National Election Studies, 15 5
M cCain, John, 18 1 National M unicipal Review , 74
McCarthy, Eugene, 15 3 National Resource Planning Board, 1 2 2 -
McCarthy, Joseph, 120 2 3 ,1 2 8
M cCloskey, Herbert, 1 5 9 -6 0 National Science Foundation (NSF), 15 5 ,
M ead, Margaret, 14 1 1 5 8 ,1 6 8 -6 9
M ein K am pf (Hitler), 8 ,8 4 National Security Council, 4 ,1 3 4
Merriam, Charles E., 1 2 , 1 3 , 1 4 0 , 217m 59; National War College, 4 ,12 9
in Berlin, 6 1 - 6 2 ; career of, 6 7 -6 8 ,8 2 , 88, N aval War College, 10 4 ,12 9
9 9 ,1 0 0 ,196m 2; on civic training/edu- N azi Germany, 7 ,1 2 4 ; American intellec­
cation, 1 4 , 5 8 - 6 1 , 9 5 , 1 1 2 , 1 2 1 , 1 3 6 - 3 7 ; tuals' view s of, 4 8 -5 0 ; political scien­
on democracy, 1 2 , 1 2 1 - 2 5 , 1 7 4 - 7 5 ; on tists' view s of, 8 - 9 , 1 8 , 5 0 - 5 5 , 8 4 -8 7 ,
Fascist Italy, 8 , 5 9 - 6 1 ; interest in propa­ 1 2 0 ,1 7 3 - 7 4 ; public administration
ganda, 6 1 - 6 6 , 7 1 - 7 2 ; on planning, 1 2 2 - scholars on, 6 7 -8 4
24; on political power, 6 2 -6 7 ; on public N azi-So viet Nonaggression Pact, 9 2 ,1 1 5 ,
administration, 6 8 -6 9 ; 7 4 -7 6 ; on sci­ 118 -19
ence, 58, 6 4 - 6 5 ,1 7 6 ; supports Schuman, N e w Deal, political scientists in /o n , 12,
1 1 6 - 1 7 ; on the Soviet Union, 5 9 - 6 1 , 18, 8 2 - 8 3 , 1 0 9 - 1 1 , 1 2 3 - 2 5 , 1 2 8
1 1 1 - 1 3 , 1 2 1 ; World War I service, 10, N e w Haven, 128; Dahl on, 10 1
44/59 N e w Leader, 13 2
Merton, Robert, 22 N e w Republic, 9 9 ,13 4 ; Schuman's articles
Mexico, 107 in, 1 1 7 - 1 9
Meyer, Alfred, 94 N e w Yorker, 1 7 1
Michigan, civil service reform in, 7 7 -7 8 N e w York Times, 2, 6 7 , 9 9 , 1 5 1 , 1 5 2 , 1 7 0
N ew York University, 16 2 Preface to Democratic Theory (Dahl), 18 ,9 5 ,
N go Dinh Diem, 1 3 1 - 3 4 1 2 2 ,1 2 5
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 18 1 President's Committee on Administrative
Northeastern Political Science Associa­ Management (Brownlow Committee),
tion, 128 6 9 ,7 6 ,8 8 ,1 2 3 ,1 2 8
Northwestern University, 168 Preuss, H ugo, 6 8 ,7 2
Princeton University, 7 0 , 8 1 , 1 3 4 , 202n.
Oatman, Miriam, 5 7 119 ; Center for International Studies,
Oberlin College, 84,86, i95n . 106 1 4 3 ,1 4 7 - 5 4 ; Wilson at, 34
objectivity: and identity of political sci­ Problems of Communism, 2o6n. 19
ence, 1 , 4 - 7 , 1 5 , 1 7 1 , 1 8 1 ; Morgenthau Project C O M C O M , 1 5 0 ,1 5 2
on, 13 3 ; Weber on, 5 - 6 , 1 7 2 propaganda, 148; Alm ond and, 1 3 ,1 3 4 ,
Office of Facts and Figures, 140 1 3 7 ,1 4 6 ; Kirkpatrick and, 1 5 5 - 5 6 ; Lass-
Office of N aval Research (ONR), 1 3 ,1 4 5 , w ell on, 1 1 , 7 3 , 1 3 7 - 4 0 ; Lepaw sky on,
149/155 7 0 -7 2 ; M erriam's interest in, 6 1-6 6 , 7 1 -
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 1 3 ,1 0 4 , 72; World War I campaign of, 1 0 ,1 3 ,4 4 ,
1 2 9 ,1 5 5 5 9 ,8 4 ,112 ,1 3 6
Office of War Information (OWI), 1 3 , 1 3 9 - psychoanalytic methods, 6 5 ,1 3 7 - 3 8 ,1 4 0 ,
4 0 ,14 6 1 4 3 - 4 4 , 2 1 7 n - 59
Ogg, Frederick A., 5 1, 80, i97n. 1 7 Psychological Strategy Board, 1 3 ,1 4 5 - 4 6 ,
Operations and Policy Research (OPR), 158
16 1-6 2 psychological warfare, 13, 9 3 ,1 3 4 ,1 3 7 ,
Osgood, Robert, 15 3 1 3 9 - 4 6 , 1 4 8 - 5 1 , 1 5 5 - 5 6/ * 6 i
Ostrom, Vincent, 89 public administration: and developing na­
tions, 1 2 7 - 3 4 ; scholars' view s of N azi
Parenti, Michael, 162 Germany, 49; 6 7-8 4 ; status of, 1 1 - 1 2 ,
Paris: Brownlow in, 69; Harper in, 1 1 1 ; 1 4 ,4 6 ,5 5 -5 7 , 8 8 - 9 0 ,1 2 7 - 2 8 ,1 7 3 ; Wil­
Merriam in, 67, 6 9 -7 0 son on, 3 8 - 4 2 , 5 6 - 5 7
Pateman, Carole, 166 Public Administration Clearing House
Peltason, Jack, 15 8 ,1 6 0 (PACH), 1 1 , 6 8 ,7 0 ,7 3 - 7 8 ,8 2 ,1 3 0 ; clo­
Penniman, Howard, 1 5 8 - 5 9 sure of, 8 8 ,1 2 7
Pentagon Papers, 1 4 , 1 5 1 public opinion, 1 4 1 - 4 3 , 1 4 6 , 1 5 1 , 1 8 0
Perestroika movement, 16 3 Putnam, Robert, 1 9 ,9 7 ,1 7 9
Perlmutter, Am os, 16 1 Pye, Lucian, 1 4 , 1 4 7 - 5 3 , 2 i8 n . 79
Philippines, 3 2 , 4 2 , 1 3 1
Pinsdorf, Kate, 5 1 Radio Free Europe, 1 5 0 ,1 5 2
planning, 1 2 , 1 7 3 ; Dahl and Lindblom on, R A N D Corporation, 1 3 , 1 2 9 , 1 3 9 , 1 4 5
12 5 ; Fainsod on, 108; Friedrich on, 1 1 0 - Ranney, Austin, 1 5 5 - 5 6 , 1 5 8 , 1 6 0 , 1 6 3
1 1 ; H ayek on, 12 3 ; Hopper on, 104; rational choice analysis, 1 4 , 1 5 1 , 1 6 4
Merriam on, 1 2 2 - 2 4 reflexivity, 1 7 8 - 8 1
pluralist theory, 1 2 , 1 4 - 1 5 , 1 6 , 4 5 , 9 5 - 9 8 , Richards, Allan, 130
1 7 3 - 7 4 ; applied to the Soviet Union, 94; Ridley, Clarence, 7 4 ,8 1
criticized, 16 7 -6 8 Riggs, Fred W , 1 3 0 - 3 1
political culture research, 1 3 4 - 3 7 , 1 4 5 - 4 6 , Roche, John, 160
1 4 8 ,1 7 9 - 8 0 Rockefeller, John D., 140
Politica} Science Quarterly, 60 ,10 0 Rockefeller Foundation, 9 2 ,1 3 8 ,1 4 3
P O LITY data set, 2 5 , 1 5 4 , 1 7 1 Roelofs, H. Mark, 16 2
Pollock, James K., 7 6 - 7 9 ,8 1 , 8 5 ,8 6 ,196m 2 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 5 0 ,6 2 -6 3 ,6 5 / 88,
Polsby, Nelson, 4 7 ,1 6 0 ,1 6 3 1 1 4 , 1 2 3 - 2 4 ; administration of, 87; on
Pool, Ithiel de Sola, 1 3 ,1 8 , 5 0 , 1 3 9 , 1 4 5 , Mein Kampf, 84
1 4 9 - 5 0 , 1 5 2 , 2 1 9n. 90 Ross, Dorothy, 2 1, 59
Popkin, Samuel, 1 4 , 1 5 0 - 5 1 , 1 6 4 Rostow, Walt W., 150
Portugal, 16 7 -6 8 Rotberg, Robert, 2
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 166 Stalin, Joseph. See Soviet Union
Rowan, Carl, 13 4 Stanford University, 5 1 , 1 2 0 , 1 3 4
Rowe, D avid N ., 12 9 state, concept (doctrine) of, 1 0 , 1 2 , 1 5 ,
Rudolph, Susanne, 163 16; in 1950s, 9 5 -9 6 ; in 1970s, 16 7 -6 8 ;
Ruml, Beardsley, 75 Burgess on 2 8 -3 0 ; Wilson on, 3 4 - 4 2 ;
Rummel, Rudolph, 168 after World War 1, 4 5 -4 6
Rush, M yron, 170 State Department. See Department of State
Russett, Bruce, 1 2 9 ,1 6 8 - 7 0 Stellenbosch University, 2 - 3
Russia, 2 5 ,3 2 ,3 9 ,4 4 ; H arper's view of, Strauss, Leo, 16 2
112 . See also Soviet Union Surkin, M arvin, 16 2
Rutgers University, 17 0 Sweden, 3 6 ,1 0 4 ,1 0 7
Switzerland, 2 8 ,3 6 - 3 7 , 3 9 ,4 2 - 4 3
Safran, N adav, 170
Said, Edw ard, 5 Teutonic (Aryan) theory, 10 ,1 6 ; of Bur­
Samuels, Richard, 9 gess, 2 8 - 2 9 , 1 7 3 ' decline of, 4 4 -4 5 ; of
Savonarola, Merriam on, 6 6 ,20 m . 83 N azi Germany, 5 2 - 5 3 ; of Wilson, 3 5 ,4 1
Scammon, Richard, 15 8 ,1 6 0 Thailand (Siam), 1 0 7 , 1 3 0 - 3 1
Schaper, William, 44 Thomas, Norman, 159
Schelling, Thomas, 14 5 Times Literary Supplement, 1 1 3
Schirach, Baldur von, 85 totalitarianism: concept of, 9 , 5 7 , 9 2 , 1 2 4 -
Scigliano, Robert, 1 3 2 ,1 3 4 25; distinguished from authoritarian­
Schmidt, Brian, 209m 76 ism, 16 0 -6 1 ; Fainsod on, 93; Friedrich
Schneider, Herbert, 60 and Brzezinski on, 8 2 -8 4 , 93 ~ 94 / and
Schuman, Frederick, 8 0 , 9 8 , 1 1 6 - 2 1 , 1 7 5 Soviet studies, 9 2 -9 5
Schumpeter, Joseph, 12 3; influence of, 12, Trotsky, Leon, 66; Harper on, 1 1 2 , 1 1 5 ;
9 7 ,1 2 5 , 207m 34 Schuman on, 1 1 8
Selznick, Philip, 145 Trotskyism, 1 4 9 ,1 5 5 ,1 5 9
Sharp, Walter, 1 2 8 ,13 0 Truman, David, 12 , 9 5 -9 8 , 2i8 n . 79
Shaw, Albert, 56 Truman, Harry, 92
Shils, Edw ard 1 3 , 1 3 9 Truman Doctrine, 9 2 ,1 2 0 ,1 4 1
Simon, Herbert, 18, 7 4 ,8 9 ,1 1 6 Turkey, 3 9 ,1 0 7
Simpson, Christopher, 149 Turner, Richard (Natal University), i83n. 10
Simulmatics Corporation, 1 5 0 - 5 1
Smith, A dam : Friedrich on, 10 9 -1 0 ; Schu­ United States Information A gency (USIA),
man on, 1 1 7 13 ,13 1,13 4 ,15 8
Smuckler, Ralph, 13 2 United States Strategic Bombing Survey,
social control, 1 0 , 1 2 , 1 7 4 140
Social Science Research Council, 60, 70, University of Berlin, 39, 69, 72, i9on. 18
83,134 University of California at Berkeley, 47,
socialism, 1 2 , 1 8 , 9 7 ,1 2 5 ,1 6 5 73 / 87
Sombart, Werner, 110 University of California at San Diego,
South Africa, 1 - 3 , 7 151
South Vietnam: Fesler in, 1 2 9 - 3 0 ,1 3 2 - 3 4 ; University of Chicago, 9 ,4 7, 50, 60, 67, 7 1,
Michigan State mission in, 1 3 1 - 3 4 . See 75, 8 9 , 1 2 1 , 1 3 1 , 1 3 6 , 1 5 2 , 1 6 3 , 202n. 119 ;
also Vietnam War Committee on Social Thought, 12 3 ; po­
Soviet studies, 9 1 - 9 5 , 9 7 ,12 0 ; revisionism litical science department, 1 0 ,1 1 ,5 8 ,6 8 ,
in, 9 4 -9 5 74, 76, 8 2 ,9 9 , 1 1 1 - 2 4
Soviet Union, political scientists' view s of, University of H awaii, 1 3 0 - 3 1
9 ,18 , 4 9 ,5 8 - 6 1 , 6 3 ,7 2 ,8 2 , 9 1 - 9 5 , 9 8 - University of Heidelberg, 75
1 2 1 , 1 7 3 . See also Russia University of Illinois, 53
Spaatz, General Carl, 105 University of M aryland, 1 7 1
Spain, 3 7 ,3 9 , 4 2 , 9 6 ,16 0 ,16 7 University of Michigan, 47; Pollock at, 76,
Spencer, H enry R., 1 9 , 184m 2 1 79
University of Minnesota, 85, i95n. 109; Whittaker, James, 150
political science department, 4 4 ,1 5 5 , Wiarda, Howard, 16 7 -6 8
159 Wildavsky, Aaron, 12 8
University of North Carolina, 128 Williams College, 1 1 7 , 1 2 0
University of Tennessee, 130 Willoughby, Westei W , 81
University of Virginia, 70 Willoughby, William F., 8 1 - 8 2 , 196m 2
University of Washington, 4 7 ,5 1 Wilson, Elmo, 1 3 ,1 4 6
University of Wisconsin, 16 5 Wilson, Francis G., 5 1 - 5 3
Wilson, Woodrow, 1 9 , 3 0 , 1 0 1 , 1 3 3 , 1 7 4 ,
Verba, Sidney, 2 3 - 2 4 ,1 4 7 , 1 4 8 ,1 6 6 ; and *93n- 7 2/ *94n- 98; administration of,
civic culture, 18 -19 ,9 8 / * 3 4 -3 5 / *79 5 9 ,1 1 2 ; career of, 2 6 - 2 7 , 3 3 - 3 4 ; on Ger­
Verwoerd, Hendrik, 3 many, 8 , 3 3 - 4 3 / 1 7 3 ; political theory of,
Vietnam War, 4 ,1 2 7 ; impact on political 3 3 - 4 2 , 4 5 , 5 9 , 1 7 4 , 192m 50
science, 1 4 - 1 6 , 9 4 - 9 5 , 1 5 1 , 1 6 4 - 7 0 ; Winks, Robin, 140
involvement of political scientists in, Wolfe, Alan, 1 5 6 - 5 7 , 1 6 2
1 4 9 - 5 1 ; political scientists' view s on, Wolfers, Arnold, 140
*52 -54 Wood, Robert, 15 2
World Data Analysis Program, 16 8 -6 9
Waldo, Dwight, 89 World War I: impact on political science,
Walgreen, Charles, 1 1 7 , 1 2 1 1 0 - 1 1 , 2 6 , 4 3 - 4 6 , 5 7 , 1 7 4 - 7 5 ; political
Walgreen lectures, 1 2 1 - 2 2 scientists' involvement in, 1 0 ,1 3 ,4 4 ,5 9 ,
Wallace, Henry, 1 2 0 ,1 4 1 8 4 ,13 6
Waltz, Kenneth, 149 World War II: impact on political science,
Walzer, Michael, 162 1 1 ,2 6 ,8 7 - 9 0 ,1 0 0 ,1 7 5 ; political scien­
War Production Board, 128 tists' involvement in, 1 3 - 1 4 , 1 2 8 , 1 3 8 -
Warsaw, Merriam and Brownlow in, 75 4 0 ,14 5 -4 6 / *55
Weber, M ax, 5 - 6 , 1 1 , 1 5 , 9 0 , 1 7 2 , 1 7 7 - 7 8 Wright, Quincy, 1 1 6 ,1 2 0
Weidner, Edward, 13 2
Weiner, Myron, 14 7 Yale University, 1 5 , 4 7 , 1 2 5 , 1 3 4 , 1 3 9 , 1 5 5 ,
Wells, Roger, 6 9 ,7 8 -8 2 16 8 -6 9 , *7°/ Institute for International
Wesleyan College, 34 Studies, 1 4 0 - 4 3 ,1 4 7 ; political science
Westerfield, Bradford, 170 department, 1 0 1 , 1 2 8 - 3 0
Western Political Science Association, 73 Yugoslavia, political scientists on, 16 5 -6 6 ,
White, Leonard, 75 168