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Strata and Stability: Reputations of American Political Scientists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

Walter B. Roettger
Walter B. Roettger*
Affiliation:
Drake University
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Extract

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The aptness of Orwell's observation is not confined to the community of Animal Farm, but extends to the “community of scholars” which constitutes the “learned discipline” of political science as well. In fact, as conceptualized by Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus in their seminal study of American Political Science, a “gallery of great men” is one of the characteristics of such a discipline, serving (inter alia) “… both as a sign of professional kinship and as a means of cementing these bonds.”

As an organized human activity, political science possesses a number of formal and informal stratification systems. The former reflect the decentralized nature of the discipline and include the various departmental structures as well as the hierarchies of the specialized and regional associations and of APSA. The informal stratification systems—essentially the considered assessment of the significance of individual contributions to the discipline—are substantially more subjective. These diverge along idiosyncratic as well as along the institutional, geographic, and subfield dimensions of the formal stratification systems. Moreover, the formal and informal systems will depart to some extent, since they are based upon different and sometimes contradictory criteria. Frequently, a particularly prominent contributor to the discipline will be elevated to the Association's presidency in recognition of these activities. In other cases, however, the nature of the contribution precludes such formal acknowledgment.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Winter 1978 , pp. 6 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1978

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Footnotes

1

The author would like to thank the Faculty Research Council of Central College, Pella, Iowa, and the Faculty Research and Creativity Committee of Emporta State University, Emporla, Kansas, for the grants which made this research possible. He would also like to thank Dr. Francis Wilhoitand Dr. Richard Pattenaude of Drake for their conscientious and helpful editorial efforts.

References

2 Orwell, George, Animal Farm (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1946), 148.Google Scholar

3 Somit, Albert and Tanenhaus, Joseph, American Political Science: A Profile of a Discipline (New York: Atherton Press, 1964).Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 6.

5 Ibid., p. 64.

6 Ibid., p. 62.

7 Ibid., p. 65.

8 Ibid., p. 72.

9 Ibid., p. 75.

10 Ibid., p. 75.

11 Ibid., p. 75.

12 Ibid., p. 75.

13 A full account of their survey and analytic techniques may be found in ibid., pp. 139–49.

14 American Political Science Association, Directory of Members: January, 1975 (Washington, D.C.: The American Political Science Association, 1975).Google Scholar

15 See, for example, Mann, Thomas E., “Report on a Survey of the Membership of the American Political Science Association,” PS: Political Science & Politics, 7 (1974), 382 (Table 1)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and, more recently, Mann's findings reported in “Political Science Faculty and Student Data,” PS, 9 (1976), 282–84.

16 Information on APSA membership is taken from Kirkpatrick, Evron, “Report of the Executive Director, 1974–75,” PS: Political Science & Politics, 8 (1975), 298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Figures on the number of Ph.D.s is taken from Mann, Thomas E., “Placement of Political Scientists in 1976,” PS: Political Science & Politics, 9 (1976), 412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Both Almond and Hyneman. published significant works toward the end of this period (1945–63): Almond, and Coleman, (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, and Hyneman, , The Study of Politics (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1959).Google Scholar However, the impact of these volumes would probably not be felt within the period 1945–60 whereas it might during 1945–1963.

18 Adapted from Somit and Tanenhaus, op. cit., 66 (Table 10).

19 The phrase, of course, is due to Easton, David, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” American Political Science Review, 63 (1969), 1051–1061.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 In this regard, see Kadushin's, Charles study, “Who Are the Elite Intellectuals?” The Public Interest, 29 (1972), 109–25.Google Scholar

21 In computing these figures, we are omitting the Left Radicals and the SRC Group since their inclusion is somewhat artificial and their disaggregation for computational purposes introduces numerous conceptual questions.

22 Lowi (Yale), Wildavsky (Yale), Dye (University of Pennsylvania), Dahl (Yale), Huntington (Harvard), Verba (Princeton), Sharkansky (Wisconsin), Barber (Yale), Campbell (Stanford), Converse (Michigan), Miller (Syracuse), Stokes (Yale), Deutsch (Harvard), and Riker (Harvard).

23 One of the most recent and frequently cited of such rankings is that of Alan Murray Cartter which ranks Yale (1), Harvard (2), Princeton (5), Stanford (6), Wisconsin (8), and Michigan (10) among the ten most effective doctoral programs in political science. See Cartter, Alan Murray, An Assessment of Quality in Graduate Education (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1966), 100 Google Scholar (Table 31 ).

24 Kadushin, op. cit.

25 In compiling this list, Kadushin sought “… to include journals of general interest and to exclude specialized or technical ones such as the American Historical Review” (ibid., 112). The resulting list included the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, New Yorker, New Republic, Commentary, Harper's, Partisan Review, Saturday Review, The Nation, Atlantic, Daedalus, Ramparts, Yale Review, Dissent, American Scholar, The Hudson Review, The Village Voice, The Progressive, Foreign Affairs, and The Public Interest (ibid., p. 113).

26 Ibid., p. 121.

27 Ibid., p. 123.

28 Loc. cit.

29 In comparing the two studies, we should be aware that Kadushin's is a survey of elites within a community while the present study is a survey of the attitudes of the mass membership of an elite group. Conceivably, this could introduce problems of interpretation. Nevertheless, if treated with the proper caution, the comparison is an interesting and fruitful one.

30 I should like to thank Dr. Seymour Martin Lipset for his helpful comments on this paper and, in particular, for suggesting this comparison.