Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis by Edward J. Harpham & Raymond Seidelman

Author:Edward J. Harpham & Raymond Seidelman [Harpham, Edward J. & Seidelman, Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Advocacy, History & Theory, United States, 20th Century, Political Science, Political Process, History
ISBN: 9781438455754
Google: GBdjCAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 27169332
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 1985-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

V. O. and the Third Tradition

Valdimer Orlando Key was born on March 13, 1908, in Austin, Texas. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Texas in 1929 and 1930, respectively, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1934. In many ways, his career represented that envisioned by Charles Merriam for political scientists when he established the graduate program at the University of Chicago. Key was a faculty member at the University of California–Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and Harvard University. From these academic positions, he published a constant stream of articles and books with a clocklike regularity, including The Administration of Federal Grants to States (1937), The Initiative and Referendum in California with W. W. Crouch (1939), Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups (1942, 1947, 1952, 1958, 1964), Southern Politics (1946), A Primer of Statistics for Political Scientists (1954), American State Politics (1956), Public Opinion and American Democracy (1961), and The Responsible Electorate (1966). He was a member of the SSRC board of directors and chaired two of its most important committees, the Committee on Political Behavior and the Committee on Problems and Policy. In 1958 he was elected APSA president. Besides these professional activities, Key also was involved in extensive activities in public service. At the national level, he served as a consultant to the Social Security board, worked as an NRPB research technician, was employed by the Bureau of the Budget, and served on President Kennedy’s Committee on Campaign Costs. At the local level, he advised the Maryland State Planning Commission and the Baltimore Commission on Planning and Economy.18

In other ways, Key’s career marked a qualitative break with prewar political science. Unlike his mentors at the University of Chicago, Key remained throughout his career primarily a professional political scientist dedicated to the scientific advancement of the discipline. His use of quantitative tools and techniques was far more sophisticated than Merriam’s. Indeed, works such as Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups and Southern Politics paved the way for later detailed empirical studies of the American political system. Similarly, A Primer of Statistics for Political Scientists was designed specifically to overcome resistance among political scientists to the use of quantitative techniques in the study of political behavior.

Key also rejected many of the political assumptions that earlier political scientists had built into their scientific work. In sharp contrast to Merriam, Key argued that distinctions had to be drawn between facts and values as well as between science and politics if the latter were not to undermine the former. Too many political scientists held an undeveloped understanding of the empirical nature of modern democracy. Moreover, too little attention had been paid to studying the actual patterns of behavior underlying American political processes. What postwar political science needed most was not a series of reform proposals based on an inadequate understanding of the American political system, but a hard-nosed scientific explanation of the way in which democracy actually operated in the real world.19

This intensified concern over scientific quantification,

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