Robert A. Dahl
| Robert A. Dahl | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 17, 1915 Inwood, Iowa, U.S. |
| Died | February 5, 2014 (aged 98) Hamden, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Fields | Political science, Democratic theory |
| Alma mater |
University of Washington Yale University, Ph.D. |
| Thesis | Socialist Programs and Democratic Politics: An Analysis |
| Academic advisors | Francis Coker, Harvey Mansfield, Sr. |
| Notable students | Catherine MacKinnon • Guillermo O'Donnell • Nelson Polsby • Ian Shapiro • Edward Tufte • Ray Wolfinger • James Fishkin |
| Known for | Polyarchy, pluralism |
| Influences | Elite theory • Kenneth Arrow • Léon Duguit • James Coleman • Carl Hempel |
| Influenced | Charles Lindblom, Tom Malleson |
| Spouse | Mary Louise Bartlett (1940–1970) Ann Sale (1973–2014) |
| Children | 4 |
Robert Alan Dahl (/dɑːl/; December 17, 1915 – February 5, 2014) was a political theorist and Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He established the pluralist theory of democracy—in which political outcomes are enacted through competitive, if unequal, interest groups—and introduced "polyarchy" as a descriptor of actual democratic governance. An originator of "empirical theory" and known for advancing behavioralist characterizations of political power, Dahl's research focused on the nature of decisionmaking in actual institutions, such as American cities. Dahl is considered one of the most influential political social scientists of the twentieth century, and has been described as "the dean of American political scientists."
Dahl received his Ph.D. at Yale in 1940 and served on its political science faculty from 1946 to 1986. His influential early books include A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956), Who Governs? (1961), and Pluralist Democracy in the United States (1967), which presented pluralistic explanations for political rule in the United States. He was elected president of the American Political Science Association in 1966.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was involved in an academic disagreement with C. Wright Mills over the nature of politics in the United States. Mills held that America's governments are in the grasp of a unitary and demographically narrow power elite. Dahl responded that there are many different elites involved, who have to work both in contention and in compromise with one another. If this is not democracy in a populist sense, Dahl contended, it is at least polyarchy (or pluralism). In perhaps his best known work, Who Governs? (1961), he examines the power structures (both formal and informal) in the city of New Haven, Connecticut, as a case study, and finds that it supports this view.
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