Richard Fenno

Richard F. Fenno, Jr. (born December 12, 1926) is an American political scientist known for his pioneering work on the U.S. Congress and its members.

Fenno grew up in Boston and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war, he graduated from Amherst College in 1948 and completed a Ph.D. degree in political science at Harvard University in 1956. Fenno moved in 1958 to the University of Rochester, where he is now an emeritus professor.

Fenno's books Congressmen in Committees (1973) and Home Style: House Members in Their Districts (1978) (for which he won the first D.B. Hardeman Prize) established him as a leading scholar of American politics. With Bill Riker, Fenno built the reputation of Rochester's political science department. Riker focused positive political science, while Fenno focused on establishing Rochester as a center for congressional studies.

Fenno's trademark style of political science research is sometimes referred to as "Soak and Poke" (see Fenno 1986). Rather than relying primarily on data sets or rational choice theory, Fenno undertakes empirical observation of the movements of political actors on the stage of politics. His most famous book Home Style is written in this fashion.

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