Donald E. Stokes

Donald Elkinton Stokes (born  April 1, 1927 in Philadelphia , †  January 26, 1997 ibid) was an American political scientist and election researcher . He taught at the University of Michigan from 1958 to 1974 and as Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University from 1974 until his death . Together with other authors he published in 1960 under the title " The American Voter " a study on the individual voting behavior of voters in political elections in the USA, which is considered to be one of the most influential works in the history of election research.

Life

Donald Stokes was born in Philadelphia in 1927 and received a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1951 . He was a Fellow of the Social Science Research Council from 1955 to 1957 and received his PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 1958 . From 1958 to 1974 he taught at the University of Michigan , where he was director of studies and programs of the Survey Research Center from 1958 to 1974, the department of political science from 1970/1971 and the graduate dean from 1971 to 1974 School headed. He then moved to Princeton University, where he was Professor of Politics and Public Affairs from 1974 until his death and from 1974 to 1992 he was Dean of the Woodrow-Wilson Faculty of Public and International Affairs. He died in 1997 in the city of his birth as a result of acute leukemia .

Scientific work

Pasteur's Quadrant as basic research inspired by use cases

Donald Stokes' research interests during his time at the University of Michigan were the study of individual voter behavior in political elections . In this area he published together with Angus Campbell , Philip E. Converse and Warren E. Miller with the work " The American Voter " a study on the basis of data from several presidential and congressional elections , which up to the present as a milestone in electoral research is seen. With their analyzes and conclusions, the participating authors established a theory of voting behavior known as the Ann Arbor model , which represents one of the three main streams of electoral research. After moving to Princeton, Donald Stokes turned to studying the relationship between basic and applied research and the American government's science policy. His last work was published posthumously in 1997 under the title "Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation", in which he systematizes the aforementioned research areas using the archetypes Bohr , Pasteur and Edison .

Awards

Donald Stokes received a Fulbright grant in 1963/1964 and a Guggenheim grant in 1964 . The American Political Science Association awarded him the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Prize in 1970 for his work "Political Change in Britain". In 1977 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . At Princeton University, a specialist library and chair bear his name.

Works (selection)

• The American Voter. New York 1960
• Elections and the Political Order. New York 1966
• with David Butler : Political Change in Britain. New York 1969
• The Federal Investment in Knowledge of Social Problems. Washington 1978
• Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation. Washington 1997

literature

• Larry M. Bartels: Stokes, Donald E. In: John Gray Geer: Public Opinion and Polling around the World: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2004, ISBN 1-57607-911-2 , Volume 1, pp. 457-461
• Edward G. Carmines, James Wood: Stokes, Donald E. In: Glenn H. Utter, Charles Lockhart: American Political Scientists: A Dictionary. Greenwood Press, Westport 2002, ISBN 0-313-31957-X , pp. 377-379
• Larry M. Bartels: Donald Stokes and the Study of Electoral Politics. In: PS: Political Science and Politics. 30 (2 )/1997. American Political Science Association, pp. 230-232, ISSN  1049-0965
• R. Douglas Arnold, Fred I. Greenstein: Donald Stokes at Princeton. In: PS: Political Science and Politics. 30 (2 )/1997. American Political Science Association, pp. 232/233, ISSN  1049-0965