Gabriel Almond

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Gabriel Abraham Almond (born January 12, 1911 in Rock Island , Illinois , † December 25, 2002 in Pacific Grove , California ) was an American political scientist who is counted among the most important scientists in the field of comparative political science . Most recently, he has done research into the history of political science .

Life

In 1928 Almond began studying political science at the University of Chicago , then the center of behavioral political science ( behavioralism ), and did his doctorate with Harold Dwight Lasswell . His dissertation ( Wealth and Plutocracy in New York City ) caused a sensation and was only published many years later. In the same year he taught at Brooklyn College.

Second World War (1941–1945)

During World War II , Almond was called to Washington to gather information. Gathering mass information for government purposes was something entirely new at the time. In particular, the media should be monitored. Opinions and attitudes that could in some way be associated with the war should be recorded regularly. In a small group gathering information about Germany, Italy and the Occupied Territories, Almond tried to create an analytical code.

His work at the “ United States Strategic Bombing Survey ”, where he was commissioned to study the effects of strategic air strikes on the attitude and behavior of the bombed population, was much more practical . To this end, documents related to the air strikes were examined and numerous police officers, Gestapo officers and survivors of the resistance movement were interviewed.

Activity as a university lecturer (1946–1976)

In 1946 Almond was appointed to Yale University , where he became a member of the “Institute of International Studies”, the first research group in the country to be interdisciplinary. In 1950 Almond published his first book ( The American People and Foreign Policy ), which made him one of the leading scholars in the field of behavioral political science. He was asked by the magazine "World Politics" to publish the results of his work in an article.

Almond formulated the concept of mood or feeling. This means a docile and informal response to an ambiguous context, which is mainly expressed in external relations. In the same year (1950) his institute relocated to Princeton University . During this time he began to be linked to the interdisciplinary activity of social science research. With this research Almond reached the preliminary climax of his career with the book "Appeals of Communism" (1954). It is largely based on a collection of data, opinions from home and abroad, interviews with former communists, and includes extensive analyzes of this data. Almond proved to be the first practitioner of political psychology , long before the study could prove itself as a discipline in its own right.

Almond stayed at Princeton until 1959 when he returned to Yale. He spent four years there before moving to Stanford University . At Stanford he worked until his retirement in 1976. He managed to renew the department of political science and became dean .

In 1961, Almond was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1966 to the American Philosophical Society, and in 1977 to the National Academy of Sciences .

Work: The Civic Culture (1963)

The book "The Civic Culture" is inspired by the social science department of the University of Chicago, which existed 30 years ago. It is about civic virtue and its impact on the effectiveness and stability of democratic policy making. With the survey of the citizens of the different states, Almond aims to identify the political consciousness of the citizens in order to gain knowledge for the political system . Five countries took part in the survey (USA, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Mexico).

The study assumes that the United States and Great Britain have political and social attributes that can lead to stable democracy. The other three states under study do not have these attributes. However, this line of argument is not intended to mean that democracy cannot be achieved in the three states. Because as long as there is participation in political systems and access to social channels is guaranteed, one can always speak of an improvement. Almond defines political culture as a clear distribution of attributes and orientations towards the political issues found in the population of a nation. The book tries to record the opinions and attitudes of the citizens and use them to spread a better understanding of the political culture. To this day, this work is of great importance for political science.

History of Political Science

Starting with two essays in 1988, he reflected on the history of the discipline from an American and international perspective. In 1990 he published his relevant standard work A Discipline Divided . Based on this focus, he wrote the scientific-historical contribution for the renowned handbook A New Handbook of Political Science , published in 1998 .

Fonts

  • Comparative Political Systems , in: Journal of Politics XVIII, August 1956, pp. 391-409
  • Introduction. A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics , in: Gabriel A. Almond / James S. Coleman (eds.): The Politics of the Developing Areas, Princeton 1960, pp. 3-64
  • together with Sidney Verba : The Civic Culture. Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations , Boston / Toronto 1963
  • A Developmental Approach to Political Systems , in: World Politics XVII, January 1965, pp. 183-214
  • together with G. Bingham Powell jr .: Comparative Politics. A Developmental Approach , Boston / Toronto 1966
  • Political Development: Analytical and Normative Perspectives , Boston 1968
  • Determinancy-Choice, Stability-Change: Some Thoughts on a Contemporary Polemic in Political Theory , in: Government and Opposition V, 1969/70
  • together with Scott Flanagan / Robert Mundt: Crisis, Choice, and Change. Historical Studies of Political Development , Boston 1973
  • together with G. Bingham Powell jr. (Ed.): Comparative Politics Today. A World View , Boston / Toronto 1980
  • A Discipline Divided. Schools and Sects in Political Science , 1990
  • Political Science - the History of the Discipline , in: Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann: A New Handbook of Political Science, Oxford / New York 1998, pp. 50-96

literature

  • Ada W. Finifter (Ed.): Political Science. The State of the Discipline (= Annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. 1982). The American Political Science Association, Washington DC 1983, ISBN 0-915654-57-1 (including articles by Donald Hancock and Joel S. Migdal).
  • Peter Mair: Comparative Politics. An overview . In: Robert E. Goodin, Hans-Dieter Klingemann (Ed.): A new handbook of political science . Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 1998, ISBN 0-19-829471-9 , pp. 309-352.
  • Peter Birle, Christoph Wagner: Comparative Political Science, Analysis and Comparison of Political Systems . In: Manfred Mols, Hans-Joachim Lauth, Christian Wagner (Eds.): Political Science. An introduction (= UTB . 1789 Political Science ). 2nd, expanded edition. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1996, ISBN 3-506-99445-X , pp. 102-135.
  • Ronald H. Chilcote: Theories of Comparative Politics. The Search for a Paradigm . Westview Press, Boulder CO 1981, ISBN 0-89158-970-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gabriel Almond, Separate Tables: Schools and Sects in Political Science? , in: Political Science, 21, 1988, pp. 828-842; Return to the State , in: American Political Science Review, 82, 1988, pp. 853-874
  2. ^ Richard Rose, Review, in: Journal of Public Policy, 10, 1990, 3 (July), pp. 356-357.
personal data
SURNAME Almond, Gabriel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Almond, Gabriel A .; Almond, Gabriel Abraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Rock Island , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 2002
Place of death Pacific Grove , California