Seymour Martin Lipset | |
|---|---|
 Lipset in 1964 | |
| Born | (1922-03-18)March 18, 1922 |
| Died | December 31, 2006(2006-12-31) (aged 84) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | Agrarian Socialism (1949) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | |
| Sub-discipline | |
| School or tradition | Behaviourism |
| Institutions | |
| Main interests | |
| Notable works |
|
Seymour Martin Lipset (/ˈlɪpsɪt/LIP-sit; March 18, 1922 – December 31, 2006) was an Americansociologist andpolitical scientist. His major work was in the fields of political sociology,trade union organization,social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He also wrote extensively about the conditions for democracy in comparative perspective. He was president of both theAmerican Political Science Association (1979–1980) and theAmerican Sociological Association (1992–1993). Asocialist in his early life, Lipset later moved to the right, and was considered to be one of the firstneoconservatives.[2][1]
At his death in 2006,The Guardian called him "the leading theorist of democracy andAmerican exceptionalism";[2]The New York Times labeled him "a pre-eminent sociologist, political scientist and incisive theorist of American uniqueness"[1] andThe Washington Post reported that he was "one of the most influential social scientists of the past half century."[3]
Lipset was born inHarlem, New York City,[1] the son ofRussian Jewish immigrants.[4] He grew up in the Bronx among Irish, Italian and Jewish youth. "I was in that atmosphere where there was a lot of political talk," Lipset recalled, "but you never heard of Democrats or Republicans; the question wascommunists,socialists,Trotskyists, oranarchists. It was all sorts of differentleft wing groups." From an early age, Seymour was active in theYoung People's Socialist League, "an organization of young Trotskyists that he would later head."[5] He graduated fromCity College of New York, where he was ananti-Stalinist leftist.[4] He received a PhD insociology fromColumbia University in 1949. Before that he taught at theUniversity of Toronto.
Lipset was the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and Sociology atStanford University and a seniorfellow at theHoover Institution and then became the George D. Markham Professor of Government and Sociology atHarvard University. He also taught atColumbia University, theUniversity of California, Berkeley, theUniversity of Toronto, andGeorge Mason University, where he was the Hazel Professor of Public Policy.
Lipset was a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, theNational Academy of Sciences, and theAmerican Philosophical Society.[6][7][8] He was the only person to have been President of both theAmerican Political Science Association (1979–1980) and theAmerican Sociological Association (1992–1993).[1] He also served as the President of the International Society of Political Psychology, the Sociological Research Association, the World Association for Public Opinion Research, the Society for Comparative Research, and the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Society in Vienna.
Lipset received the MacIver Prize forPolitical Man (1960) and, in 1970, theGunnar Myrdal Prize forThe Politics of Unreason.
In 2001, Lipset was named among the top 100 American intellectuals, as measured by academic citations, inRichard Posner's book,Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline.[9]
One of Lipset's most cited works is "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy" (1959),[10] a key work onmodernization theory, ondemocratization, and an article that includes the Lipset hypothesis that economic development leads to democracy.
Lipset was one of the first proponents of thetheory of modernization", which states thatdemocracy is the direct result ofeconomic growth, and that "[t]he more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy."[11] Lipset's modernization theory has continued to be a significant factor in academic discussions and research relating todemocratic transitions.[12][13] It has been referred to as the "Lipset hypothesis"[14][15] and the "Lipset thesis".[16]
The Lipset hypothesis has been challenged byGuillermo O'Donnell,Adam Przeworski andDaron Acemoglu andJames A. Robinson.
One of the debates as to how exactly democracy emerges, is betweenendogenous orexogenous democratization. Endogenous democratization holds the argument that democratization happens as a result of the country's previous history leading up to that point. So here economic development and expansion of themiddle class play a crucial role. Proponents of this viewpoint areCarles Boix andSusan Stokes.[17] Exogenous democratization, on the other hand, argues that democratization happens as a result of external factors, such as thezeitgeist of pro-democracy political movements seen across the world from the third wave of democratization[18] up until the 1990s. According toAdam Przeworski andFernando Limongi, the reason for the correlation between economic wealth and democracy is for the simple reason that once a country has transitioned to a democratic rule, it has a much better chance of staying democratic if it is wealthy, where as poor countries most often fall back intoautocratic rule.[19]
Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, published in 1960, is an influential analysis of the bases of democracy,fascism, communism ("working classauthoritarianism"), and other political organizations, across the world, in the interwar period and afterWorld War II. One of the important sections is Chapter 2: "Economic Development and Democracy." Larry Diamond and Gary Marks argue that "Lipset's assertion of a direct relationship between economic development and democracy has been subjected to extensiveempirical examination, both quantitative and qualitative, in the past 30 years. And the evidence shows, with striking clarity and consistency, a strong causal relationship between economic development and democracy." In Chapter V, Lipset analyzed "Fascism"—Left, Right, and Center, and explained that the study of the social bases of different modern mass movements suggests that each majorsocial stratum has both democratic andextremist political expressions. He explained the mistakes of identifying extremism as aright-wing phenomenon, and Communism with the left-wing phenomenon. He underlined that extremistideologies and groups can be classified and analyzed in the same terms as democratic groups, i.e., right, left, and center.
Political Man was published and republished in several editions, sold more than 400,000 copies and was translated into 20 languages, including: Vietnamese, Bengali, and Serbo-Croatian.
In 1967, Lipset co-authored work withStein Rokkan,[20] Lipset introducedcritical juncture theory and made a substantial contributions tocleavage theory.
InThe Democratic Century, published in 2004, Lipset sought to explain why North America developed stable democracies and Latin America did not. He argued that the reason for this divergence is that the initial patterns of colonization, the subsequent process of economic incorporation of the newcolonies, and the wars of independence varied. The divergent histories of Britain and Iberia are seen as creating different cultural legacies that affected the prospects of democracy.[21]
Lipset left theSocialist Party in 1960 and later described himself as a centrist, deeply influenced byAlexis de Tocqueville,George Washington,Aristotle, andMax Weber.[22] He became active within the Democratic Party's conservative wing, and associated with neoconservatives, without calling himself one.[23][1][24]
Lipset was vice chair of the board of directors of theUnited States Institute of Peace,[25] a board member of theAlbert Shanker Institute, a member of the US Board of Foreign Scholarships, co-chair of the Committee for Labor Law Reform, co-chair of the Committee for an EffectiveUNESCO, and consultant to theNational Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Institute, theNational Endowment for Democracy, and theAmerican Jewish Committee.
Lipset was a strong supporter of the state of Israel, and was President of the American Professors for Peace in theMiddle East, chair of the NationalB'nai B'rith Hillel Commission and the Faculty Advisory Cabinet of theUnited Jewish Appeal, and co-chair of the executive committee of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East. He worked for years on seeking solution for theIsraeli–Palestinian conflict[25] as part of his larger project of research on the factors that allow societies to sustain stable and peaceful democracies. His work focused on the way in which high levels of socioeconomic development created the preconditions for democracy (see alsoAmartya Sen's work), and the consequences of democracy for peace.[26]
Lipset's bookThe First New Nation was a finalist for theNational Book Award. He was also awarded theTownsend Harris and Margaret Byrd Dawson Medals for significant achievement, the Northern Telecom-International Council for Canadian Studies Gold Medal, and the Leon Epstein Prize in Comparative Politics by theAmerican Political Science Association. He received the Marshall Sklare Award for distinction inJewish studies and, in 1997, he was awarded the Helen Dinnerman Prize by the World Association for Public Opinion Research.
Lipset's first wife, Elsie, died in 1987. She was the mother of his three children, David, Daniel, and Carola[1] ("Cici"). David Lipset is a professor of anthropology at theUniversity of Minnesota. He had six grandchildren. Lipset was survived by his second wife, Sydnee Guyer (a director of the JCRC),[4] whom he married in 1990.
At age 84, Lipset died as a result of complications following a stroke.[1][22]
