Elmer Eric Schattschneider | |
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| Born | Elmer Eric Schattschneider (1892-08-11)August 11, 1892 Bethany, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | March 4, 1971(1971-03-04) (aged 78) |
| Nationality | American |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Political science |
| Institutions | Wesleyan University |
Elmer Eric Schattschneider (August 11, 1892 – March 4, 1971) was an Americanpolitical scientist.
Schattschneider was born inBethany, Minnesota. He received his AB at the University of Wisconsin,[2] MA at theUniversity of Pittsburgh, and his PhD atColumbia University. He taught at Columbia, the New Jersey College for Women (now a section ofRutgers University), andWesleyan University (1930–1960). Schattschneider was president of theAmerican Political Science Association between 1956 and 1957 and is the namesake of its award for the best dissertation in the field of American politics. He died inOld Saybrook, Connecticut.
Schattschneider's books includePolitics, Pressures and the Tariff (1935),Party Government (1942),The Struggle for Party Government, (1948),Equilibrium and Change in American Politics (1958),The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (1960) (for a discussion see: Mair, 1997[3]), andTwo Hundred Million Americans in Search of a Government (1969).
Along with thepolitical scientistTheodore J. Lowi, Schattschneider offered perhaps "the most devastating" critique of the Americanpolitical theory ofpluralism: Rather than an essentially democratic system in which the many competing interests ofcitizens are amply represented, if not advanced, by equally many competinginterest groups, Schattschneider argued the pressure system is biased in favor of "the most educated and highest-income members of society", and showed that "the difference between those who participate in interest group activity and those who stand at the sidelines is much greater than that between voters and nonvoters."[4]
InThe Semisovereign People, Schattschneider argued the scope of the pressure system is really quite small: The "range of organized, identifiable, known groups is amazingly narrow; there is nothing remotely universal about it" and the "business or upper-class bias of the pressure system shows up everywhere." He says the "notion that the pressure system is automatically representative of the whole community is a myth" and, instead, the "system is skewed, loaded and unbalanced in favor of a fraction of a minority."[5] And "the flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent."[6]
