Robert Dahl: scholar, teacher, and democrat

Abstract

Robert Dahl’s greatness as a political scientist rested on three qualities: the analytic clarity of his definitions of democracy, his insistence on studying complex ideas such as ‘power’ in a systematic empirical manner, and his commitment to a moral or normative underpinning for one’s scholarship. He was a deep egalitarian intellectually and interpersonally. However, many of Dahl’s publications had a considerable blindspot; until late in life, he did not fully recognize how much racial hierarchy and discrimination undermined his and others’ claims that the United States has a reasonably well functioning and robust democracy. This blind spot teaches us to be intellectually humble, to recognize the defects of even the strongest methodological strategies, and to recognize our own mistakes, as Dahl did.

Keywords:

• democracy
• polyarchy
• race
• Robert Dahl
• power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It gives me pleasure to note that I am one of only two political scientists, to my knowledge, who has been to Skagway, Alaska – population 920 in 2010 – where Dahl grew up. (The other is Stephen Wasby.) A small indicator of his personality is the fact that he went out of his way to talk with my parents, then living in Alaska, about Skagway when they visited me at Yale. Thanks to C. Anthony Broh, David Mayhew, Cynthia Verba, Sidney Verba, and an anonymous correspondent (see page xx) for helpful comments.

2. http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/CTtab.pdf

3. Observation from AP photographer David Vine, at https://www.youtube.com/user/davidvine