hauptmann 2012 the ford foundation and the rise of behavioralism in political science

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 48(2), 154–173 Spring 2012View this article online at Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.21515C© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISMIN POLITICAL SCIENCE

EMILY HAUPTMANN

How did behavioralism, one of the most influential approaches to the academic studyof politics in the twentieth century, become so prominent so quickly? I argue that manypolitical scientists have either understated or ignored how the Ford Foundation’s BehavioralSciences Program gave form to behavioralism, accelerated its rise, and helped root it inpolitical science. I then draw on archived documents from Ford as well as one of itsmajor grantees, U. C. Berkeley, to present several examples of how Ford used its funds toencourage the behavioral approach at a time when it had few adherents among politicalscientists. C© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

For supporters and critics alike, behavioralism stands out as one of the most importantorientations in twentieth-century political science. Many of its early defenders called it revolu-tionary (Almond, 1966; Dahl, 1961; Truman, 1965); some argued it had changed the disciplineirreversibly (Ranney, 1974, p. 39). Though one of its architects announced the close of thebehavioral era in 1969 (Easton, 1969), behavioralism still has many adherents in politicalscience today. In the study of public opinion, public officials, interest groups and politicalbeliefs as well as in the research methods used by many political scientists, behavioralism isstill a powerful presence.1

For behavioralists, studying politics meant studying recent trends in political parties,interest groups and public opinion; consequently, they focused less on the historical develop-ment of formal governmental and legal structures than had many of their predecessors. Butas Robert Adcock (2007) has convincingly argued, it was less what behavioralists studiedthan how they studied it that set them apart from other political scientists. Though manyearly twentieth century political scientists had also studied public opinion and informal polit-ical processes, behavioralists approached these topics in several new ways. First, rather thancrafting fine-grained case studies based on qualitative analyses of documents and in-depthinterviews, most behavioralists based their work on statistical analyses of large bodies of data,such as public opinion surveys, censuses, and electoral records. Second, many early behav-ioralists in the 1950s and 1960s appealed to neopositivist ideas about scientific explanation,the most ambitious among them aspiring to develop a unified theory of behavior and “systems”that would reveal regularities underlying all human processes (Easton, 1953; Miller, 1955).These striking methodological and theoretical commitments reinforced one another—general

1. See Adcock (2007) for an assessment of the impact of behavioralism on the fields of American and comparativepolitics in the United States Schwartz-Shea and Yanow (2002, p. 476) argue that behavioralism remains central tohow graduate students of political science learn research methods.

EMILY HAUPTMANN is a professor of political science at Western Michigan University. This article ispart of a larger project that explores how changes in private and public funding immediately after WorldWar II affected what political scientists studied and how they did so. Her other publications on the recenthistory of political science have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Political Theory andin an edited volume, The Politics of Method (Duke).

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Emily Hauptmann, De-partment of Political Science, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008. E-mail:[email protected].

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theories of human behavior informed data gathering and analysis and vice versa (Adcock,2007, pp. 190–191, 197–198). They also distinguished behavioralists not only from theirpredecessors but from many of their contemporaries as well, many of whom argued that be-havioralists neglected the historical, normative, and critical dimensions of the study of politics(Strauss, 1962; Wolin, 1969).

Political scientists and historians of the discipline have assessed the emergence of thisimportant approach in one of two principal ways. The first, as mentioned above, presentsbehavioralism as an intellectual revolution, a consciously crafted rejection on the part ofsome political scientists of the deficiencies of their predecessors. Those closely identified withthe approach have offered this assessment in a variety of retrospective analyses, includingmemoirs and oral histories; many more recent accounts of the history of political scienceecho it (Dahl, 1961; Easton, 1991; Eulau, 1963; Somit and Tanenhaus, 1982). More recently,some have argued that behavioralism was not thoroughly revolutionary but continuous withsome currents in early twentieth century political science (Adcock, 2007; Dryzek, 2006; Farr,1995; Gunnell, 1993). As much as these two approaches differ, both are more concernedwith assessing the novelty of the behavioral approach in the study of politics than they arewith explaining its rise. And for each, the discipline is the principal object and frame ofanalysis.

Particularly from the postwar period on, I believe there are a number of good historicalreasons to look for the principal agents of academic change outside of disciplinary frames—even outside of the academy. Though universities in the United States have long been linked topolitical and economic entities, by the mid-twentieth century, those ties multiplied and becamestronger (Klausner and Lidz, 1986; Owens, 1990; Solovey, 2001). By the 1960s, major researchuniversities in the United States were actively contributing to the national political economy,their faculty competing for and working on grants from industry, government, and privatefoundations (Geiger, 1988, 1990; Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004). When externally fundedresearch becomes crucial to universities and individual academics, asking whether and how theentities that supply it influence academic disciplines become important questions. To answerthem, as Peter Seybold (1980, p. 274) has suggested, one must identify the channels throughwhich external funds flow into and then reconfigure the terrain of academic disciplines.2

A full story of the rise of behavioralism would be broader in scope in several ways thanwhat I offer here. For one, it would be an interdisciplinary story, since a broader discourseof behavior was unfolding not only in political science, but also in psychology, sociology,and anthropology, and was even helping to create new disciplines, such as communications.Though the emphasis on behavioral science began during the postwar period, psychologistsand sociologists in the United States had been focusing on behavior far earlier and to a greaterextent than did political scientists; indeed, Danziger (1997, p. 97) argues that a discourseof behavior had already become hegemonic in U.S. psychology as early as the 1910s. Mostfirst-generation behavioralists in political science were keenly aware of this and acknowledgedtheir considerable intellectual debts to their colleagues in the other social sciences.3 Thesedebts, however, were not to Skinnerian behaviorism with its conviction that behavior couldbest be understood through experiments in tightly controlled laboratory settings, but to the

2. I am indebted to a number of analyses of the influence of foundation funding on academic life. Among them areSeybold (1980), Roelofs (2003), Fisher (1993), and Geiger (1988, 1990). Both Simpson (1994) and Osborne andRose (1999) show how several fields within the social sciences (communications and the study of public opinion)were imported into the academy after having been developed by government or industry. For a skeptical assessmentof the capacity of foundations to influence academic disciplines, see Turner (1999).3. See, for example, Almond (1991, p. 123), Dahl (1961, pp. 764–765), and Easton (1991, pp. 201–205).

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

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interdisciplinary, methodologically sophisticated and eminently practical behavioral sciences(Herman, 1995, p. 8). Like many behavioral scientists, behavioralists in political sciencedisclaimed any grand visions of social reform; their ambitions focused instead on developing“a practical science of social control” (Danziger, 1997, pp. 98, 101–102). The story of the riseof behavioralism in political science, therefore, is best told as a subplot in the bigger story ofthe rise of the behavioral sciences.

A full account of the rise of behavioralism would also include a composite analysis of allthe entities that supported the behavioral approach: the Rockefeller Foundation, the CarnegieCorporation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and numerous agencies in thefederal government.4 And since many of the funded projects involved interdisciplinary groupsof psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists as well as political scientists, what becamebehavioralism in political science continued to be influenced by other social sciences well intothe 1950s and 1960s.

In what follows, however, I present two more focused vantage points on the rise ofbehavioralism in political science. First, I consider what behavioralists in political scienceas well as historians of the discipline have said about the role external funding might haveplayed in the rise of behavioralism. In addition to showing how little attention has so far beenpaid to the relation between external funding and the rise of behavioralism, I also discussthe virtues and shortcomings of the few analyses that do exist. I then focus on the FordFoundation’s program in the Behavioral Sciences, both because of its great size (around $24million disbursed from 1951 to 1957) and because of the early and explicit commitment of itsstaff to steering the social sciences in a behavioral direction. Along with summarizing the aimsof the major architects of this program, I also show how a range of people affiliated with U. C.Berkeley, one of its major grantees, understood and responded to Ford’s aims. My emphasison the importance of Ford’s program is meant to counter the tendency to assess the rise ofbehavioralism within a disciplinary frame in which only political scientists are the principalactors.

THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE: SEVERAL VERSIONS OF THE

USUAL STORY

Some political scientists and historians of the discipline have acknowledged that thebehavioral approach benefited from generous foundation support. But such acknowledgmentsrarely lead to much analysis. Whether behavioralism had a substantive core or discernibleancestors within political science are the interesting questions for most, not how and why itwas funded.

Though not the primary concern of most, several distinct conceptions of the relationbetween behavioralism and foundation funding may be found in these commentaries. Whilethe earliest appear excited but also bemused by the sudden availability of so much funding forbehavioral studies, many later accounts argue that behavioralists managed to attract generousfinancial support during the immediate postwar period mainly because they successfullyportrayed their work as sharing the expectations private and government funders had forpostwar social science. I challenge the idea implicit in both these points: that behavioralism

4. Though these foundations devoted a large portion of their social science budgets to behavioral approaches, theRockefeller Foundation sponsored some pointedly antibehavioral projects. I have discussed how Rockefeller’s programin Legal and Political Philosophy was conceived as an antibehavioral program (Hauptmann, 2006); Guilhot (2011)analyzes Rockefeller’s support for realist scholars of international relations who explicitly rejected ambitions tostudy politics scientifically. Important though these programs were, they were dwarfed even by Rockefeller’s owncommitment to the behavioral sciences—not to mention by Ford’s (Hauptmann, 2006, p. 644, note 5).



had already gelled as an academic approach before Ford supported it so generously. I thenunderscore some of what I think are the most promising accounts of a few historians ofpolitical science of how behavioralism depended on external funding before moving on to myown analysis of how the Ford Foundation helped constitute the behavioral sciences.

Early Assessments

One of the early pieces noting the implications of foundation funding on political scienceappeared shortly after the Ford Foundation launched its nationwide program. In an essayentitled, “Social Science at the Crossroads,” Heinz Eulau (1951) reviewed a number of worksrepresenting new and promising ways of doing social science. Among them was the Reportfor the Study Committee for the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program (Ford FoundationStudy Committee, 1949), the report that laid out Ford’s national philanthropic agenda. Clearlyimpressed by Ford’s announced agenda, Eulau remarked that such unprecedented spendingmight well transform social science: “until now, no foundation with means comparable tothose of the Ford Foundation has ventured so far as to lay all of its golden eggs into theshapeless basket of social science” (Eulau, 1951, p. 117).5 The image Eulau chose expressesnot only some puzzlement over why Ford favored the humble, disorganized social scienceswith so much grant money but also considerable excitement over what such generously fundedsocial scientists might be able to do. Perhaps sensing an emerging trend, Eulau cited severalrecent social scientific projects generously supported by public or private funds that embodiedthe standard promoted by the Study Committee’s report—that social science research be“inextricably bound up with a question of public policy” (Eulau, 1951, p. 118).6

Though Eulau acknowledged the importance of these public and private “golden eggs”to postwar social science in 1951, the issue disappears from his much more widely read laterassessment of behavioralism. In the later book, Eulau does not discuss any extra-academicfactors that accelerated the rise of behavioralism. Instead, he presents behavioralists as con-temporary intellectual heroes, comparing them to Socrates (for their bold embrace of newways of thinking) and underscoring the many obstacles they had to overcome (insufficienttraining and insufficient funding being foremost) (Eulau, 1963, pp. v, 115–119). The sweepingstyle Eulau adopts throughout this book assists the heroic myth he creates; because there areno footnotes and few specific references in the body of the text, few of Eulau’s statements arequalified. Many of these unqualified statements bolster the myth of intellectual heroism bysuppressing acknowledgment of the support behavioralists received.

For instance, Eulau presents the education of the first generation of postwar behavioralistsas an arduous and unsupported venture: “In the last fifteen years, most of those who havecome to the behavioral persuasion in politics have been largely self-taught. Trained in thetraditional techniques of political science, they had to develop new skills” (Eulau, 1963, p. 115).Eulau’s own intellectual biography only partially fits this heroic picture. The irrelevance of

5. Herman (1995, p. 133) cites a similar comment made by Gordon Allport in a 1955 speech. After expressing somereservations about the appropriateness of the term, “behavioral science,” Allport adds ruefully, “But the foundationsseem to like the name behavioral science, and we shall raise no objection to it lest Cinderella miss her chance to ridein a golden coach provided by the Foundation. Up to now these sciences have been riding in a Ford model T.” Allportand Eulau both use magical metaphors to capture how Ford’s “golden” money might transform the humble socialsciences.6. The projects Eulau mentions are Thompson’s Culture in Crisis: Study of the Hopi Indians (1950); Adorno et al.’sThe Authoritarian Personality (1950) and Stouffer et al.’s The American Soldier (1949). Thompson’s research “wassponsored by the Office of Indian Affairs”; Adorno’s by “the American Jewish Committee”; Stouffer’s by the “ResearchBranch, Information and Education Division, of the War Department” (Eulau, 1951, p. 118). Whether these are fullyaccurate acknowledgments is not the point, but rather that they are offered at all.


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the “traditional” education he had received as a graduate student at U. C. Berkeley to hisbehavioral work notwithstanding, Eulau was far from being a “self-taught” behavioralist.Instead, his retraining as a behavioralist—first as a research assistant to Harold Lasswell inthe War Communication Division of the Library of Congress and second as a participantin a workshop supported by the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) Committee onPolitical Behavior in 1954—was organized and financed by government agencies and privatefoundations.7 Though Eulau (1991) mentions both these specific debts in an oral history, his1963 book actively constructs the myth of the “self-taught” behavioralist.

In one of the most frequently cited early assessments of behavioralism, Robert Dahl(1961) readily acknowledges how much the approach depended on foundation funding: “Ifthe foundations had been hostile to the behavioral approach, there can be no doubt that itwould have had very rough sledding indeed” (p. 765). Dahl also cites numerous “interrelated. . . powerful stimuli” he believes helped vault behavioralism to its preeminent position in thediscipline (p. 763); in addition to foundation funding, he discusses the work done by manypolitical scientists for the state during World War II (WW II) and the SSRC’s Committee onPolitical Behavior (pp. 764–765).8 For as thorough as Dahl’s analysis appears to be, however,its predominant tone of blithe bemusement blocks any deep investigation of how these factorswere interrelated.

Dahl presents the relation between foundations and academics as “to a very high degreereciprocal: the staffs of the foundations are highly sensitive to the views of distinguishedscholars, on whom they rely heavily for advice, and at the same time because even foundationresources are scarce, the policies of foundation staffs and trustees must inevitably encourageor facilitate some lines of research more than others” (p. 765). But this important observationshould be pushed much further: in a number of instances, “the staffs of the foundations”had academic ties and positions in state agencies. One particularly striking example of suchmultiple affiliations may be found in Hans Speier. Could one possibly choose only one labelfor the ubiquitous Speier, who worked for the Office of War Information during WW II,then headed the RAND Corporation’s Social Science Division in the 1950s while helpingto build the Ford Foundation’s social science programs? No single professional tag will dofor Speier; he was a government official, foundation staff member and an academic (Lowen,1997, pp. 199–202). The same could be said of Donald Marquis, a psychologist on the facultyof the University of Michigan, a member of the Ford Foundation’s Study Committee andthe head of the Committee on Human Resources of the Department of Defense’s Researchand Development Board (Marquis, 1972; Simpson, 1994, p. 57, Ford Foundation Archives).9

Speier and Marquis were not exceptional for the number of positions they held. The manyhats they wore illustrate one portion of the dense network of institutional linkages that bound

7. Eulau’s postgraduate move toward behavioralism was not unusual. A number of young PhDs in the social sciencesparticipated in workshops funded by Ford and other foundations designed to acquaint them with research techniquesgrounded in mathematical analysis. See my discussion of one such Ford program below. For Eulau’s wartime workwith Lasswell, see Simpson (1994, pp. 26–27). Eulau dedicates his 1963 book to his wartime teacher: “To Harold D.Lasswell, Persuader.” For the importance of the University of Michigan summer workshop organized by the SSRC’sCommittee on Political Behavior and funded by the Carnegie Corporation to Eulau’s intellectual development, seeEulau (1991, pp. 188–189).8. This committee was first established in 1945, but appears to have begun its active life only in 1949. It is not listedas an active committee in the annual reports for 1946–1947 or 1947–1948; from 1945 to 1946, it did not expend anySSRC funds. When it reappears in the 1948–1949 report, its founding date is given as 1949 (SSRC, 1944–1949).9. See Lowen (1997, pp. 277–278, note 13) for a longer list of scholars in the postwar period with such multipleaffiliations. In subsequent references, I abbreviate citations for all documents from the Ford Foundation Archives“FFA.”



together private foundations, the federal government and the academy during the postwarperiod (Herman, 1995, pp. 126–130).

Though Dahl notes that many political scientists worked for the federal governmentin some capacity during WW II, he suggests that these ties ended with the war. But manyresearch efforts in which they took part after the war were funded by the federal governmentas well.10 Though foundation funding for the social sciences was substantial after WW II, itwas dwarfed by federal funding—$7 million from foundations as opposed to $52 million fromthe federal government in 1948 (Marquis, 1950, p. 31, FFA).11 What is more, government andfoundations often supported the same types of research. This was not a coincidence; rather,many foundation officials (like Ford’s H. Rowan Gaither) sought to carry on the work they haddone for the government during the war through the programs of the foundations they helpedto run (Amadae, 2003, pp. 34–39; Lowen, 1997, pp. 198–199; Needell, 1998, pp. 23–24). Notonly did the personnel of distinct institutions overlap; their aims often did as well.

Dahl comes closest to acknowledging how crucial these personal and institutional con-nections were to the rise of behavioralism by writing about its rise in passive language, as ifprofessional success just happened to behavioralists rather than being something they doggedlypursued12 : “[T]he revolutionary sectarians have found themselves, perhaps more rapidly thanthey thought possible, becoming members of the establishment” (p. 766). By contrast, mak-ing the links between the federal government, foundations and the academy explicit wouldhighlight the degree to which state and private power permeated the academy as well as howsome academics helped make this possible. Still, for as hazy an account as it offers of therise of behavioralism, Dahl’s laudatory piece makes clear that by the beginning of the 1960s,behavioralists were at the top of a discipline that did not even have a name for their approach10 years earlier.13

Later Assessments of the Rise of Behavioralism

I turn now to how the rise of behavioralism has been explained by a range of politicalscientists reflecting on the history of their discipline rather than solely by behavioraliststhemselves. Some, like Farr (1995) and Dryzek (2006), argue that behavioralism was already

10. As Simpson (1994, pp. 57–62, 82), Needell (1998) and Stonor Saunders (1999) have shown, federal funds wereoften funneled through private foundations; this makes it difficult to provide a precise breakdown of private versuspublic funding. Lowen (1997) notes that many social scientists who had done some war work were also receptive tothe behavioral approach. Although their “wartime experiences . . . are not sufficient to explain their research interestsin the postwar period,” Lowen remarks that these experiences “may have been significant in creating among them adesire to continue providing advice, indirectly if not directly, to the federal government” (p. 205).11. Though frequently cited, this figure is disputed by Lowen (1997, p. 277, note 7) who argues that the federalgovernment spent no more than $10 million on “academic research in the social sciences” in 1953. Lowen says the$52 million figure cited by Marquis (and derived from Riley, 1986 [1950]) includes “expenditures for developmentas well as research, and expenditures for statistical research as well as social scientific research” (p. 277). But Ball(1993, p. 215) cites a Russell Sage Foundation publication from 1950, which also claims federal funding far exceededwhat private foundations spent on the social sciences. NSF reports put total federal spending on the social sciencesbetween $20 and $35 million per annum for every year from 1953 to 1961 (NSF, 1952–1961). But these figures, asLowen notes, include expenditures for basic research as well as applied research and development. Why should it beso difficult to settle on even a rough estimate of the ratio of federal to private funding for this period? The newnessof these programs, the secrecy of some of the federal ones and the (previously mentioned) difficulty of conclusivelylabeling some funds either “federal” or “private” are probably all factors.12. Not all behavioralists endorsed calling their rise to prominence a “revolution.” For example, Heinz Eulau dislikedthe term because he thought it carried the false implication that behavioralism was coherent enough to constitute anew “paradigm” in the Kuhnian sense (Eulau, 1991, pp. 193–194). But Eulau had no objections to behavioralistsbeing referred to as “Young Turks”—an expression not far afield from “revolutionary” (p. 188).13. See my discussion of the coining of the term “behavioral science” below—“behavioralism” seems to be a latervariant of “behaviorism” (Farr, 1995, p. 222, note 2).


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well established in political science by the early 1950s and therefore merely benefited frompostwar funding rather than being fundamentally shaped by it. Others, like Adcock (2007),Somit and Tanenhaus (1982) and Ball (1993), go further in acknowledging the importance ofexternal funds to the rise of behavioralism. In what follows, I highlight what I believe are themost significant shortcomings and merits of each.

When Farr (1995) addresses the connection between the rise of behavioralism and itsfunding, he focuses on how behavioralists made their approach look appealing to federalfunders by emphasizing that it was scientific, “value-free” and “ethically neutral” and thereforerelatively immune to political criticism from the anticommunist right (p. 211). Taken togetherwith what Farr says earlier about the immediate ancestors of behavioralism in early twentiethcentury social science, this analysis gives the impression that “behavioralism” in politicalscience was viable enough as a collective enterprise by the early 1950s for its partisans to bethinking about how to pitch what they were doing to Congress and federal agencies. It seemsmore accurate to say that during the early 1950s even those who would become the most vocaldefenders of the behavioral approach in political science in the latter years of the decade werejust beginning to reinvent themselves with an eye to federal and private opportunities.14

Paying explicit attention to when some of these opportunities arose sheds more light onwhy “1951 was something of a banner year” for behavioralists than Farr does (p. 212); inthe latter half of 1950, the Ford Foundation awarded a number of large grants to universitiesand to the SSRC for research on “individual behavior and human relations” (Report #003025,FFA).15 Ford devoted $3 million to this program; a number of universities, along with theSSRC, received $300,000 each; other universities received $100,000. As I discuss in greaterdetail below, not only were these grants unsolicited; at many universities that received them,administrators and faculty alike were initially at a loss over what Ford had in mind and thereforeover what its officers would consider appropriate expenditures of this money.

Unlike Farr, Dryzek (2006) does interrogate the vagueness of behavioralism in the mid-twentieth century political science. “[W]hat exactly,” Dryzek asks, “did behavioralism op-pose?” (p. 489). Even though behavioralists were eloquent to the point of polemical in de-nouncing their predecessors’ various intellectual deficiencies, Dryzek notes that they rarelycharged others still active in the discipline with them. So, for example, while Easton (1953)denounced a tendency toward the “hyperfactual,” he chose to illustrate it by referring to Bryce,most of whose work appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century (Dryzek, 2006, p. 489).

Dryzek (2006) cites this vagueness to support his claim that behavioralism was a reorien-tation within political science prompted by some of its adherents’ awareness of new fundingopportunities: “Behavioralism led to more survey research being funded and published, anincrease in the relative frequency of quantitative studies in the discipline’s top journals, and arelative decline in work addressed to public policy. The emphasis on science facilitated accessto new funding sources such as the National Science Foundation” (p. 490). Upon closer ex-amination, however, each of these sentences is either circular or misleading. The first sentenceessentially claims, “behavioralism led to behavioralist research,” but sheds no light on what

14. In the case of Heinz Eulau, there is a noticeable shift in the direction of explicitly behavioral topics and awayfrom more traditional theoretical ones only in the mid-1950s. In the 1940s, Eulau’s publications do not yet expressthe behavioral persuasion; for example, the 1941 “Theories of federalism under the Holy Roman Empire,” AmericanPolitical Science Review 35: 643–664, and the 1949 “Wayside challenger: some remarks on the politics of HenryDavid Thoreau,” Antioch Review 9, no. 4. Only in 1955 did Eulau begin to publish what is now regarded as behavioralresearch; for example, “Perceptions of class and party in voting behavior,” American Political Science Review 49:364–384. I am indebted to Norman Jacobson for pointing me toward Eulau’s prebehavioral work.15. I discuss this grant program more fully below, beginning at p. 12.



led to behavioralism per se. The second claims that there was a positive relation betweenbehavioralism and access to NSF money—but suggests, as Farr’s account does, that behav-ioralism had gelled as a distinct approach before its partisans sought funding from outsidesources. Rather, I would invert the relation and say that, along with Ford’s Behavioral SciencesProgram, support from federal sources (which were overwhelmingly non-NSF in the 1950s)contributed to the rise of behavioralism (Mazuzan, 1994; Solovey, 2001).

Robert Adcock’s (2007) detailed analysis of the behavioral movement offers good reasonsfor changing the subject of Dryzek’s question (what exactly did behavioralism oppose?) fromthe singular to the plural. For Adcock, it makes more sense to treat behavioralism as acomposite of different projects rather than one coherent program for remaking the discipline:“Our image of behavioralism’s place in the evolution of American political science should takeon varying characteristics depending on whether we attend to the topics the movement wishedthe discipline to research, the empirical techniques it promoted, or the kind of theory it soughtto develop and bring into interplay with empirical research” (p. 207). How revolutionary themovement appears to be, therefore, depends on which of these aspects of behavioralism oneemphasizes—stressing the topics behavioralists studied makes what they did seem continuouswith some earlier approaches, while focusing on the research methods behavioralists favoredor their attempts at developing an empirical political theory makes them seem more sharplyat odds with the past (p. 207).

Adcock devotes most of his attention to representing the multiple currents that made upthe behavioral movement as a whole rather than accounting for its rapid rise (pp. 181–182).Though our concerns are clearly different, the story I am telling about the rise of behavioralismdoes not clash with Adcock’s analysis of how behavioralism took root in the fields of Americanand comparative politics. For example, Adcock shows how foundation-dependent entities—the Committee on Political Behavior and the Committee on Comparative Politics (two postwarcommittees of the SSRC), as well as the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center—helped behavioralists secure a central place in the discipline (pp. 193–197, 200–206). Althoughhe does not highlight how much each of these entities depended upon foundation funds orhow they all were funded into existence only after WW II, Adcock correctly identifies eachof them as among the institutions that made behavioralism the powerful force it became inmid-twentieth century political science.

Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus’ (1982) widely cited assessment of the history ofAmerican political science is more forthright still about the influence external funds on thediscipline in the immediate postwar period. From their tabulation of the total number offoundation grants of $50,000 or more awarded to political science departments from 1959to 1964, the authors conclude that such support went overwhelmingly to prestigious, well-endowed institutions, making “the rich . . . richer” (pp. 167–169). They also underscore the“massive predominance of the Ford Foundation” during that five-year period, estimating thatFord “outgave [the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations] combined by a ratio of almost20 to 1” (p. 169). Both of these points support Somit and Tanenhaus’ conclusion that Ford’s“partiality to behavioralism” had a significant effect on the discipline, so much so that “politicalscientists would have been less than human were they not tempted to manifest a deep interestin the kinds of research known to be favored by Ford Foundation staff and advisers” (pp. 185,167).

When it comes to offering an explanation for the rapid rise of behavioralism, however,Somit and Tanenhaus demur, saying that “[w]e may still be too close to the event for a definitiveexplanation” (p. 184). Still, foundation funding is one of the items on their “tentativelyidentified . . . list” of “the most important predisposing conditions and forces” that led to the


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rise of behavioralism (p. 184). Additionally, Somit and Tanenhaus present behavioralism asa postwar phenomenon, assigning little significance to its connection with earlier approaches(p. 183).16 Though they do not make the case extensively, Somit and Tanenhaus clearly regardexternal funding as a major factor in the rise of behavioralism.

Among recent accounts, Terence Ball (1993) offers the most detailed discussion of therelation between behavioralism and external funding. His analysis of behavioralism “focus[es]on the political contexts and institutional matrices that have helped to shape and direct the dis-cipline” in the immediate postwar period (p. 207). Ball notes that government and foundationfunding for social scientists during the postwar period had a lot to do with how social scientistsaided the state during WW II (pp. 208–209). During this period, Ball stresses that governmentfunds were by far the more significant, citing a 1950 Russell Sage Foundation report that con-cluded: “[e]xpenditures of the federal government for social science research projects . . . farexceeded the amount given by all the philanthropic foundations for similar purposes” (p. 215).Overall, the years immediately after WW II transformed the discipline because they were so“bountiful”—and thereby led to the emergence of “the academic entrepreneur or grantsmanskilled in the art of securing governmental and foundation funding” (p. 216).

Given Ball’s focus on the importance of outside money, it is not surprising that he feelshe has to say something about whether or how those who disbursed these funds may haveexercised power over their recipients. Power is exercised, Ball argues, but not to the extentthat funders “predetermine the specific outcomes or findings of scholarly research. They do,however, help to shape the kinds of questions that researchers ask and answer, and the kinds ofinquiries and investigations deemed worthy of support and thereby, less directly, of reportingvia conferences, symposia, publications and even, eventually, pedagogy” (pp. 216–217).17

Most notably, Ball concludes, the kinds of questions not asked by those political scientistswho received significant government or foundation funding “are questions about the locus,distribution and uses of power . . . It is surely ironic that during the postwar period that oldstaple of political description and analysis– ‘the state’–virtually disappeared from the socialscientists’ vocabulary, even as the American state was becoming more powerful than ever”(p. 218). Just as the vocabulary of political science became increasingly unsuited to talkingabout power and the state, many political scientists were now exercising power on the state’sbehalf as “defense Intellectuals” or “policy scientists”—roles they could often play withoutformally leaving the academy (p. 219).18

THE FORD FOUNDATION’S BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES PROGRAM

I now turn to linking some of the archived records of the Behavioral Sciences Programof the Ford Foundation with a set of the archived records from U. C. Berkeley, one of thisprogram’s major grantees. A variety of Ford documents make clear how instrumental thefoundation was to the initiation and ultimate institutionalization of behavioralism across arange of disciplines, including political science. Of course, one would expect Ford documents

16. The prominent behavioralist Austin Ranney (1974, p. 39) makes a similar point, arguing that even though politicalscientists disagree profoundly about the merits and importance of behavioralism, “I think most would agree . . . [that]prior to 1945 the behavioral approach had very little impact on what political scientists did.”17. Simpson (1994, pp. 94, 115–116) also speaks to this point.18. It would be wrong to conclude that the approaches to data gathering and analysis favored by behavioralists alwayslead to system-preserving conclusions. One vivid illustration of this point may be found in how the mass observationmovement in 1930s Great Britain used survey research and empirical observation to further its progressive socialaspirations. For a recent overview of this movement, see Hubble (2006).



to highlight Ford’s role, perhaps even exaggerate it. Still, these documents reveal not only thegreat interest the some officials at the Ford Foundation took in behavioralism but also howFord helped initiate its rise. Reading these documents along with records from a universitythat received a significant portion of these funds makes the way Ford’s program reshaped theacademic world more visible.

For as large and active as it was, the mechanisms by which Ford’s Behavioral SciencesProgram influenced political science are not immediately obvious. For one, those who designedand ran this program did not pay much attention to political science, both because other Fordprograms (such as Area II programs devoted to Strengthening Democracy and the Fund for theRepublic) were more centrally concerned with it but also because they thought political scienceless scientifically advanced than psychology or sociology (Behavioral Sciences Program, FinalReport, 1951–1957, p. 3; appended to Berelson, 1972, FFA). The grant record is consistentwith these points: the majority of the Behavioral Sciences Program’s funds supported researchby psychologists and sociologists, not political scientists.19

Taking these qualifications into account, I nevertheless believe that the influence of Ford’sprogram on political science was profound—even if this was not the intention of its officers.In the immediate postwar period, Ford’s multimillion dollar programs were by far the biggestprivate source of extramural funds for the social sciences.20 Additionally, Ford’s BehavioralSciences Program spent a significant portion of its money on new initiatives rather than onprojects already being undertaken. Therefore, any political scientist who sought external fundsfor research was likely to look to Ford and, in part, to its behavioral science initiatives. Theinfluence of the Ford program on political science can be thought of as a kind of “ripple effect”:because political science was far from the center of where Ford wanted to make the biggestsplash, its influence was most discernible years later, even after the program itself had cometo an end.

I believe Ford’s program in the Behavioral Sciences influenced political science in severalprincipal ways. First, because of the size of the grants it made, administrators and faculty beganto think that research in political science (and all the social sciences) could potentially winexternal financial support. This then affected how administrators and departments evaluated theimportance of different fields within the discipline. Second, by making its first round of largegrants to universities to develop new programs in the behavioral sciences, Ford’s program gaveacademics from across the social sciences (including political science) strong incentives tojoin the effort of figuring out what behavioralism was and how they might help build it. Finally,though some university officials puzzled over what foundation officers meant by “behavioralscience,” at least Ford’s desire that it be pursued by means of interdisciplinary research wasclear. Universities receiving Behavioral Sciences money seemed to understand that settingup interdisciplinary centers and institutes would be much easier to justify to the foundationthan allowing established departments to control these funds. Despite the skepticism program

19. See the Total List of Grants appended to the Behavioral Sciences Program, Final Report, 1951–1957, pp. A-1–A-12, appended to Berelson, 1972, FFA. Though I have not calculated how much grant money members of each ofthese disciplines received, large grants to political scientists are rare.20. Immediately after WW II, federal government funding for the social sciences decreased significantly; what ismore, the social sciences were also marginal to the National Science Foundation’s program for the first decade orso of its existence. Some of the Ford Foundation’s officers expressed concern about this dearth of funds for socialscientific research and argued that the foundation’s programs should try to remedy this deficiency—ideally, in a waythat would encourage government and industry to spend more on the social sciences in the future (Klausner and Lidz,1986; Mazuzan, 1994; Needell, 1998; Solovey, 2001). There is, however, widespread disagreement on how much thefederal government spent on social science research during the immediate postwar period—or on what ought to countas federal government spending. See my discussion of this issue in footnote no. 7.


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officers expressed about political scientists’ willingness or ability to move toward behavioralscience, they do not seem to have actively barred political scientists from taking part ininterdisciplinary efforts. For people across the social sciences, then, obtaining research fundsand release time through Ford programs meant presenting one’s work as interdisciplinary andbehavioral.

Ford did not commission universities to build the behavioral sciences from a detailedblueprint; instead, when program officers sketched the direction in which they thought thesocial sciences should go, they made clear that they expected to be closely consulted over howeach university fleshed out its aims. Though only some political scientists participated in thiseffort to redesign the social sciences, all soon became aware that they and their colleagueswere now likely to be judged by how well they fit into this emerging academic enterprise.

Renaming the Social Sciences: Making the Case for the Behavioral Sciences

Musing about the Board of the Ford Foundation’s decision to terminate the program inBehavioral Sciences, its director, Bernard Berelson, concluded that “perhaps [the program]made some ill will for itself . . . by being somewhat initiatory in its activity, by resisting suchpopular demands as those for free departmental funds, and by appearing in some quartersto have a ‘line’” (Behavioral Sciences Program, Final Report, 1951–1957, p. 7; appended toBerelson, 1972, FFA). Whether these factors did indeed contribute to the Board’s decisionto end the program is not the issue here. What is more significant is Berelson’s assessmentthat the program he directed was indeed “somewhat initiatory in its activity” and that it wasperceived “in some quarters to have a ‘line’.” There are, I believe, several important reasonswhy Berelson saw the program he led as “initiatory.”

Before any grants were made, before any new centers were funded, the Ford Foundationbegan with a name change, opting to call the focus of its new program the “behavioralsciences” instead of the social sciences. The decision for the change was consciously madeand justified by Marquis, a psychologist who was part of the small group charged withplanning the foundation’s programs on the eve of its national debut. In his report for thedivision Ford was still calling “Social Science,” Marquis raised some concerns about theassociations prompted by the old label, noting that people tended to link social science with“social reform” and “socialism”(Marquis, 1950, pp. 20–21, FFA). Marquis wanted Ford’s newprogram to raise a different set of expectations: instead of working toward achieving a goodsociety akin to an “ideal body,” Marquis argued that social scientists should be more likephysicians, “diagnos[ing] particular modes of malfunctioning . . . This is the general spirit ofmodern social science. It is specifically technical. It does not have a program for reconstructingthe social world” (pp. 21–22). Because “social science” was still associated with reformistagendas, Marquis argued that a new name could be a first step toward moving these fields in amore technical, applied direction.

Marquis explained in greater detail why he had argued that Ford drop the name “socialscience” for “behavioral sciences” in an oral history interview over 20 years later. In additionto shaking off any reformist associations, he pointed out that “a different label enabled usto define an area rather than accept already defined areas.” (Marquis, 1972, p. 7, FFA). Tothose who conceived it, the new name was much more than a superficial rebranding; rather, itannounced the foundation’s intention to move a set of academic disciplines in a new direction.21

21. Marquis (1972, p. 8, FFA) takes some credit for having come up with the term “behavioral sciences,” althoughhe says James [Grier] Miller might be given credit for doing so as well—as Somit and Tanenhaus (1982, p. 183,note 9) do. On this point, see Miller (1955, p. 513). Marquis also says that he considered calling Ford’s program



The great resources available to Ford during the early 1950s allowed its officers to approachgrant-making differently; they could start entirely new academic programs rather than merely“making marginal increments on top of what universities were already doing” (Price, 1972,p. 102, FFA).

Berelson agrees with Marquis that Ford’s program went beyond pasting a new, lesscontroversial label on established ways of doing things (Berelson, 1968). In his entry for“behavioral sciences” in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Berelson saysthe Behavioral Sciences Program “influenced at least the nomenclature, and probably eventhe conception, of an intellectual field of inquiry” (Berelson, 1968, p. 43). Berelson alsonotes that what Ford started took firm root in academic practice. The behavioral sciences“survived the termination of the foundation’s program . . . in 1957 . . . [T]here seems to havebeen,” Berelson concludes, “a genuine need for a collective term in addition to the traditional‘social sciences’,” since many scholars in psychology, sociology, and anthropology “are moreor less after the same end, namely, the establishment of scientifically validated generalizationsabout the subject matter of human behavior–how people behave and why” (Berelson, 1968,p. 43). Berelson credits the program he directed for making an interdisciplinary synthesispossible that traditional disciplinary boundaries had blocked.

Three Major Grants in Ford’s Program in Behavioral Sciences

Once the aims of the Behavioral Sciences Program had been outlined by Marquis, the FordFoundation launched it by making substantial, unsolicited grants to universities nationwide—a dramatic gesture meant to begin and then accelerate the development of the behavioralsciences. These grants, “for research in individual behavior and human relations” were madewith the intention of giving universities and other academic institutions like the SSRC strongincentives to build new programs rather than supplement existing ones (Report on “A Programin Behavioral Science Research,” Instituted by the Ford Foundation in the Summer of 1950,p. 1. Report #003025, FFA). As correspondence between the foundation and U. C. Berkeley,one of the universities selected, makes clear, the impetus for these grants came from thefoundation, not from the universities themselves (Letters to President Sproul, University ofCalifornia, from B.J. Craig, Secretary and Treasurer, Ford Foundation, 7.28.50 and 9.29.50.“Research in Individual Behavior and Human Relations, U. C. Berkeley,” Grant #50–005,FFA).22 Though there may have been a number of scholars interested in doing behavioralresearch in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ford’s program in this area was not a response toorganized pressure or formal applications from university faculty or administrators. Rather,the staff of the foundation contacted university administrators to announce awards designedto finance new programs in the behavioral sciences. This is perhaps the most important sensein which the program was initiatory.

Once the grants had been made, universities did not create behavioral science programsovernight; indeed, Ford officials often had to prod their recipients to do so. Foundation officialsexpressed particular impatience with those institutions that were not observing “the spirit of

“human resources,” as the military’s Committee on Human Resources of the Research and Development Board did.See also Simpson (1994) on Marquis’ role as the head of this board, which was “established in 1947 to coordinate allU.S. military spending on social psychology, sociology, and the social sciences, including communication studies”(Simpson, 1994, p. 57).22. Lowen (1997, p. 204) describes a similar set of circumstances in recounting how Stanford came to be awarded agrant through this program. Initial discussions of the grant took place between Ford officials and Stanford’s PresidentSterling, with Ford officials urging Sterling to apply for the funds. As was the case at U. C. Berkeley, it seems Stanfordwas awarded a sizable grant under this program without ever having submitted a formal application to Ford.


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the grant,” but were using the monies for ordinary expenses or on “research projects withoutprimary attention to the development of resources and personnel” (Report on “A Program inBehavioral Science Research,” p. 3. Report #003025, FFA). U. C. Berkeley, a recipient of a$300,000 grant, did nothing with the money for years. This prompted some social scientists atBerkeley to worry that Ford might withdraw its money at a time when they were already feelinggrant poor, relative to their colleagues at other research universities (Letter from Clark Kerr toPresident Sproul, 10.8.54; Memo from social science department chairs to Kerr, 11.15.54; bothin folder 26, “$300,000 Ford Grant to University, Uses of,” Box 54, Office of the ChancellorRecords, University of California Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California,Berkeley).23 Still, these worries did not spark immediate action. Berkeley finally began tospend the 1950 grant eight years later, largely on the creation of a Survey Research Centerand a Center for the Integration of Social Science Theory (Letter from Hart to Sproul, 1.3.58,folder 6, “Institute for Social Science,” Box 54, OCR, UCA).24 Though Berkeley’s delay inmaking use of the Behavioral Sciences grant was unusually long, it highlights the challengethese grants presented all universities: organizing faculty and administrators to develop aprogram in an area few thoroughly understood and to which fewer still had a long-standingcommitment.

Another Behavioral Sciences Division grant program that influenced a number of disci-plines focused on training social scientists in statistics and higher mathematics. This programaimed to train people from different disciplines and at different points in their careers—everyone from undergraduates to tenured professors was encouraged to apply. Notably, manyestablished political scientists did, including Robert Dahl, Charles Lindblom, and John Wahlke,all of whom were invited to attend the first summer workshop funded by this grant and orga-nized by the SSRC (list of those admitted to SSRC’s 1953 Summer Institute, “Mathematicsfor Social Scientists,” in “Support for a program on the mathematical training of behavioralscientists, SSRC.” PA 53-01, FFA).25 After some experience with these workshops, a com-mittee recommended that future sessions focus more explicitly on interdisciplinary study ofsocial scientific problems (like group behavior) or tools broadly useful to a range of socialscientists (like models of stable equilibria or stochastic models). The report’s authors arguedmathematics might be the key to making social science truly interdisciplinary: “mathematicsshould show its advantages as a useful language, an Esperanto for the Babel’s Tower of socialscientists” (“Report of the Committee on the Mathematical Training of Social Scientists to theSSRC,” 12.14.54, pp. 2–3. PA 53-01, FFA). The planning for the institute makes clear just howambitious that goal was. Judging by the minimal entry requirement they set (one semester ofcollege-level mathematics), the organizers of the institute expected few students fluent in this“Esperanto” (Flier for SSRC’s 1953 Summer Institute, “Mathematics for Social Scientists.”PA 53-01, FFA). But these low expectations underscore the lofty ambitions of a program thatsought to train generations of math-deficient social scientists to work with mathematical tools.

23. Chancellor Clark Kerr wrote in the August 10, 1954 letter to President Sproul, “Mr. Berelson had said that theFoundation intended to make a report sometime this fall on how such grants had been spent, and he had furtherremarked that it would be most embarrassing for the University to have to report that its grant had not been spent.” Inall subsequent references, I abbreviate ‘Office of the Chancellor Records’ OCR, “University of California Archives,”UCA.24. Both of these centers were placed under the umbrella of the interdisciplinary Institute for Social Science.25. Records marked with PA numbers are part of the Grants and Reports for Area V in the Ford Foundation’s Archivescited in the references section. Though all three applied and were admitted, only Wahlke attended. The SSRC’sCommittee on Political Behavior also sponsored a number of summer workshops on survey research, presidentialelections, and state politics during the 1950s. These workshops were funded by the Carnegie Corporation and seemto have been geared more specifically to political scientists (SSRC, Annual Reports, 1953–1954, 1954–1955).



This initiative offers yet another example of the self-consciously transformative mission ofFord’s Behavioral Sciences Program.26

These two grant programs not only ensured the behavioral sciences a presence in theacademy but also sped up the rate at which they developed. But perhaps the single mostsignificant action taken by the Behavioral Sciences division was the $10.35 million spent tocreate and endow the Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS)in Menlo Park, California (Ford Foundation Annual Report, 1957, p. 33). Conceived as aresearch center to which scholars from all over the United States would be invited for atleast a semester’s residency, the hope was that CASBS fellows from different disciplinarybackgrounds would come to the Center to work together on topics of mutual interest.27 Judgingby several reports from 1950s fellows, collaborative work and interaction among fellows fromdifferent disciplines was one of the Center’s main attractions (Letter from Boulding to Kerr,1.27.55, folder 9, “Center for the Integration of Social Science Theory,”; Letter from Burdickto Tyler, 11.30.55, folder 11, “Junior Fellows – CASBS,” both in Box 54, OCR, UCA). Whenit was established, the release time the Center offered its fellows was a scarce resource inacademic circles. Though Berelson said in retrospect that he was disappointed that the Centerhad not contributed more to the development of the behavioral sciences, this was largelybecause his hopes for it had been so high; he had wanted, he said, the Center “to be a seminalspearhead of new developments in the behavioral sciences” (Berelson 1972, p. 57, FFA). Evenif the Center did not fulfill this lofty purpose, the prestige of being invited to a residency thereat least made many established scholars pay attention to the behavioral sciences and thinkabout whether their work could fit within this new category.28

Ford’s Influence on Political Science29

It is one thing to initiate something in the academic world, as I have shown Ford did;but it is a challenge of another order to make sure that what has been initiated takes rootand continues to grow. Two aspects of Ford’s approach seem to have been crucial to theendurance of behavioralism. First, Ford officials were able to convince university administratorsat prominent research universities to take an active part in promoting behavioral science byoffering significant start-up grants and the prospect of continued support in the future. Thealliance between Ford and university administrations helped the behavioral approach establish

26. Although SSRC Annual Reports do not provide much detailed information about the funding and expenditures ofindividual committees, it is possible to distinguish the committees that consistently expended most of the money onresearch planning activities. From the late 1940s through 1961, the most active committees relevant to behavioralismwere Comparative Politics, followed by Mathematical Training for Social Scientists (renamed, “Mathematics in SocialScience Research,” in 1958) and Political Behavior.27. Berelson recalled that when the idea of the Center was nearly dead because of lack of support both within thefoundation and the academy, the sociologist Samuel Stouffer enthusiastically endorsed the plan at a crucial meeting.Stouffer, who had led the large, interdisciplinary team of social scientists who produced the multivolume AmericanSoldier study during WW II, made a strong enough case for the need for such a research center to convince severalhigh-ranking Ford officials that it ought to be funded (Berelson, 1972, pp. 51–52, FFA).28. Berelson’s full comment on CASBS: “while I’m sure the Center was good for the fellows who went through it,in that it gave them a year off to reflect and write and all of that, I’m not sure that it was as good for the behavioralsciences as I meant it–originally meant it to be. I meant it to be a seminal spearhead of new developments in thebehavioral sciences. Instead, it became a kind of retreat for individual members and anything of the former thathappened, was sort of accidental. And Ralph [Tyler, first director of CASBS] made it into that . . . .[A]nd that’s why Ithink it’s been disappointing though very successful” (CASBS, 1972, p. 57, FFA).29. My analysis in this section is indebted to Seybold’s (1980) careful case study of Ford’s efforts in promotingthe behavioral sciences and, specifically, to his suggestion that the “mechanisms” Ford used to influence politicalscience be the focus of analysis (Seybold, 1980, p. 274). While Seybold’s focus is principally on Ford, I have tried toreconstruct how people within the academic community responded to Ford’s initiatives.


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a strong presence in departments quickly. These departments were among the most highlyregarded PhD programs in the country; once behavioralism was well represented among theirfaculty, the stage was set for many cohorts of graduate students to be trained in this approach(Roelofs, 2003, pp. 36–37). Second, Ford often awarded funds for setting up new institutes,centers, or committees outside of existing academic structures. Though these new entitieswere relatively independent from university control, they were much more heavily dependenton external monies than were departments. They not only provided a new conduit throughwhich funders could exert influence over the shape of academic research; many also outlivedthe specific foundation programs that created them (Geiger, 1990). For these reasons, the workof institutionalizing behavioralism went on even after Ford’s Behavioral Sciences Programended.

In his analysis of Ford’s funding of academic institutes and centers, Seybold focuses onhow the new institutions Ford helped create continued the work of rooting the behavioralsciences in the academic world. “[I]t is this ability to build institutions and dominate thenetwork of organizations which are involved in the production of knowledge,” Seybold writes,“which allowed Ford to set the agenda for social science research in the United States”(Seybold, 1980, p. 274). Among the institutions Seybold has in mind are independent researchcenters such as the CASBS, various committees under the auspices of the SSRC, and centersand institutes tied to (but only minimally funded by) universities (like M.I.T.’s Center forInternational Studies (CENIS) or Columbia’s Bureau for Applied Social Research (BASR)(pp. 285–296).

The advent of such well-funded entities changed the internal structure of universities inways that had important consequences for disciplines. Beginning in the 1950s, these orga-nizations used their foundation-derived funds to offer academics valuable scarce resources:release time, research funds and support, graduate fellowships, etc. Many departments sim-ply could not offer comparable levels of support. Faculty and administrators allied with suchentities could therefore easily translate their resources into disciplinary power—all the moreso because departments had only partial control over them (Geiger, 1990; Turner, 1999). Toillustrate how this dynamic worked, I offer three specific examples of how people used Fordfunds in ways that affected political science: the Ford-funded Institute for Social Science (ISS)at U. C. Berkeley’s relations with the political science department; one scholar’s use of hisFord grant money to rescue the career of a struggling political scientist; and administrators atStanford University moving the political science department toward behavioralism in responseto prospects of increased Ford funding.

The case of Berkeley’s ISS provides a glimpse into how Ford-funded institutes were able torival departments’ power to shape the social sciences. To the extent that ISS tried to do so, thereare good reasons to believe that it did it in a way that advanced the cause of behavioralism. Forone, the centers that were created under the ISS umbrella—the Survey Research Center and theCenter for Social Science Theory—were charged with explicitly behavioral missions. Not onlydid these rely on faculty appointments from across the social sciences; they were also meantto further the development of interdisciplinary research methods and social theory applicableto all the behavioral sciences (Letter from Kerr to Sproul, 4.11.51, folder 9, Box 54, OCR,UCA). ISS also became an internal grant-making agency responsible for disbursing portionsof Ford funds as smaller grants-in-aid to faculty from a number of departments.30 Shortly

30. In addition to the initial grant of $300,000, Berkeley also received another $75,000 terminal grant from theBehavioral Sciences division when it made its final round of grants in 1957. That terminal grant came with thecondition that Berkeley match Ford’s funds by devoting an additional $50,000 to behavioral science research (Berelsonto Kerr, 7.12.57, folder 15, Box 54, OCR, UCA).



after the institute took on this new function, an administrative assistant to the Chancellorcharged Herbert Blumer, its director, to proceed with one important consideration in mind:“The Foundation will undoubtedly request progress reports on the use of the granted funds,and we should be prepared to answer them and to defend our judgments in classing projects as‘behavioral’” (Letter from Eugene C. Lee to Blumer, 6.3.58, folder 6, Box 54, OCR, UCA).Blumer appears to have followed this advice, especially in summarizing the work done byfaculty affiliated with the Survey Research Center and the Center for Social Science Theory(Letter from Blumer to Robert W. Chandler, Ford, 3.21.61, pp. 3–5, folder 6, Box 54, OCR,UCA).31 In a cover letter to one of his reports to Ford, Blumer assured the foundation that theuniversity’s commitment to the behavioral sciences would continue and even increase after theterminal grant from the Behavioral Sciences Division ran out (Blumer to Robert W. Chandler,1.9.61, p. 2, folder 6, Box 54, OCR, UCA).

There are some indications that departments saw this well-funded institute as a threatto their own power within the university—and that the institute’s director at least consideredusing his power to weigh in on departmental decisions. For example, once the ISS’ controlover small grant funds had been established, the chair of the political science department triedto claim a chunk of those funds to disburse among his faculty alone, an attempt ISS’ advisorycommittee successfully resisted (Advisory Committee Minutes, ISS, 4.3.61, folder 6, Box 54,OCR, UCA). The institute not only fended off departmental claims to their resources; Blumerfelt confident enough in his position to ask others in positions similar to his own whether theyought to try extending their power by influencing departmental hiring decisions (Memo todirectors of eight U. C. Berkeley research centers from Blumer, 10.3.60, p.2, folder 6, Box54, OCR, UCA). These instances illustrate how Ford’s funding of independent institutes andcenters posed a potential challenge to departmental control over funds and hiring.

Behavioral Science program funds did not always travel through interdisciplinary centers;some were directly awarded to individual academics who used them to intervene in departmen-tal decisions. For example, Marquis, the psychologist who was a consultant to the BehavioralSciences Program, recalled how he used a grant he received from the program to rescue thecareer of a young University of Michigan political scientist, Samuel Eldersveld. Eldersveld,according to Marquis, “was a behavioral researcher in political science and was just about to befired because the department believed that the historical approach and the theoretical analysisof power was the only thing. But he was doing and wanted to do empirical research. Well, hesubsequently became mayor of Ann Arbor and is now chairman of the department. [laughter]The money kept him from being fired” (Marquis, 1972, p. 16, FFA). Whether this anecdoteaccurately reflects what happened to Eldersveld is not the issue; what seems more significantis that Marquis thought changing the balance of power in his young colleague’s favor was anappropriate and even felicitous use of some of his Behavioral Sciences grant money.

In her detailed account of how behavioralism rose to prominence in Stanford’s politicalscience department, Rebecca Lowen shows how an administration deeply committed to ad-vancing Ford’s program overrode the wishes of political science faculty (Lowen, 1997). Aswas the case with Berkeley, Ford officials offered Stanford administrators several grants todevelop the behavioral sciences; the administration then used some of these funds to hirepeople already working in the behavioral sciences to come to Stanford (Lowen, 1997, pp. 204,

31. Survey Research Center projects for the 1960–1961 academic year are largely devoted to the analysis of publicopinion on particular issues or to the development of techniques for the statistical analysis of public opinion. Center forSocial Science Theory projects are often interdisciplinary in conception and ambition and the departmental affiliationof the Center’s members is not mentioned (Blumer to Robert W. Chandler, 3.21.61, pp. 3–4, folder 6, Box 54, OCR,UCA).


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211). Though Stanford’s administrators worked far more quickly and enthusiastically to pushthe social sciences in a behavioral direction than was the case at Berkeley, Lowen believes theydid so not because of any prior commitment to behavioralism but in response to the fundingoffered by Ford.

When Arnaud Leavelle, the Stanford political science department’s theorist, died in 1957,the department recommended that offers be made to the traditional theorist Mulford Q. Sibleyand the behavioralist Eulau, indicating (its members thought) their openness to a variety ofapproaches. Provost Frederick Terman, however, initiated his own search with the intention offilling “the department’s slot for a theorist . . . [with] a prominent behavioralist, such as Ithielde Sola Pool or David Truman,” ultimately “fix[ing] upon political scientist David Eastonas the ideal candidate” (p. 213). In the short term, the department’s choices prevailed. BothSibley and Eulau were hired in 1958; but while Eulau spent the rest of his career at Stanford,Sibley’s appointment was tumultuous and short-lived. There was strong departmental supportfor Sibley, though few of his colleagues shared his outspoken pacifist views. But to Stanford’sadministration, Sibley was a liability on two counts: not only was his on-campus activism (insupport of a nuclear test ban) annoying; he was also, from Terman’s perspective, a net financialloss to the institution since he was unlikely to win external grants (pp. 216–217).

As Lowen reads this period in the Stanford political science department’s history, theultimate fulfillment of Terman’s plan to enhance the department’s reputation along with itsability to win external grants came in 1963 and 1964 with the hiring of the behavioralistsGabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (pp. 221–222). Lowen stresses that the actions of universityadministrators were crucial to how and when behavioralism took root at Stanford; had hiringdecisions been left largely to the discretion of the faculty, the political science departmentwould have remained more eclectic (p. 210). Administrators, keen on bringing in more fundsfrom Ford and other sources, remained focused on hiring well-established behavioralists; bythe mid-1960s, once they had made a few such hires and denied tenure to several traditionaltheorists (Sibley and John Bunzel), the department’s center of gravity shifted toward thebehavioral approach (p. 219).

CONCLUSION

When the Board of the Ford Foundation decided to terminate the Behavioral SciencesDivision in 1957, its deeply disappointed director chided the Board’s members for abandoningwhat he called a “major [American] intellectual invention of the 20th century” (BehavioralSciences Program, Final Report, 1951–1957, p. 20; appended to Berelson, 1972, FFA). Butfor as much as Berelson believed Ford might still have done in this area, he could neverthelessconclude, “The behavioral sciences are here to stay” (Berelson, 1972, p. 18, FFA). Theplanning of the mission of the Behavioral Sciences Division and the design of its majorgrants not only brought the behavioral sciences to life in American universities; they helpedensure their survival. From its earliest grants to foster the behavioral sciences in universitiesnationwide to the endowment of the CASBS, the division’s strongly interdisciplinary initiativesreshaped many disciplines, even those like political science that were not the main concernof its staff. As the Berkeley and Stanford cases I discussed illustrate, Ford’s program madeadministrators and faculty see that research in sociology, anthropology, psychology, politicalscience, and economics could win substantial external support—albeit for research initiativesthat came from funders rather than from universities. In the very early 1950s, Ford’s Marquisand Berelson had aspirations for the behavioral sciences they wanted to bring into being: theyshould be interdisciplinary in both theory and method, technically sophisticated, and well suited



to practical applications, and focused on understanding and managing current sociopoliticalproblems.

Strikingly similar visions moved many political scientists to turn toward behavioral sci-ence in the 1950s and 1960s. Speaking in the same idiom, Dahl (1961, p. 770) commendedbehavioralists for “restor[ing] some unity within the social sciences”; Eulau (1951, p. 118) wel-comed behavioral scientists’ commitment to research geared toward “action or policy.” Mostfundamentally, many political scientists saw the promise of a methodologically sophisticateddiscipline as one of the behavioral revolution’s greatest achievements.

Though behavioralism was far from wholly novel, its early adherents were right to stresshow much it changed political science as well as how quickly it did so. As I have argued,either emphasizing the continuities between interwar political science and behavioralism orexplaining the rise of behavioralism as a move in an intramural academic debate runs the riskof missing the crucial role of Ford’s Behavioral Science Program in fueling the postwar riseof behavioralism in political science. Many persistently obscure features of political science’sbehavioral revolution—its indeterminate origins and aims, its rapid success—begin to clear uponce Ford’s program is drawn into the analytical frame. That the behavioral revolution beganshortly after Ford launched its Behavioral Sciences Program was neither a coincidence nora manifestation of a culture-wide “mood.”32 It was instead sparked and fueled by the FordFoundation’s program—a program that exerted great influence through unusually large anddirective grants designed to remake the social sciences.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to the Ford Foundation and to the Bancroft Library at the University of Californiafor granting permission to cite material from their archives. Robert Adcock, Terry Ball,Kevin Corder, Erik Freye, Jack Gunnell, Joan Roelofs and Mark Solovey as well as all theparticipants in the June 2009 History of Economics as History of Social Science Workshop atthe Ecole Normale Superieure, Cachan, all commented on versions of this article; I gratefullyacknowledge their help. Thanks also to Western Michigan University and the Political ScienceDepartment for research and travel support and to Joshua Berkenpas for his help in preparingthis manuscript.

REFERENCES

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