Daniel J. Elazar Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Daniel J. Elazar (1934–1999) was a leading American political scientist specializing in the study of federalism and federal political systems and arrangements. He was also a scholar of political culture and the Jewish political tradition. Throughout his career, he attempted to link the study of politics and public policy with its practice and has served as a consultant to numerous governments throughout the world.

While studying at Wayne State University, Elazar worked as a librarian at the United Hebrew Schools. In this capacity, he and his brother developed a system for cataloguing Judaica, which they published in 1968 as A Classification System for Libraries of Judaica. Elazar’s Jewish roots both informed and influenced his study of politics.

Elazar next studied at the University of Chicago, earning a master’s degree (1957) and a doctorate (1959). Under the tutelage of Morton Grodzins, Elazar’s understanding of federalism was developed. His dissertation was awarded the American Political Science Association’s Leonard D. White Award for best dissertation in public administration in 1959 and was later published as The American Partnership: Intergovernmental Cooperation in the Nineteenth-century United States (1962). In this volume, Elazar took issue with the prevailing interpretation that “dual federalism” characterized the American political system in the nineteenth century. He demonstrated that a significant degree of intergovernmental cooperation occurred. For Elazar, the relationship between the federal and state governments had always been a partnership.

This concept was fully developed in Elazar’s seminal work American Federalism: A View from the States (1966).Written when the concept of states’ rights was often equated with racism and discrimination, Elazar’s text provided a theoretical framework that discussed and assessed the central role of state governments in the American federal system. Elazar outlined his theory of American political culture and identified three subcultures— the individualistic, moralistic, and traditionalistic—that were brought to and reinforced by the various immigrant groups arriving in the United States. These subcultures shaped local political structures and practices and were spread across the country as immigrant groups pushed farther west.

During this same period, Elazar initiated a unique longitudinal study titled Cities of the Prairie because of his dissatisfaction with the limited nature of the individual community studies conducted during that time that provided only a snapshot description and analysis of local power structures. The Cities of the Prairie project was an ongoing multigenerational, comparative study of ten medium-sized civil communities located in the Midwest. In this work, Elazar also expanded on Frederick Turner Jackson’s thesis that the frontier was a determining factor in American politics by describing how a series of succeeding frontiers have opened throughout American history and have shaped local and national development.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Elazar turned his attention toward federal developments worldwide. His 1987 book Exploring Federalism presented a comprehensive interpretation of the way in which federal arrangements inform, shape, and define civil communities throughout the world. Elazar was also the founding president of the International Association of Centers for the Study of Federalism, a coalition of academic research centers focusing on federal political systems.

Bibliography:

Elazar, Daniel J. American Federalism: A View from the States. 2d ed. New York: Crowell, 1972.
The American Partnership: Intergovernmental Co-operation in the Nineteenth-century United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Cities of the Prairie: The Metropolitan Frontier and American Politics. New York: Basic Books, 1970.
Exploring Federalism. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987.