Donald Stokes Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Donald E. Stokes (1927–1997) was an American political scientist who was a specialist in public opinion research. He was known for his studies of voting behavior in the United States and Great Britain.

Stokes was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1951 and earned his doctorate from Yale University in 1958.

He was on the faculty at the University of Michigan from 1958 to 1974. During that time, he served as chair of the political science department (1970–1971) and dean of the university’s graduate school (1971–1974). He then moved to Princeton as dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1974. He left the deanship in 1992 but remained the Class of 1943 University Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton until his death. He also taught as an associate member at Nuffield College, Oxford, and as a visiting professor at the University of the West Indies and the Australian National University.

Stokes’ book, Political Change in Britain (1969), written with David Butler, received the Woodrow Wilson Prize from the American Political Science Association, awarded to the year’s best book on political science. Using the behavioral approach to election studies, they found that political generation (the era in which one was born) and “duration of partisanship” predict party identification; that is, the longer that one has identified with a political party, the more likely that person is to vote for that party. They also found that party identification, initially transmitted by one’s parents, may change under the impact of historic events. Stokes was also the coauthor of two other books on American and British voting behavior: The American Voter (1960) and Elections and the Political Order (1966). A second edition of Political Change in Britain was published in 1974. He and David Butler originated the British General Election Studies in 1964 and Stokes continued to direct them until 1970. Stokes, with Donald Aitkin and Michael Kahan, conducted the Australian National Political Attitudes Studies (1967, 1969). In later years, Stokes’ interests turned to the science policies of the federal government and the relationship between basic and applied science. He was principal author of The Federal Investment in Knowledge of Social Problems (1978), and Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation (1997) was published posthumously.

Stokes was a Senior Fulbright Scholar to Great Britain, a Fellow for the Social Science Research Council, a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, a visiting research fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, and a fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Stokes died from acute leukemia on January 26, 1997, in Philadelphia.

Bibliography:

Butler, David, and Donald Stokes. Political Change in Britain. Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1969.
Political Change in Britain: The Evolution of Electoral Choice. Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1974.
Stokes, Donald. Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997.

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