Harold Foote Gosnell Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Harold Foote Gosnell (1896–1997) was an American political scientist and social science methodologist. He is remembered for bringing quantitative methodology into the mainstream of political science, using both experimental and statistical methods. In his 1933 essay, “Statisticians and Political Scientists,” he advocated for the use of statistics in the fields of political parties, public opinion, citizenship, legislative behavior, and political psychology. Gosnell is associated with the influential Chicago school of social science, which saw behavior as a function of social structure and environment rather than personal characteristics. His innovative work on voter turnout, black politics, and Chicago’s Democratic machine left lasting substantive legacies.

Gosnell earned his bachelor’s degree in 1918 from the University of Rochester, which later created a graduate fellowship named in his honor. He received his doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1922. He joined the faculty there and was promoted to assistant professor in 1926 and associate professor in 1932.

Gosnell’s dissertation, Boss Platt and his New York Machine (1924), broke new ground in its use of survey research, comparisons, statistics, and political psychology to study the political leadership of former New York senator and representative Thomas C. Platt. Reviewers of the book praised it while pointing out that it was unconventional and unlike typical biographies.

Gosnell’s next books, Non-voting: Causes and Methods of Control (1924), coauthored with Charles E. Merriam, and Getting out the Vote: An Experiment in the Stimulation of Voting (1927), are considered by many as landmarks in political science and are recognized in particular for their use of a multimethod approach. Gosnell and Merriam conducted interviews with party officials, officeholders, and election activists, and gathered data on the characteristics of voters and nonvoters. They interviewed a random sample of nonvoters and, as Karl D. Berry notes in his 1974 book Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics, produced the “first major study in political science to use both random sampling and the statistics of attributes, the book combine[d] new methodology and familiar concern in a fashion which startles the profession.” In Getting out the Vote, Gosnell provided the first use of experimental methods to study voter turnout, finding that mailing reminders regarding upcoming elections to potential voters increased turnout. Another of Gosnell’s works, Machine Politics: Chicago Model (1937), was the first book to use correlation, regression, and factor analysis in political science.

Gosnell is also remembered for his forward-thinking substantive research. Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago (1935) was the first book on the subject of African American politics, and his Why Europe Votes (1930) provides an early account of cross-national voting.

After Robert M. Hutchins, a critic of behaviorialism, became president of the University of Chicago, Gosnell left the school for a position at the Office of Price Administration in Washington, D.C. He also served at the Bureau of the Budget and Department of State. Gosnell later served as an adjunct professor at American University, visiting professor at the University of Washington, and professor of political science at Howard University. He published four more books during this time, Grass Roots Politics (1942), Democracy: The Threshold of Freedom (1948), Champion Campaigner: Franklin D. Roosevelt (1952), and Truman’s Crises: A Political Biography of Harry S.Truman (1980).

In 1995 the Harold F. Gosnell Prize of Excellence was established to honor his influence and legacy in the field of political methodology.

Bibliography:

Brooks, Robert C. “Review: Boss Platt and His New York Machine by Harold F. Gosnell.” American Political Science Review 18, no. 3 (1924): 627–629.
Hansen, John Mark. “In Memoriam: Harold F. Gosnell.” PS: Political Science & Politics 30, no. 3 (1997): 582–587.
Karl, Barry D. Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

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