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Lewis Anthony Dexter (1915–1995) was a Canadian author and professor credited with producing some of the most influential books on political science and sociology of the mid-twentieth century. His particular interests were the proliferation of special-interest politics and the analysis of government and public policy as they relate to business and foreign trade.

A native of Montréal, Québec, Dexter received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago in 1935, a master’s degree from Harvard University in 1938, and a doctorate from Columbia University in 1960. Over the span of his career, he lectured at more than thirty colleges and universities, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Johns Hopkins University.

Though his professorial career was undeniably illustrious, Dexter was equally prolific in his research and publications, publishing several well-received books and numerous articles on topics ranging from specialized interviewing techniques to the sociology of the American Congress. One of the books for which he is most well-known is American Business and Public Policy (with Raymond Bauer and Ithiel Pool 1972), a study of the politics of foreign trade during the 1950s and early 1960s. It was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for making the most significant contribution to the field of political science for the year. In the work, Dexter and his coauthors explore the mishandling of economic determinism; seek to refute myths about how the Congress and government lobbyists operate; investigate the relationships between public opinion, interest-group politics, and the legislature; and examine the nature and processes of congressional legislation. In so doing, the authors paint a picture of American government and politics that ultimately differs substantially from that of popular belief.

Dexter is also recognized for his contributions to the social sciences in terms of his novel approach to nonstandardized elite interview techniques. In Elite and Specialized Interviewing (a volume in the series of Handbooks for Research in Political Behavior, published in 1970), Dexter offers practical advice and an analysis of specialized interviewing based on his own experiences as well an examination of the existing literature and the published and unpublished experiences of fellow social scientists. Though his treatment of the topic is practical and pragmatic and addresses topics as rudimentary as securing an interview and whom to interview first, Dexter underscores the fact that an elite interview is a social relationship and that the results emerging from the interview depend in large part on how the respondent perceives the interviewer and his or her purpose. This being the case, Dexter also emphasizes the methodological underpinning of elite interviews and stresses that respondents should be given the license essentially to structure their own information so that the definition of the issues at hand reflect those of the interviewee, not the biases of the interviewer or the interviewer’s understanding of a phenomenon.

Dexter published numerous articles and other books, including How Organizations Are Represented in Washington (1969), The Sociology and Politics of Congress (1969; republished in 1981 as Representation, Legislation, and Consequences), and The Tyranny of Schooling: An Inquiry into the Problem of “Stupidity” (1964).

Bibliography:

Bauer, Raymond A., Lewis A. Dexter, and Ithiel De Sola Pool. American Business and Public Policy: The Politics of Foreign Trade, 2nd ed. Chicago: Aldine, 1972.
Dexter, Lewis A. Elite and Specialized Interviewing. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
How Organizations Are Represented in Washington. New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1969.
“Interviewing Business Leaders.” American Behavioral Scientist 2, no. 3 (1959): 25–29.
The Sociology and Politics of Congress. Chicago, Ill.: Rand McNally, 1969.
The Tyranny of Schooling: An Inquiry into the Problem of “Stupidity.” New York: Basic Books, 1964.
Dexter, Lewis A., and David M.White, eds. People, Society, and Mass Communications. New York: Free Press, 1964.