Life

Robert Alan Dahl was born on 17 December 1915 in Iowa, US. Dahl studied for his undergraduate degree at the University of Washington, graduating in 1936. He then went on to obtain his PhD in Political Science from Yale University in 1940. During World War II he served in the US Army, receiving the Bronze Star Medal for distinguished service. After the war he joined the faculty at Yale, where he taught until 1986, eventually becoming Sterling Professor of Political Science. He died on 5 February 2014 in Connecticut, US, hailed as one of the most influential political scientists of the twentieth century.

Works

One of Dahl’s earliest influential works, The Concept of Power, published in 1957, defined power as A influencing B to do what A wants. His most famous works, however, were focused on democracy. In perhaps his most influential work, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (1961), Dahl used his own city, New Haven, Connecticut, as a case study, treating it as a microcosm of the country. He investigated who wielded the dominant share of power in order to thus extrapolate to the country at large. Arguing against C. Wright Mills, who asserted that power rested with small elite groups, Dahl concluded that no one group was in charge, rather power was dispersed among several competing groups. This led him to assert that political power in the US was pluralistic. Dahl also stated most citizens were apathetic in the democratic process, though he later changed his mind on this in Democracy and its Critics. In the 1970s, his conclusions were challenged by G. William Domhoff, primarily on the grounds that his methodology (interview-based) was flawed and had led him to overestimate the degree to which group leaders’ opinions were divided. In Democracy and its Critics (1989), Dahl expounded his views on democracy, arguing that no modern country met the criteria for full participatory democracy. Instead, he refers to most developed countries as ‘polyarchies’, in which political rights such as freedom of expression, free and fair elections, etc., are upheld.

Key ideas

• Power
• Democracy
• Pluralism
• He coined the term ‘polyarchy’ to describe political systems that are competitive, open, and inclusive; basically a form of representative (rather than direct), decentralized democracy.

Further reading

Interview by Richard Snyder, ‘Robert A. Dahl: Normative Theory, Empirical Research and Democracy’, pp. 113–49, in Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder, Passion, Craft and Method in Comparative Politics, The John Hopkins University Press, 2007.