Hauptmann 2012 The Ford Foundation and The Rise of Behavioralism in Political Science

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol.
48(2), 154173 Spring 2012

View this article online at Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.21515

C 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM

IN POLITICAL SCIENCE
EMILY HAUPTMANN
How did behavioralism, one of the most influential approaches to the academic study
of politics in the twentieth century, become so prominent so quickly? I argue that many
political scientists have either understated or ignored how the Ford Foundations Behavioral
Sciences Program gave form to behavioralism, accelerated its rise, and helped root it in
political science. I then draw on archived documents from Ford as well as one of its
major grantees, U. C. Berkeley, to present several examples of how Ford used its funds to
encourage the behavioral approach at a time when it had few adherents among political
C 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
scientists.
For supporters and critics alike, behavioralism stands out as one of the most important
orientations in twentieth-century political science. Many of its early defenders called it revolutionary (Almond, 1966; Dahl, 1961; Truman, 1965); some argued it had changed the discipline
irreversibly (Ranney, 1974, p. 39). Though one of its architects announced the close of the
behavioral era in 1969 (Easton, 1969), behavioralism still has many adherents in political
science today. In the study of public opinion, public officials, interest groups and political
beliefs as well as in the research methods used by many political scientists, behavioralism is
still a powerful presence.1
For behavioralists, studying politics meant studying recent trends in political parties,
interest groups and public opinion; consequently, they focused less on the historical development of formal governmental and legal structures than had many of their predecessors. But
as Robert Adcock (2007) has convincingly argued, it was less what behavioralists studied
than how they studied it that set them apart from other political scientists. Though many
early twentieth century political scientists had also studied public opinion and informal political processes, behavioralists approached these topics in several new ways. First, rather than
crafting fine-grained case studies based on qualitative analyses of documents and in-depth
interviews, most behavioralists based their work on statistical analyses of large bodies of data,
such as public opinion surveys, censuses, and electoral records. Second, many early behavioralists in the 1950s and 1960s appealed to neopositivist ideas about scientific explanation,
the most ambitious among them aspiring to develop a unified theory of behavior and systems
that would reveal regularities underlying all human processes (Easton, 1953; Miller, 1955).
These striking methodological and theoretical commitments reinforced one anothergeneral
1. See Adcock (2007) for an assessment of the impact of behavioralism on the fields of American and comparative
politics in the United States Schwartz-Shea and Yanow (2002, p. 476) argue that behavioralism remains central to
how graduate students of political science learn research methods.
EMILY HAUPTMANN is a professor of political science at Western Michigan University. This article is
part of a larger project that explores how changes in private and public funding immediately after World
War II affected what political scientists studied and how they did so. Her other publications on the recent
history of political science have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Political Theory and
in an edited volume, The Politics of Method (Duke).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Emily Hauptmann, Department of Political Science, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008. E-mail:
emily.hauptmann@wmich.edu.
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THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE
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theories of human behavior informed data gathering and analysis and vice versa (Adcock,
2007, pp. 190191, 197198). They also distinguished behavioralists not only from their
predecessors but from many of their contemporaries as well, many of whom argued that behavioralists neglected the historical, normative, and critical dimensions of the study of politics
(Strauss, 1962; Wolin, 1969).
Political scientists and historians of the discipline have assessed the emergence of this
important approach in one of two principal ways. The first, as mentioned above, presents
behavioralism as an intellectual revolution, a consciously crafted rejection on the part of
some political scientists of the deficiencies of their predecessors. Those closely identified with
the approach have offered this assessment in a variety of retrospective analyses, including
memoirs and oral histories; many more recent accounts of the history of political science
echo it (Dahl, 1961; Easton, 1991; Eulau, 1963; Somit and Tanenhaus, 1982). More recently,
some have argued that behavioralism was not thoroughly revolutionary but continuous with
some currents in early twentieth century political science (Adcock, 2007; Dryzek, 2006; Farr,
1995; Gunnell, 1993). As much as these two approaches differ, both are more concerned
with assessing the novelty of the behavioral approach in the study of politics than they are
with explaining its rise. And for each, the discipline is the principal object and frame of
analysis.
Particularly from the postwar period on, I believe there are a number of good historical
reasons to look for the principal agents of academic change outside of disciplinary frames
even outside of the academy. Though universities in the United States have long been linked to
political and economic entities, by the mid-twentieth century, those ties multiplied and became
stronger (Klausner and Lidz, 1986; Owens, 1990; Solovey, 2001). By the 1960s, major research
universities in the United States were actively contributing to the national political economy,
their faculty competing for and working on grants from industry, government, and private
foundations (Geiger, 1988, 1990; Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004). When externally funded
research becomes crucial to universities and individual academics, asking whether and how the
entities that supply it influence academic disciplines become important questions. To answer
them, as Peter Seybold (1980, p. 274) has suggested, one must identify the channels through
which external funds flow into and then reconfigure the terrain of academic disciplines.2
A full story of the rise of behavioralism would be broader in scope in several ways than
what I offer here. For one, it would be an interdisciplinary story, since a broader discourse
of behavior was unfolding not only in political science, but also in psychology, sociology,
and anthropology, and was even helping to create new disciplines, such as communications.
Though the emphasis on behavioral science began during the postwar period, psychologists
and sociologists in the United States had been focusing on behavior far earlier and to a greater
extent than did political scientists; indeed, Danziger (1997, p. 97) argues that a discourse
of behavior had already become hegemonic in U.S. psychology as early as the 1910s. Most
first-generation behavioralists in political science were keenly aware of this and acknowledged
their considerable intellectual debts to their colleagues in the other social sciences.3 These
debts, however, were not to Skinnerian behaviorism with its conviction that behavior could
best be understood through experiments in tightly controlled laboratory settings, but to the
2. I am indebted to a number of analyses of the influence of foundation funding on academic life. Among them are
Seybold (1980), Roelofs (2003), Fisher (1993), and Geiger (1988, 1990). Both Simpson (1994) and Osborne and
Rose (1999) show how several fields within the social sciences (communications and the study of public opinion)
were imported into the academy after having been developed by government or industry. For a skeptical assessment
of the capacity of foundations to influence academic disciplines, see Turner (1999).
3. See, for example, Almond (1991, p. 123), Dahl (1961, pp. 764765), and Easton (1991, pp. 201205).
JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs
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EMILY HAUPTMANN
interdisciplinary, methodologically sophisticated and eminently practical behavioral sciences

(Herman, 1995, p. 8). Like many behavioral scientists, behavioralists in political science
disclaimed any grand visions of social reform; their ambitions focused instead on developing
a practical science of social control (Danziger, 1997, pp. 98, 101102). The story of the rise
of behavioralism in political science, therefore, is best told as a subplot in the bigger story of
the rise of the behavioral sciences.
A full account of the rise of behavioralism would also include a composite analysis of all
the entities that supported the behavioral approach: the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie
Corporation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and numerous agencies in the
federal government.4 And since many of the funded projects involved interdisciplinary groups
of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists as well as political scientists, what became
behavioralism in political science continued to be influenced by other social sciences well into
the 1950s and 1960s.
In what follows, however, I present two more focused vantage points on the rise of
behavioralism in political science. First, I consider what behavioralists in political science
as well as historians of the discipline have said about the role external funding might have
played in the rise of behavioralism. In addition to showing how little attention has so far been
paid to the relation between external funding and the rise of behavioralism, I also discuss
the virtues and shortcomings of the few analyses that do exist. I then focus on the Ford
Foundations program in the Behavioral Sciences, both because of its great size (around $24
million disbursed from 1951 to 1957) and because of the early and explicit commitment of its
staff to steering the social sciences in a behavioral direction. Along with summarizing the aims
of the major architects of this program, I also show how a range of people affiliated with U. C.
Berkeley, one of its major grantees, understood and responded to Fords aims. My emphasis
on the importance of Fords program is meant to counter the tendency to assess the rise of
behavioralism within a disciplinary frame in which only political scientists are the principal
actors.
THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE: SEVERAL VERSIONS OF THE
USUAL STORY
Some political scientists and historians of the discipline have acknowledged that the
behavioral approach benefited from generous foundation support. But such acknowledgments
rarely lead to much analysis. Whether behavioralism had a substantive core or discernible
ancestors within political science are the interesting questions for most, not how and why it
was funded.
Though not the primary concern of most, several distinct conceptions of the relation
between behavioralism and foundation funding may be found in these commentaries. While
the earliest appear excited but also bemused by the sudden availability of so much funding for
behavioral studies, many later accounts argue that behavioralists managed to attract generous
financial support during the immediate postwar period mainly because they successfully
portrayed their work as sharing the expectations private and government funders had for
postwar social science. I challenge the idea implicit in both these points: that behavioralism
4. Though these foundations devoted a large portion of their social science budgets to behavioral approaches, the
Rockefeller Foundation sponsored some pointedly antibehavioral projects. I have discussed how Rockefellers program
in Legal and Political Philosophy was conceived as an antibehavioral program (Hauptmann, 2006); Guilhot (2011)
analyzes Rockefellers support for realist scholars of international relations who explicitly rejected ambitions to
study politics scientifically. Important though these programs were, they were dwarfed even by Rockefellers own
commitment to the behavioral sciencesnot to mention by Fords (Hauptmann, 2006, p. 644, note 5).
157
had already gelled as an academic approach before Ford supported it so generously. I then
underscore some of what I think are the most promising accounts of a few historians of
political science of how behavioralism depended on external funding before moving on to my
own analysis of how the Ford Foundation helped constitute the behavioral sciences.
Early Assessments
One of the early pieces noting the implications of foundation funding on political science
appeared shortly after the Ford Foundation launched its nationwide program. In an essay
entitled, Social Science at the Crossroads, Heinz Eulau (1951) reviewed a number of works
representing new and promising ways of doing social science. Among them was the Report
for the Study Committee for the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program (Ford Foundation
Study Committee, 1949), the report that laid out Fords national philanthropic agenda. Clearly
impressed by Fords announced agenda, Eulau remarked that such unprecedented spending
might well transform social science: until now, no foundation with means comparable to
those of the Ford Foundation has ventured so far as to lay all of its golden eggs into the
shapeless basket of social science (Eulau, 1951, p. 117).5 The image Eulau chose expresses
not only some puzzlement over why Ford favored the humble, disorganized social sciences
with so much grant money but also considerable excitement over what such generously funded
social scientists might be able to do. Perhaps sensing an emerging trend, Eulau cited several
recent social scientific projects generously supported by public or private funds that embodied
the standard promoted by the Study Committees reportthat social science research be
inextricably bound up with a question of public policy (Eulau, 1951, p. 118).6
Though Eulau acknowledged the importance of these public and private golden eggs
to postwar social science in 1951, the issue disappears from his much more widely read later
assessment of behavioralism. In the later book, Eulau does not discuss any extra-academic
factors that accelerated the rise of behavioralism. Instead, he presents behavioralists as contemporary intellectual heroes, comparing them to Socrates (for their bold embrace of new
ways of thinking) and underscoring the many obstacles they had to overcome (insufficient
training and insufficient funding being foremost) (Eulau, 1963, pp. v, 115119). The sweeping
style Eulau adopts throughout this book assists the heroic myth he creates; because there are
no footnotes and few specific references in the body of the text, few of Eulaus statements are
qualified. Many of these unqualified statements bolster the myth of intellectual heroism by
suppressing acknowledgment of the support behavioralists received.
For instance, Eulau presents the education of the first generation of postwar behavioralists
as an arduous and unsupported venture: In the last fifteen years, most of those who have
come to the behavioral persuasion in politics have been largely self-taught. Trained in the
traditional techniques of political science, they had to develop new skills (Eulau, 1963, p. 115).
Eulaus own intellectual biography only partially fits this heroic picture. The irrelevance of
5. Herman (1995, p. 133) cites a similar comment made by Gordon Allport in a 1955 speech. After expressing some
reservations about the appropriateness of the term, behavioral science, Allport adds ruefully, But the foundations
seem to like the name behavioral science, and we shall raise no objection to it lest Cinderella miss her chance to ride
in a golden coach provided by the Foundation. Up to now these sciences have been riding in a Ford model T. Allport
and Eulau both use magical metaphors to capture how Fords golden money might transform the humble social
sciences.
6. The projects Eulau mentions are Thompsons Culture in Crisis: Study of the Hopi Indians (1950); Adorno et al.s
The Authoritarian Personality (1950) and Stouffer et al.s The American Soldier (1949). Thompsons research was
sponsored by the Office of Indian Affairs; Adornos by the American Jewish Committee; Stouffers by the Research
Branch, Information and Education Division, of the War Department (Eulau, 1951, p. 118). Whether these are fully
accurate acknowledgments is not the point, but rather that they are offered at all.
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the traditional education he had received as a graduate student at U. C. Berkeley to his

behavioral work notwithstanding, Eulau was far from being a self-taught behavioralist.
Instead, his retraining as a behavioralistfirst as a research assistant to Harold Lasswell in
the War Communication Division of the Library of Congress and second as a participant
in a workshop supported by the Social Science Research Councils (SSRC) Committee on
Political Behavior in 1954was organized and financed by government agencies and private
foundations.7 Though Eulau (1991) mentions both these specific debts in an oral history, his
1963 book actively constructs the myth of the self-taught behavioralist.
In one of the most frequently cited early assessments of behavioralism, Robert Dahl
(1961) readily acknowledges how much the approach depended on foundation funding: If
the foundations had been hostile to the behavioral approach, there can be no doubt that it
would have had very rough sledding indeed (p. 765). Dahl also cites numerous interrelated
. . . powerful stimuli he believes helped vault behavioralism to its preeminent position in the
discipline (p. 763); in addition to foundation funding, he discusses the work done by many
political scientists for the state during World War II (WW II) and the SSRCs Committee on
Political Behavior (pp. 764765).8 For as thorough as Dahls analysis appears to be, however,
its predominant tone of blithe bemusement blocks any deep investigation of how these factors
were interrelated.
Dahl presents the relation between foundations and academics as to a very high degree
reciprocal: the staffs of the foundations are highly sensitive to the views of distinguished
scholars, on whom they rely heavily for advice, and at the same time because even foundation
resources are scarce, the policies of foundation staffs and trustees must inevitably encourage
or facilitate some lines of research more than others (p. 765). But this important observation
should be pushed much further: in a number of instances, the staffs of the foundations
had academic ties and positions in state agencies. One particularly striking example of such
multiple affiliations may be found in Hans Speier. Could one possibly choose only one label
for the ubiquitous Speier, who worked for the Office of War Information during WW II,
then headed the RAND Corporations Social Science Division in the 1950s while helping
to build the Ford Foundations social science programs? No single professional tag will do
for Speier; he was a government official, foundation staff member and an academic (Lowen,
1997, pp. 199202). The same could be said of Donald Marquis, a psychologist on the faculty
of the University of Michigan, a member of the Ford Foundations Study Committee and
the head of the Committee on Human Resources of the Department of Defenses Research
and Development Board (Marquis, 1972; Simpson, 1994, p. 57, Ford Foundation Archives).9
Speier and Marquis were not exceptional for the number of positions they held. The many
hats they wore illustrate one portion of the dense network of institutional linkages that bound
7. Eulaus postgraduate move toward behavioralism was not unusual. A number of young PhDs in the social sciences
participated in workshops funded by Ford and other foundations designed to acquaint them with research techniques
grounded in mathematical analysis. See my discussion of one such Ford program below. For Eulaus wartime work
with Lasswell, see Simpson (1994, pp. 2627). Eulau dedicates his 1963 book to his wartime teacher: To Harold D.
Lasswell, Persuader. For the importance of the University of Michigan summer workshop organized by the SSRCs
Committee on Political Behavior and funded by the Carnegie Corporation to Eulaus intellectual development, see
Eulau (1991, pp. 188189).
8. This committee was first established in 1945, but appears to have begun its active life only in 1949. It is not listed
as an active committee in the annual reports for 19461947 or 19471948; from 1945 to 1946, it did not expend any
SSRC funds. When it reappears in the 19481949 report, its founding date is given as 1949 (SSRC, 19441949).
9. See Lowen (1997, pp. 277278, note 13) for a longer list of scholars in the postwar period with such multiple
affiliations. In subsequent references, I abbreviate citations for all documents from the Ford Foundation Archives
FFA.
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together private foundations, the federal government and the academy during the postwar
period (Herman, 1995, pp. 126130).
Though Dahl notes that many political scientists worked for the federal government
in some capacity during WW II, he suggests that these ties ended with the war. But many
research efforts in which they took part after the war were funded by the federal government
as well.10 Though foundation funding for the social sciences was substantial after WW II, it
was dwarfed by federal funding$7 million from foundations as opposed to $52 million from
the federal government in 1948 (Marquis, 1950, p. 31, FFA).11 What is more, government and
foundations often supported the same types of research. This was not a coincidence; rather,
many foundation officials (like Fords H. Rowan Gaither) sought to carry on the work they had
done for the government during the war through the programs of the foundations they helped
to run (Amadae, 2003, pp. 3439; Lowen, 1997, pp. 198199; Needell, 1998, pp. 2324). Not
only did the personnel of distinct institutions overlap; their aims often did as well.
Dahl comes closest to acknowledging how crucial these personal and institutional connections were to the rise of behavioralism by writing about its rise in passive language, as if
professional success just happened to behavioralists rather than being something they doggedly
pursued12 : [T]he revolutionary sectarians have found themselves, perhaps more rapidly than
they thought possible, becoming members of the establishment (p. 766). By contrast, making the links between the federal government, foundations and the academy explicit would
highlight the degree to which state and private power permeated the academy as well as how
some academics helped make this possible. Still, for as hazy an account as it offers of the
rise of behavioralism, Dahls laudatory piece makes clear that by the beginning of the 1960s,
behavioralists were at the top of a discipline that did not even have a name for their approach
10 years earlier.13
Later Assessments of the Rise of Behavioralism
I turn now to how the rise of behavioralism has been explained by a range of political
scientists reflecting on the history of their discipline rather than solely by behavioralists
themselves. Some, like Farr (1995) and Dryzek (2006), argue that behavioralism was already
10. As Simpson (1994, pp. 5762, 82), Needell (1998) and Stonor Saunders (1999) have shown, federal funds were
often funneled through private foundations; this makes it difficult to provide a precise breakdown of private versus
public funding. Lowen (1997) notes that many social scientists who had done some war work were also receptive to
the behavioral approach. Although their wartime experiences . . . are not sufficient to explain their research interests
in the postwar period, Lowen remarks that these experiences may have been significant in creating among them a
desire to continue providing advice, indirectly if not directly, to the federal government (p. 205).
11. Though frequently cited, this figure is disputed by Lowen (1997, p. 277, note 7) who argues that the federal
government spent no more than $10 million on academic research in the social sciences in 1953. Lowen says the
$52 million figure cited by Marquis (and derived from Riley, 1986 [1950]) includes expenditures for development
as well as research, and expenditures for statistical research as well as social scientific research (p. 277). But Ball
(1993, p. 215) cites a Russell Sage Foundation publication from 1950, which also claims federal funding far exceeded
what private foundations spent on the social sciences. NSF reports put total federal spending on the social sciences
between $20 and $35 million per annum for every year from 1953 to 1961 (NSF, 19521961). But these figures, as
Lowen notes, include expenditures for basic research as well as applied research and development. Why should it be
so difficult to settle on even a rough estimate of the ratio of federal to private funding for this period? The newness
of these programs, the secrecy of some of the federal ones and the (previously mentioned) difficulty of conclusively
labeling some funds either federal or private are probably all factors.
12. Not all behavioralists endorsed calling their rise to prominence a revolution. For example, Heinz Eulau disliked
the term because he thought it carried the false implication that behavioralism was coherent enough to constitute a
new paradigm in the Kuhnian sense (Eulau, 1991, pp. 193194). But Eulau had no objections to behavioralists
being referred to as Young Turksan expression not far afield from revolutionary (p. 188).
13. See my discussion of the coining of the term behavioral science belowbehavioralism seems to be a later
variant of behaviorism (Farr, 1995, p. 222, note 2).
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well established in political science by the early 1950s and therefore merely benefited from
postwar funding rather than being fundamentally shaped by it. Others, like Adcock (2007),
Somit and Tanenhaus (1982) and Ball (1993), go further in acknowledging the importance of
external funds to the rise of behavioralism. In what follows, I highlight what I believe are the
most significant shortcomings and merits of each.
When Farr (1995) addresses the connection between the rise of behavioralism and its
funding, he focuses on how behavioralists made their approach look appealing to federal
funders by emphasizing that it was scientific, value-free and ethically neutral and therefore
relatively immune to political criticism from the anticommunist right (p. 211). Taken together
with what Farr says earlier about the immediate ancestors of behavioralism in early twentieth
century social science, this analysis gives the impression that behavioralism in political
science was viable enough as a collective enterprise by the early 1950s for its partisans to be
thinking about how to pitch what they were doing to Congress and federal agencies. It seems
more accurate to say that during the early 1950s even those who would become the most vocal
defenders of the behavioral approach in political science in the latter years of the decade were
just beginning to reinvent themselves with an eye to federal and private opportunities.14
Paying explicit attention to when some of these opportunities arose sheds more light on
why 1951 was something of a banner year for behavioralists than Farr does (p. 212); in
the latter half of 1950, the Ford Foundation awarded a number of large grants to universities
and to the SSRC for research on individual behavior and human relations (Report #003025,
FFA).15 Ford devoted $3 million to this program; a number of universities, along with the
SSRC, received $300,000 each; other universities received $100,000. As I discuss in greater
detail below, not only were these grants unsolicited; at many universities that received them,
administrators and faculty alike were initially at a loss over what Ford had in mind and therefore
over what its officers would consider appropriate expenditures of this money.
Unlike Farr, Dryzek (2006) does interrogate the vagueness of behavioralism in the midtwentieth century political science. [W]hat exactly, Dryzek asks, did behavioralism oppose? (p. 489). Even though behavioralists were eloquent to the point of polemical in denouncing their predecessors various intellectual deficiencies, Dryzek notes that they rarely
charged others still active in the discipline with them. So, for example, while Easton (1953)
denounced a tendency toward the hyperfactual, he chose to illustrate it by referring to Bryce,
most of whose work appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century (Dryzek, 2006, p. 489).
Dryzek (2006) cites this vagueness to support his claim that behavioralism was a reorientation within political science prompted by some of its adherents awareness of new funding
opportunities: Behavioralism led to more survey research being funded and published, an
increase in the relative frequency of quantitative studies in the disciplines top journals, and a
relative decline in work addressed to public policy. The emphasis on science facilitated access
to new funding sources such as the National Science Foundation (p. 490). Upon closer examination, however, each of these sentences is either circular or misleading. The first sentence
essentially claims, behavioralism led to behavioralist research, but sheds no light on what
14. In the case of Heinz Eulau, there is a noticeable shift in the direction of explicitly behavioral topics and away
from more traditional theoretical ones only in the mid-1950s. In the 1940s, Eulaus publications do not yet express
the behavioral persuasion; for example, the 1941 Theories of federalism under the Holy Roman Empire, American
Political Science Review 35: 643664, and the 1949 Wayside challenger: some remarks on the politics of Henry
David Thoreau, Antioch Review 9, no. 4. Only in 1955 did Eulau begin to publish what is now regarded as behavioral
research; for example, Perceptions of class and party in voting behavior, American Political Science Review 49:
364384. I am indebted to Norman Jacobson for pointing me toward Eulaus prebehavioral work.
15. I discuss this grant program more fully below, beginning at p. 12.
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led to behavioralism per se. The second claims that there was a positive relation between
behavioralism and access to NSF moneybut suggests, as Farrs account does, that behavioralism had gelled as a distinct approach before its partisans sought funding from outside
sources. Rather, I would invert the relation and say that, along with Fords Behavioral Sciences
Program, support from federal sources (which were overwhelmingly non-NSF in the 1950s)
contributed to the rise of behavioralism (Mazuzan, 1994; Solovey, 2001).
Robert Adcocks (2007) detailed analysis of the behavioral movement offers good reasons
for changing the subject of Dryzeks question (what exactly did behavioralism oppose?) from
the singular to the plural. For Adcock, it makes more sense to treat behavioralism as a
composite of different projects rather than one coherent program for remaking the discipline:
Our image of behavioralisms place in the evolution of American political science should take
on varying characteristics depending on whether we attend to the topics the movement wished
the discipline to research, the empirical techniques it promoted, or the kind of theory it sought
to develop and bring into interplay with empirical research (p. 207). How revolutionary the
movement appears to be, therefore, depends on which of these aspects of behavioralism one
emphasizesstressing the topics behavioralists studied makes what they did seem continuous
with some earlier approaches, while focusing on the research methods behavioralists favored
or their attempts at developing an empirical political theory makes them seem more sharply
at odds with the past (p. 207).
Adcock devotes most of his attention to representing the multiple currents that made up
the behavioral movement as a whole rather than accounting for its rapid rise (pp. 181182).
Though our concerns are clearly different, the story I am telling about the rise of behavioralism
does not clash with Adcocks analysis of how behavioralism took root in the fields of American
and comparative politics. For example, Adcock shows how foundation-dependent entities
the Committee on Political Behavior and the Committee on Comparative Politics (two postwar
committees of the SSRC), as well as the University of Michigans Survey Research Center
helped behavioralists secure a central place in the discipline (pp. 193197, 200206). Although
he does not highlight how much each of these entities depended upon foundation funds or
how they all were funded into existence only after WW II, Adcock correctly identifies each
of them as among the institutions that made behavioralism the powerful force it became in
mid-twentieth century political science.
Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus (1982) widely cited assessment of the history of
American political science is more forthright still about the influence external funds on the
discipline in the immediate postwar period. From their tabulation of the total number of
foundation grants of $50,000 or more awarded to political science departments from 1959
to 1964, the authors conclude that such support went overwhelmingly to prestigious, wellendowed institutions, making the rich . . . richer (pp. 167169). They also underscore the
massive predominance of the Ford Foundation during that five-year period, estimating that
Ford outgave [the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations] combined by a ratio of almost
20 to 1 (p. 169). Both of these points support Somit and Tanenhaus conclusion that Fords
partiality to behavioralism had a significant effect on the discipline, so much so that political
scientists would have been less than human were they not tempted to manifest a deep interest
in the kinds of research known to be favored by Ford Foundation staff and advisers (pp. 185,
167).
When it comes to offering an explanation for the rapid rise of behavioralism, however,
Somit and Tanenhaus demur, saying that [w]e may still be too close to the event for a definitive
explanation (p. 184). Still, foundation funding is one of the items on their tentatively
identified . . . list of the most important predisposing conditions and forces that led to the
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rise of behavioralism (p. 184). Additionally, Somit and Tanenhaus present behavioralism as
a postwar phenomenon, assigning little significance to its connection with earlier approaches
(p. 183).16 Though they do not make the case extensively, Somit and Tanenhaus clearly regard
external funding as a major factor in the rise of behavioralism.
Among recent accounts, Terence Ball (1993) offers the most detailed discussion of the
relation between behavioralism and external funding. His analysis of behavioralism focus[es]
on the political contexts and institutional matrices that have helped to shape and direct the discipline in the immediate postwar period (p. 207). Ball notes that government and foundation
funding for social scientists during the postwar period had a lot to do with how social scientists
aided the state during WW II (pp. 208209). During this period, Ball stresses that government
funds were by far the more significant, citing a 1950 Russell Sage Foundation report that concluded: [e]xpenditures of the federal government for social science research projects . . . far
exceeded the amount given by all the philanthropic foundations for similar purposes (p. 215).
Overall, the years immediately after WW II transformed the discipline because they were so
bountifuland thereby led to the emergence of the academic entrepreneur or grantsman
skilled in the art of securing governmental and foundation funding (p. 216).
Given Balls focus on the importance of outside money, it is not surprising that he feels
he has to say something about whether or how those who disbursed these funds may have
exercised power over their recipients. Power is exercised, Ball argues, but not to the extent
that funders predetermine the specific outcomes or findings of scholarly research. They do,
however, help to shape the kinds of questions that researchers ask and answer, and the kinds of
inquiries and investigations deemed worthy of support and thereby, less directly, of reporting
via conferences, symposia, publications and even, eventually, pedagogy (pp. 216217).17
Most notably, Ball concludes, the kinds of questions not asked by those political scientists
who received significant government or foundation funding are questions about the locus,
distribution and uses of power . . . It is surely ironic that during the postwar period that old
staple of political description and analysis the statevirtually disappeared from the social
scientists vocabulary, even as the American state was becoming more powerful than ever
(p. 218). Just as the vocabulary of political science became increasingly unsuited to talking
about power and the state, many political scientists were now exercising power on the states
behalf as defense Intellectuals or policy scientistsroles they could often play without
formally leaving the academy (p. 219).18
THE FORD FOUNDATIONS BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES PROGRAM
I now turn to linking some of the archived records of the Behavioral Sciences Program
of the Ford Foundation with a set of the archived records from U. C. Berkeley, one of this
programs major grantees. A variety of Ford documents make clear how instrumental the
foundation was to the initiation and ultimate institutionalization of behavioralism across a
range of disciplines, including political science. Of course, one would expect Ford documents
16. The prominent behavioralist Austin Ranney (1974, p. 39) makes a similar point, arguing that even though political
scientists disagree profoundly about the merits and importance of behavioralism, I think most would agree . . . [that]
prior to 1945 the behavioral approach had very little impact on what political scientists did.
17. Simpson (1994, pp. 94, 115116) also speaks to this point.
18. It would be wrong to conclude that the approaches to data gathering and analysis favored by behavioralists always
lead to system-preserving conclusions. One vivid illustration of this point may be found in how the mass observation
movement in 1930s Great Britain used survey research and empirical observation to further its progressive social
aspirations. For a recent overview of this movement, see Hubble (2006).
163
to highlight Fords role, perhaps even exaggerate it. Still, these documents reveal not only the
great interest the some officials at the Ford Foundation took in behavioralism but also how
Ford helped initiate its rise. Reading these documents along with records from a university
that received a significant portion of these funds makes the way Fords program reshaped the
academic world more visible.
For as large and active as it was, the mechanisms by which Fords Behavioral Sciences
Program influenced political science are not immediately obvious. For one, those who designed
and ran this program did not pay much attention to political science, both because other Ford
programs (such as Area II programs devoted to Strengthening Democracy and the Fund for the
Republic) were more centrally concerned with it but also because they thought political science
less scientifically advanced than psychology or sociology (Behavioral Sciences Program, Final
Report, 19511957, p. 3; appended to Berelson, 1972, FFA). The grant record is consistent
with these points: the majority of the Behavioral Sciences Programs funds supported research
by psychologists and sociologists, not political scientists.19
Taking these qualifications into account, I nevertheless believe that the influence of Fords
program on political science was profoundeven if this was not the intention of its officers.
In the immediate postwar period, Fords multimillion dollar programs were by far the biggest
private source of extramural funds for the social sciences.20 Additionally, Fords Behavioral
Sciences Program spent a significant portion of its money on new initiatives rather than on
projects already being undertaken. Therefore, any political scientist who sought external funds
for research was likely to look to Ford and, in part, to its behavioral science initiatives. The
influence of the Ford program on political science can be thought of as a kind of ripple effect:
because political science was far from the center of where Ford wanted to make the biggest
splash, its influence was most discernible years later, even after the program itself had come
to an end.
I believe Fords program in the Behavioral Sciences influenced political science in several
principal ways. First, because of the size of the grants it made, administrators and faculty began
to think that research in political science (and all the social sciences) could potentially win
external financial support. This then affected how administrators and departments evaluated the
importance of different fields within the discipline. Second, by making its first round of large
grants to universities to develop new programs in the behavioral sciences, Fords program gave
academics from across the social sciences (including political science) strong incentives to
join the effort of figuring out what behavioralism was and how they might help build it. Finally,
though some university officials puzzled over what foundation officers meant by behavioral
science, at least Fords desire that it be pursued by means of interdisciplinary research was
clear. Universities receiving Behavioral Sciences money seemed to understand that setting
up interdisciplinary centers and institutes would be much easier to justify to the foundation
than allowing established departments to control these funds. Despite the skepticism program
19. See the Total List of Grants appended to the Behavioral Sciences Program, Final Report, 19511957, pp. A-1
A-12, appended to Berelson, 1972, FFA. Though I have not calculated how much grant money members of each of
these disciplines received, large grants to political scientists are rare.
20. Immediately after WW II, federal government funding for the social sciences decreased significantly; what is
more, the social sciences were also marginal to the National Science Foundations program for the first decade or
so of its existence. Some of the Ford Foundations officers expressed concern about this dearth of funds for social
scientific research and argued that the foundations programs should try to remedy this deficiencyideally, in a way
that would encourage government and industry to spend more on the social sciences in the future (Klausner and Lidz,
1986; Mazuzan, 1994; Needell, 1998; Solovey, 2001). There is, however, widespread disagreement on how much the
federal government spent on social science research during the immediate postwar periodor on what ought to count
as federal government spending. See my discussion of this issue in footnote no. 7.
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EMILY HAUPTMANN
officers expressed about political scientists willingness or ability to move toward behavioral
science, they do not seem to have actively barred political scientists from taking part in
interdisciplinary efforts. For people across the social sciences, then, obtaining research funds
and release time through Ford programs meant presenting ones work as interdisciplinary and
behavioral.
Ford did not commission universities to build the behavioral sciences from a detailed
blueprint; instead, when program officers sketched the direction in which they thought the
social sciences should go, they made clear that they expected to be closely consulted over how
each university fleshed out its aims. Though only some political scientists participated in this
effort to redesign the social sciences, all soon became aware that they and their colleagues
were now likely to be judged by how well they fit into this emerging academic enterprise.
Renaming the Social Sciences: Making the Case for the Behavioral Sciences
Musing about the Board of the Ford Foundations decision to terminate the program in
Behavioral Sciences, its director, Bernard Berelson, concluded that perhaps [the program]
made some ill will for itself . . . by being somewhat initiatory in its activity, by resisting such
popular demands as those for free departmental funds, and by appearing in some quarters
to have a line (Behavioral Sciences Program, Final Report, 19511957, p. 7; appended to
Berelson, 1972, FFA). Whether these factors did indeed contribute to the Boards decision
to end the program is not the issue here. What is more significant is Berelsons assessment
that the program he directed was indeed somewhat initiatory in its activity and that it was
perceived in some quarters to have a line. There are, I believe, several important reasons
why Berelson saw the program he led as initiatory.
Before any grants were made, before any new centers were funded, the Ford Foundation
began with a name change, opting to call the focus of its new program the behavioral
sciences instead of the social sciences. The decision for the change was consciously made
and justified by Marquis, a psychologist who was part of the small group charged with
planning the foundations programs on the eve of its national debut. In his report for the
division Ford was still calling Social Science, Marquis raised some concerns about the
associations prompted by the old label, noting that people tended to link social science with
social reform and socialism(Marquis, 1950, pp. 2021, FFA). Marquis wanted Fords new
program to raise a different set of expectations: instead of working toward achieving a good
society akin to an ideal body, Marquis argued that social scientists should be more like
physicians, diagnos[ing] particular modes of malfunctioning . . . This is the general spirit of
modern social science. It is specifically technical. It does not have a program for reconstructing
the social world (pp. 2122). Because social science was still associated with reformist
agendas, Marquis argued that a new name could be a first step toward moving these fields in a
more technical, applied direction.
Marquis explained in greater detail why he had argued that Ford drop the name social
science for behavioral sciences in an oral history interview over 20 years later. In addition
to shaking off any reformist associations, he pointed out that a different label enabled us
to define an area rather than accept already defined areas. (Marquis, 1972, p. 7, FFA). To
those who conceived it, the new name was much more than a superficial rebranding; rather, it
announced the foundations intention to move a set of academic disciplines in a new direction.21
21. Marquis (1972, p. 8, FFA) takes some credit for having come up with the term behavioral sciences, although
he says James [Grier] Miller might be given credit for doing so as wellas Somit and Tanenhaus (1982, p. 183,
note 9) do. On this point, see Miller (1955, p. 513). Marquis also says that he considered calling Fords program
165
The great resources available to Ford during the early 1950s allowed its officers to approach
grant-making differently; they could start entirely new academic programs rather than merely
making marginal increments on top of what universities were already doing (Price, 1972,
p. 102, FFA).
Berelson agrees with Marquis that Fords program went beyond pasting a new, less
controversial label on established ways of doing things (Berelson, 1968). In his entry for
behavioral sciences in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Berelson says
the Behavioral Sciences Program influenced at least the nomenclature, and probably even
the conception, of an intellectual field of inquiry (Berelson, 1968, p. 43). Berelson also
notes that what Ford started took firm root in academic practice. The behavioral sciences
survived the termination of the foundations program . . . in 1957 . . . [T]here seems to have
been, Berelson concludes, a genuine need for a collective term in addition to the traditional
social sciences, since many scholars in psychology, sociology, and anthropology are more
or less after the same end, namely, the establishment of scientifically validated generalizations
about the subject matter of human behaviorhow people behave and why (Berelson, 1968,
p. 43). Berelson credits the program he directed for making an interdisciplinary synthesis
possible that traditional disciplinary boundaries had blocked.
Three Major Grants in Fords Program in Behavioral Sciences
Once the aims of the Behavioral Sciences Program had been outlined by Marquis, the Ford
Foundation launched it by making substantial, unsolicited grants to universities nationwide
a dramatic gesture meant to begin and then accelerate the development of the behavioral
sciences. These grants, for research in individual behavior and human relations were made
with the intention of giving universities and other academic institutions like the SSRC strong
incentives to build new programs rather than supplement existing ones (Report on A Program
in Behavioral Science Research, Instituted by the Ford Foundation in the Summer of 1950,
p. 1. Report #003025, FFA). As correspondence between the foundation and U. C. Berkeley,
one of the universities selected, makes clear, the impetus for these grants came from the
foundation, not from the universities themselves (Letters to President Sproul, University of
California, from B.J. Craig, Secretary and Treasurer, Ford Foundation, 7.28.50 and 9.29.50.
Research in Individual Behavior and Human Relations, U. C. Berkeley, Grant #50005,
FFA).22 Though there may have been a number of scholars interested in doing behavioral
research in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Fords program in this area was not a response to
organized pressure or formal applications from university faculty or administrators. Rather,
the staff of the foundation contacted university administrators to announce awards designed
to finance new programs in the behavioral sciences. This is perhaps the most important sense
in which the program was initiatory.
Once the grants had been made, universities did not create behavioral science programs
overnight; indeed, Ford officials often had to prod their recipients to do so. Foundation officials
expressed particular impatience with those institutions that were not observing the spirit of
human resources, as the militarys Committee on Human Resources of the Research and Development Board did.
See also Simpson (1994) on Marquis role as the head of this board, which was established in 1947 to coordinate all
U.S. military spending on social psychology, sociology, and the social sciences, including communication studies
(Simpson, 1994, p. 57).
22. Lowen (1997, p. 204) describes a similar set of circumstances in recounting how Stanford came to be awarded a
grant through this program. Initial discussions of the grant took place between Ford officials and Stanfords President
Sterling, with Ford officials urging Sterling to apply for the funds. As was the case at U. C. Berkeley, it seems Stanford
was awarded a sizable grant under this program without ever having submitted a formal application to Ford.
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the grant, but were using the monies for ordinary expenses or on research projects without
primary attention to the development of resources and personnel (Report on A Program in
Behavioral Science Research, p. 3. Report #003025, FFA). U. C. Berkeley, a recipient of a
$300,000 grant, did nothing with the money for years. This prompted some social scientists at
Berkeley to worry that Ford might withdraw its money at a time when they were already feeling
grant poor, relative to their colleagues at other research universities (Letter from Clark Kerr to
President Sproul, 10.8.54; Memo from social science department chairs to Kerr, 11.15.54; both
in folder 26, $300,000 Ford Grant to University, Uses of, Box 54, Office of the Chancellor
Records, University of California Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley).23 Still, these worries did not spark immediate action. Berkeley finally began to
spend the 1950 grant eight years later, largely on the creation of a Survey Research Center
and a Center for the Integration of Social Science Theory (Letter from Hart to Sproul, 1.3.58,
folder 6, Institute for Social Science, Box 54, OCR, UCA).24 Though Berkeleys delay in
making use of the Behavioral Sciences grant was unusually long, it highlights the challenge
these grants presented all universities: organizing faculty and administrators to develop a
program in an area few thoroughly understood and to which fewer still had a long-standing
commitment.
Another Behavioral Sciences Division grant program that influenced a number of disciplines focused on training social scientists in statistics and higher mathematics. This program
aimed to train people from different disciplines and at different points in their careers
everyone from undergraduates to tenured professors was encouraged to apply. Notably, many
established political scientists did, including Robert Dahl, Charles Lindblom, and John Wahlke,
all of whom were invited to attend the first summer workshop funded by this grant and organized by the SSRC (list of those admitted to SSRCs 1953 Summer Institute, Mathematics
for Social Scientists, in Support for a program on the mathematical training of behavioral
scientists, SSRC. PA 53-01, FFA).25 After some experience with these workshops, a committee recommended that future sessions focus more explicitly on interdisciplinary study of
social scientific problems (like group behavior) or tools broadly useful to a range of social
scientists (like models of stable equilibria or stochastic models). The reports authors argued
mathematics might be the key to making social science truly interdisciplinary: mathematics
should show its advantages as a useful language, an Esperanto for the Babels Tower of social
scientists (Report of the Committee on the Mathematical Training of Social Scientists to the
SSRC, 12.14.54, pp. 23. PA 53-01, FFA). The planning for the institute makes clear just how
ambitious that goal was. Judging by the minimal entry requirement they set (one semester of
college-level mathematics), the organizers of the institute expected few students fluent in this
Esperanto (Flier for SSRCs 1953 Summer Institute, Mathematics for Social Scientists.
PA 53-01, FFA). But these low expectations underscore the lofty ambitions of a program that
sought to train generations of math-deficient social scientists to work with mathematical tools.
23. Chancellor Clark Kerr wrote in the August 10, 1954 letter to President Sproul, Mr. Berelson had said that the
Foundation intended to make a report sometime this fall on how such grants had been spent, and he had further
remarked that it would be most embarrassing for the University to have to report that its grant had not been spent. In
all subsequent references, I abbreviate Office of the Chancellor Records OCR, University of California Archives,
UCA.
24. Both of these centers were placed under the umbrella of the interdisciplinary Institute for Social Science.
25. Records marked with PA numbers are part of the Grants and Reports for Area V in the Ford Foundations Archives
cited in the references section. Though all three applied and were admitted, only Wahlke attended. The SSRCs
Committee on Political Behavior also sponsored a number of summer workshops on survey research, presidential
elections, and state politics during the 1950s. These workshops were funded by the Carnegie Corporation and seem
to have been geared more specifically to political scientists (SSRC, Annual Reports, 19531954, 19541955).
167
This initiative offers yet another example of the self-consciously transformative mission of
Fords Behavioral Sciences Program.26
These two grant programs not only ensured the behavioral sciences a presence in the
academy but also sped up the rate at which they developed. But perhaps the single most
significant action taken by the Behavioral Sciences division was the $10.35 million spent to
create and endow the Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS)
in Menlo Park, California (Ford Foundation Annual Report, 1957, p. 33). Conceived as a
research center to which scholars from all over the United States would be invited for at
least a semesters residency, the hope was that CASBS fellows from different disciplinary
backgrounds would come to the Center to work together on topics of mutual interest.27 Judging
by several reports from 1950s fellows, collaborative work and interaction among fellows from
different disciplines was one of the Centers main attractions (Letter from Boulding to Kerr,
1.27.55, folder 9, Center for the Integration of Social Science Theory,; Letter from Burdick
to Tyler, 11.30.55, folder 11, Junior Fellows CASBS, both in Box 54, OCR, UCA). When
it was established, the release time the Center offered its fellows was a scarce resource in
academic circles. Though Berelson said in retrospect that he was disappointed that the Center
had not contributed more to the development of the behavioral sciences, this was largely
because his hopes for it had been so high; he had wanted, he said, the Center to be a seminal
spearhead of new developments in the behavioral sciences (Berelson 1972, p. 57, FFA). Even
if the Center did not fulfill this lofty purpose, the prestige of being invited to a residency there
at least made many established scholars pay attention to the behavioral sciences and think
about whether their work could fit within this new category.28
Fords Influence on Political Science29
It is one thing to initiate something in the academic world, as I have shown Ford did;
but it is a challenge of another order to make sure that what has been initiated takes root
and continues to grow. Two aspects of Fords approach seem to have been crucial to the
endurance of behavioralism. First, Ford officials were able to convince university administrators
at prominent research universities to take an active part in promoting behavioral science by
offering significant start-up grants and the prospect of continued support in the future. The
alliance between Ford and university administrations helped the behavioral approach establish
26. Although SSRC Annual Reports do not provide much detailed information about the funding and expenditures of
individual committees, it is possible to distinguish the committees that consistently expended most of the money on
research planning activities. From the late 1940s through 1961, the most active committees relevant to behavioralism
were Comparative Politics, followed by Mathematical Training for Social Scientists (renamed, Mathematics in Social
Science Research, in 1958) and Political Behavior.
27. Berelson recalled that when the idea of the Center was nearly dead because of lack of support both within the
foundation and the academy, the sociologist Samuel Stouffer enthusiastically endorsed the plan at a crucial meeting.
Stouffer, who had led the large, interdisciplinary team of social scientists who produced the multivolume American
Soldier study during WW II, made a strong enough case for the need for such a research center to convince several
high-ranking Ford officials that it ought to be funded (Berelson, 1972, pp. 5152, FFA).
28. Berelsons full comment on CASBS: while Im sure the Center was good for the fellows who went through it,
in that it gave them a year off to reflect and write and all of that, Im not sure that it was as good for the behavioral
sciences as I meant itoriginally meant it to be. I meant it to be a seminal spearhead of new developments in the
behavioral sciences. Instead, it became a kind of retreat for individual members and anything of the former that
happened, was sort of accidental. And Ralph [Tyler, first director of CASBS] made it into that . . . .[A]nd thats why I
think its been disappointing though very successful (CASBS, 1972, p. 57, FFA).
29. My analysis in this section is indebted to Seybolds (1980) careful case study of Fords efforts in promoting
the behavioral sciences and, specifically, to his suggestion that the mechanisms Ford used to influence political
science be the focus of analysis (Seybold, 1980, p. 274). While Seybolds focus is principally on Ford, I have tried to
reconstruct how people within the academic community responded to Fords initiatives.
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a strong presence in departments quickly. These departments were among the most highly
regarded PhD programs in the country; once behavioralism was well represented among their
faculty, the stage was set for many cohorts of graduate students to be trained in this approach
(Roelofs, 2003, pp. 3637). Second, Ford often awarded funds for setting up new institutes,
centers, or committees outside of existing academic structures. Though these new entities
were relatively independent from university control, they were much more heavily dependent
on external monies than were departments. They not only provided a new conduit through
which funders could exert influence over the shape of academic research; many also outlived
the specific foundation programs that created them (Geiger, 1990). For these reasons, the work
of institutionalizing behavioralism went on even after Fords Behavioral Sciences Program
ended.
In his analysis of Fords funding of academic institutes and centers, Seybold focuses on
how the new institutions Ford helped create continued the work of rooting the behavioral
sciences in the academic world. [I]t is this ability to build institutions and dominate the
network of organizations which are involved in the production of knowledge, Seybold writes,
which allowed Ford to set the agenda for social science research in the United States
(Seybold, 1980, p. 274). Among the institutions Seybold has in mind are independent research
centers such as the CASBS, various committees under the auspices of the SSRC, and centers
and institutes tied to (but only minimally funded by) universities (like M.I.T.s Center for
International Studies (CENIS) or Columbias Bureau for Applied Social Research (BASR)
(pp. 285296).
The advent of such well-funded entities changed the internal structure of universities in
ways that had important consequences for disciplines. Beginning in the 1950s, these organizations used their foundation-derived funds to offer academics valuable scarce resources:
release time, research funds and support, graduate fellowships, etc. Many departments simply could not offer comparable levels of support. Faculty and administrators allied with such
entities could therefore easily translate their resources into disciplinary powerall the more
so because departments had only partial control over them (Geiger, 1990; Turner, 1999). To
illustrate how this dynamic worked, I offer three specific examples of how people used Ford
funds in ways that affected political science: the Ford-funded Institute for Social Science (ISS)
at U. C. Berkeleys relations with the political science department; one scholars use of his
Ford grant money to rescue the career of a struggling political scientist; and administrators at
Stanford University moving the political science department toward behavioralism in response
to prospects of increased Ford funding.
The case of Berkeleys ISS provides a glimpse into how Ford-funded institutes were able to
rival departments power to shape the social sciences. To the extent that ISS tried to do so, there
are good reasons to believe that it did it in a way that advanced the cause of behavioralism. For
one, the centers that were created under the ISS umbrellathe Survey Research Center and the
Center for Social Science Theorywere charged with explicitly behavioral missions. Not only
did these rely on faculty appointments from across the social sciences; they were also meant
to further the development of interdisciplinary research methods and social theory applicable
to all the behavioral sciences (Letter from Kerr to Sproul, 4.11.51, folder 9, Box 54, OCR,
UCA). ISS also became an internal grant-making agency responsible for disbursing portions
of Ford funds as smaller grants-in-aid to faculty from a number of departments.30 Shortly
30. In addition to the initial grant of $300,000, Berkeley also received another $75,000 terminal grant from the
Behavioral Sciences division when it made its final round of grants in 1957. That terminal grant came with the
condition that Berkeley match Fords funds by devoting an additional $50,000 to behavioral science research (Berelson
to Kerr, 7.12.57, folder 15, Box 54, OCR, UCA).
169
after the institute took on this new function, an administrative assistant to the Chancellor
charged Herbert Blumer, its director, to proceed with one important consideration in mind:
The Foundation will undoubtedly request progress reports on the use of the granted funds,
and we should be prepared to answer them and to defend our judgments in classing projects as
behavioral (Letter from Eugene C. Lee to Blumer, 6.3.58, folder 6, Box 54, OCR, UCA).
Blumer appears to have followed this advice, especially in summarizing the work done by
faculty affiliated with the Survey Research Center and the Center for Social Science Theory
(Letter from Blumer to Robert W. Chandler, Ford, 3.21.61, pp. 35, folder 6, Box 54, OCR,
UCA).31 In a cover letter to one of his reports to Ford, Blumer assured the foundation that the
universitys commitment to the behavioral sciences would continue and even increase after the
terminal grant from the Behavioral Sciences Division ran out (Blumer to Robert W. Chandler,
1.9.61, p. 2, folder 6, Box 54, OCR, UCA).
There are some indications that departments saw this well-funded institute as a threat
to their own power within the universityand that the institutes director at least considered
using his power to weigh in on departmental decisions. For example, once the ISS control
over small grant funds had been established, the chair of the political science department tried
to claim a chunk of those funds to disburse among his faculty alone, an attempt ISS advisory
committee successfully resisted (Advisory Committee Minutes, ISS, 4.3.61, folder 6, Box 54,
OCR, UCA). The institute not only fended off departmental claims to their resources; Blumer
felt confident enough in his position to ask others in positions similar to his own whether they
ought to try extending their power by influencing departmental hiring decisions (Memo to
directors of eight U. C. Berkeley research centers from Blumer, 10.3.60, p.2, folder 6, Box
54, OCR, UCA). These instances illustrate how Fords funding of independent institutes and
centers posed a potential challenge to departmental control over funds and hiring.
Behavioral Science program funds did not always travel through interdisciplinary centers;
some were directly awarded to individual academics who used them to intervene in departmental decisions. For example, Marquis, the psychologist who was a consultant to the Behavioral
Sciences Program, recalled how he used a grant he received from the program to rescue the
career of a young University of Michigan political scientist, Samuel Eldersveld. Eldersveld,
according to Marquis, was a behavioral researcher in political science and was just about to be
fired because the department believed that the historical approach and the theoretical analysis
of power was the only thing. But he was doing and wanted to do empirical research. Well, he
subsequently became mayor of Ann Arbor and is now chairman of the department. [laughter]
The money kept him from being fired (Marquis, 1972, p. 16, FFA). Whether this anecdote
accurately reflects what happened to Eldersveld is not the issue; what seems more significant
is that Marquis thought changing the balance of power in his young colleagues favor was an
appropriate and even felicitous use of some of his Behavioral Sciences grant money.
In her detailed account of how behavioralism rose to prominence in Stanfords political
science department, Rebecca Lowen shows how an administration deeply committed to advancing Fords program overrode the wishes of political science faculty (Lowen, 1997). As
was the case with Berkeley, Ford officials offered Stanford administrators several grants to
develop the behavioral sciences; the administration then used some of these funds to hire
people already working in the behavioral sciences to come to Stanford (Lowen, 1997, pp. 204,
31. Survey Research Center projects for the 19601961 academic year are largely devoted to the analysis of public
opinion on particular issues or to the development of techniques for the statistical analysis of public opinion. Center for
Social Science Theory projects are often interdisciplinary in conception and ambition and the departmental affiliation
of the Centers members is not mentioned (Blumer to Robert W. Chandler, 3.21.61, pp. 34, folder 6, Box 54, OCR,
UCA).
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211). Though Stanfords administrators worked far more quickly and enthusiastically to push
the social sciences in a behavioral direction than was the case at Berkeley, Lowen believes they
did so not because of any prior commitment to behavioralism but in response to the funding
offered by Ford.
When Arnaud Leavelle, the Stanford political science departments theorist, died in 1957,
the department recommended that offers be made to the traditional theorist Mulford Q. Sibley
and the behavioralist Eulau, indicating (its members thought) their openness to a variety of
approaches. Provost Frederick Terman, however, initiated his own search with the intention of
filling the departments slot for a theorist . . . [with] a prominent behavioralist, such as Ithiel
de Sola Pool or David Truman, ultimately fix[ing] upon political scientist David Easton
as the ideal candidate (p. 213). In the short term, the departments choices prevailed. Both
Sibley and Eulau were hired in 1958; but while Eulau spent the rest of his career at Stanford,
Sibleys appointment was tumultuous and short-lived. There was strong departmental support
for Sibley, though few of his colleagues shared his outspoken pacifist views. But to Stanfords
administration, Sibley was a liability on two counts: not only was his on-campus activism (in
support of a nuclear test ban) annoying; he was also, from Termans perspective, a net financial
loss to the institution since he was unlikely to win external grants (pp. 216217).
As Lowen reads this period in the Stanford political science departments history, the
ultimate fulfillment of Termans plan to enhance the departments reputation along with its
ability to win external grants came in 1963 and 1964 with the hiring of the behavioralists
Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (pp. 221222). Lowen stresses that the actions of university
administrators were crucial to how and when behavioralism took root at Stanford; had hiring
decisions been left largely to the discretion of the faculty, the political science department
would have remained more eclectic (p. 210). Administrators, keen on bringing in more funds
from Ford and other sources, remained focused on hiring well-established behavioralists; by
the mid-1960s, once they had made a few such hires and denied tenure to several traditional
theorists (Sibley and John Bunzel), the departments center of gravity shifted toward the
behavioral approach (p. 219).
CONCLUSION
When the Board of the Ford Foundation decided to terminate the Behavioral Sciences
Division in 1957, its deeply disappointed director chided the Boards members for abandoning
what he called a major [American] intellectual invention of the 20th century (Behavioral
Sciences Program, Final Report, 19511957, p. 20; appended to Berelson, 1972, FFA). But
for as much as Berelson believed Ford might still have done in this area, he could nevertheless
conclude, The behavioral sciences are here to stay (Berelson, 1972, p. 18, FFA). The
planning of the mission of the Behavioral Sciences Division and the design of its major
grants not only brought the behavioral sciences to life in American universities; they helped
ensure their survival. From its earliest grants to foster the behavioral sciences in universities
nationwide to the endowment of the CASBS, the divisions strongly interdisciplinary initiatives
reshaped many disciplines, even those like political science that were not the main concern
of its staff. As the Berkeley and Stanford cases I discussed illustrate, Fords program made
administrators and faculty see that research in sociology, anthropology, psychology, political
science, and economics could win substantial external supportalbeit for research initiatives
that came from funders rather than from universities. In the very early 1950s, Fords Marquis
and Berelson had aspirations for the behavioral sciences they wanted to bring into being: they
should be interdisciplinary in both theory and method, technically sophisticated, and well suited
171
to practical applications, and focused on understanding and managing current sociopolitical

problems.
Strikingly similar visions moved many political scientists to turn toward behavioral science in the 1950s and 1960s. Speaking in the same idiom, Dahl (1961, p. 770) commended
behavioralists for restor[ing] some unity within the social sciences; Eulau (1951, p. 118) welcomed behavioral scientists commitment to research geared toward action or policy. Most
fundamentally, many political scientists saw the promise of a methodologically sophisticated
discipline as one of the behavioral revolutions greatest achievements.
Though behavioralism was far from wholly novel, its early adherents were right to stress
how much it changed political science as well as how quickly it did so. As I have argued,
either emphasizing the continuities between interwar political science and behavioralism or
explaining the rise of behavioralism as a move in an intramural academic debate runs the risk
of missing the crucial role of Fords Behavioral Science Program in fueling the postwar rise
of behavioralism in political science. Many persistently obscure features of political sciences
behavioral revolutionits indeterminate origins and aims, its rapid successbegin to clear up
once Fords program is drawn into the analytical frame. That the behavioral revolution began
shortly after Ford launched its Behavioral Sciences Program was neither a coincidence nor
a manifestation of a culture-wide mood.32 It was instead sparked and fueled by the Ford
Foundations programa program that exerted great influence through unusually large and
directive grants designed to remake the social sciences.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to the Ford Foundation and to the Bancroft Library at the University of California
for granting permission to cite material from their archives. Robert Adcock, Terry Ball,
Kevin Corder, Erik Freye, Jack Gunnell, Joan Roelofs and Mark Solovey as well as all the
participants in the June 2009 History of Economics as History of Social Science Workshop at
the Ecole
Normale Superieure, Cachan, all commented on versions of this article; I gratefully
acknowledge their help. Thanks also to Western Michigan University and the Political Science
Department for research and travel support and to Joshua Berkenpas for his help in preparing
this manuscript.
REFERENCES
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FFA. Ford Foundation Archives, New York, New York.
OCR, UCA. Office of the Chancellor Records, University of California Archives, The Bancroft Library, University
of California, Berkeley.
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Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol.

48(2), 154173 Spring 2012

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

interdisciplinary, methodologically sophisticated and eminently practical behavioral sciences

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

the traditional education he had received as a graduate student at U. C. Berkeley to his

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

to practical applications, and focused on understanding and managing current sociopolitical

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

THE FORD FOUNDATION AND THE RISE OF BEHAVIORALISM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI 10.1002/jhbs

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