Gosnell, Harold F. (Harold Foote), 1896-1997

Political scientist, educator, and government consultant.

Biographical Note

Harold Foote Gosnell (1896-1997) grew up in Rochester, New York, where he attended the University and graduated in 1918. He served briefly in the army, remaining in America, before pursuing graduate studies in political science at the University of Chicago. At Chicago Gosnell worked with Charles E. Merriam, graduating in 1922 and staying on as faculty. By 1932 Gosnell was an Associate Professor and closely associated with Merriam's approach to the discipline, which incorporated methods from economics, sociology, and psychology.

Gosnell's work during the 1920s and 1930s used statistical analyses to draw conclusions about voter behavior and political participation. He became known for his research into Chicago politics and the African-American vote; Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics and Chicago (1935) and Machine Politics: The Chicago Model (1937) were still considered authoritative texts in the 1990s. Gosnell also completed studies of American non-voters and voter turnout in Europe. His work was consistently valued for its "behaviorism" method, which made use of the quantitative models favored by the other social sciences, but modified their tendency towards determinism.

Despite this success, however, the Political Science Department came under increasing criticism from University President Robert Hutchins, who disliked Charles Merriam's political activism. In 1941 Gosnell accepted a job with the Bureau of the Budget. In 1946 he moved to the State Department, where he remained until 1960. He continued to publish on voter motivations, though his case studies of presidential leadership demonstrated a shift away from behaviorism.

During this period Gosnell also served as faculty at American University, where he conducted research on the Soviet Union for their Special Operations Research Office. In 1962 he was invited to teach at Howard University, where his scholarship on African-American politics was particularly admired. Gosnell retired in 1970, but continued to receive accolades for his contribution to the discipline, awarded the Charles E. Merriam Award from the American Political Science Association in 1981. Both APSA and the University of Rochester created fellowships named for him, and by the time of his death in 1997 Gosnell was widely considered to have made quantitative analysis mainstream in political science.

Gosnell was married to Florence Fake, who died in 1991.