Harold D. Lasswell on Political Sociology

Harold Dwight Lasswell

University of Chicago Press, 1980 - Social Science - 456 pages

Harold D. Lasswell's pioneering work in the field of political sociology is distinguished by his insistence on studying major contemporary problems, his willingness to try new methods of inquiry, and--above all--his conviction that, to understand events on the political stage, one must also analyze the social and historical context. From the huge corpus of Lasswell's work, Dwaine Marvick has chosen representative selections that demonstrate the wide range of his interests, the intellectual framework of this thought, the characteristics of his style, and the diversity of his methods. The volume is organized around the five fields of central interest to Lasswell: elite analysis in an contextual perspective, developmental constructs, political communications research, the use of psychoanalysis to explain political behavior, and the role of intellectuals in policy-making processes.

About the author

Harold D. Lasswell was the wunderkind of American political science. Beginning in his twenties, he attempted through his writings to develop a theory about the individual and society that draws on and illuminates all of the social sciences. When he enrolled in the University of Chicago at age 16, he had already read widely such writers as Kant and Freud. His doctoral dissertation was published in 1927 as Propaganda Technique in the World War, a major work in the development of communications research. He created a phrase that set the agenda for communications research for a generation: "Who says what to whom with what effect?" After World War II, he moved to Yale Law School, where he introduced a generation of law students to the social sciences. He believed that the creation of what he called "the policy sciences" was his greatest achievement; the book by that title that he edited with Daniel Lerner in 1951 is still widely read today.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Harold D. Lasswell on Political Sociology; The Heritage of Sociology, ISSN 0073-1986
• Author: Harold Dwight Lasswell
• Editor: Dwaine Marvick
• Contributor: Dwaine Marvick
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1980
• ISBN: 0226469212, 9780226469218
• Length: 456 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Sociology / General