Background
Vladimir Orlando Key Jr. was born on 13 March 1908 in Austin, Texas. his father was a lawyer and land owner.
(In Public Opinion and American Democracy Key analyzed the...)
In Public Opinion and American Democracy Key analyzed the link between the changing patterns of public opinion and the governmental system. He was vigorous in opposing the idea that voters' preferences are socially determined.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007HC2MK/?tag=2022091-20
(More than thirty years after its original publication, V....)
More than thirty years after its original publication, V. O. Key's classic remains the most influential book on its subject. Its author, one of the nation's most astute observers, drew on more than five hundred interviews with Southerners to illuminate the political process in the South and in the nation. Key's book explains party alignments within states, internal factional competition, and the influence of the South upon Washington. It also probes the nature of the electorate, voting restrictions, and political operating procedures. This reprint of the original edition includes a new introduction by Alexander Heard and a profile of the author by William C. Havard. "A monumental accomplishment in the field of political investigation." Hodding Carter, New York Times "The raw truth of southern political behavior." C. Vann Woodward, Yale Review "This book should be on the 'must' list of any student of American politics." Ralph J. Bunche V.O. Key (1908-1963) taught political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at Johns Hopkins, Yale, and Harvard universities. He was president of the American Political Science Association and author of numerous books, including American State Politics: An Introduction (1956); Public Opinion and American Democracy (1961); and The Responsible Electorate (1966). "
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/087049435X/?tag=2022091-20
(A wonderful book. This was Key's final volume; he died be...)
A wonderful book. This was Key's final volume; he died before it was published. From p. 7: "The perverse and unorthodox argument of this little book is that voters are not fools."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394704703/?tag=2022091-20
Vladimir Orlando Key Jr. was born on 13 March 1908 in Austin, Texas. his father was a lawyer and land owner.
Key spent his early life in Texas and received much of his education there. He attended McMurray College in Abilene for 2 years and then the University of Texas, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1929 and a master of arts degree in 1930. He went to the University of Chicago for his doctoral work. There he came under the influence of Charles E. Merriam, the leading figure in the "Chicago school" of political science.
The intention of the Chicago school was to explore and develop new methods of studying political and administrative behavior. It pioneered in the use of statistics, the use of filed methods, the study of the role of psychology in politics, and especially the realistic approach that focused on power and power relations. In this atmosphere Key wrote his doctoral dissertation, The Techniques of Political Graft in the United States. His approach was not to moralize about graft but to analyze it from the standpoint of the function it played in the political system.
After teaching for a short time at the University of California at Los Angeles, Key went to Washington in 1936, where he was first associated with the Social Science Research Council, and he later served as a staff member of the National Resources Planning Board.
In 1938 he was appointed to the faculty of Johns Hopkins University. At the outset of World War II, however, he returned to Washington, where he served several years with the U. S. Bureau of the Budget.
Key's pioneering approach to the study of politics was evident in 1942 in the first of many editions of his extremely influential text Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups. Unlike earlier studies which were merely party histories, Key focused on the interest groups that contend for power and on their functions in the party system and the whole political process.
Following World War II, he published his landmark work Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949). The work received the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for 1949 and inspired a number of other regional studies. Innovative in its approach, it analyzed local election returns and extensive in-depth interviews. Following the publication of Southern Politics, Key was appointed Alfred Cowles professor of government and chairman of the department at Yale University.
Preferring research to such administrative duties, he moved to Harvard in 1951 as Jonathan Trumbull professor of history and government. In 1954 he published A Primer of Statistics for Political Scientists, a general introduction to statistics with advice on research strategy. The work accomplished its purpose, giving considerable impetus to the study of statistics and the use of quantitative methods in political science.
In 1956 Key published American State Politics, a pioneering study of the functioning of two-party and one-party states in which he utilized aggregate election returns. While troubled by ill health during much of this period, Key nevertheless managed to accomplish a prodigious amount of work and in 1958 was elected to the presidency of the American Political Science Association.
In 1959 he coauthored with Frank Munger "Social Determinism and Electoral Decision, " a paper critical of the early sociological approach to the study of voting which maintained that social characteristics determined political preference.
In 1961 Key published Public Opinion and American Democracy, a massive study on American political culture, in which he attempted to explore the patterns and distribution of opinions, the ways in which they are formed, and the links between mass opinions and the operations of the structural machinery of government. In October 1961, President John Kennedy appointed him to the President's Commission on Campaign Costs, which reported in 1962.
Although his health had become much worse, Key continued working to the very end. His last work was The Responsible Electorate, published posthumously with the assistance of his former student Milton Cummings, Jr. , in 1966. This work challenged the conclusions of many leading works on the study of voting behavior by arguing that there was a greater degree of rationality involved in voting than had been commonly inferred.
(In Public Opinion and American Democracy Key analyzed the...)
(More than thirty years after its original publication, V....)
(A wonderful book. This was Key's final volume; he died be...)
The Social Science Research Council, the National Resources Planning Board, the U. S. Bureau of the Budget, the American Political Science Association, the President's Commission on Campaign Costs.
Key married Cora Luella Gettys Key on October 27, 1934.