Walter Dean Burnham (June 15, 1930 – October 4, 2022) was an American political scientist who was an expert on elections and voting patterns. He was known for his
quantitative analysis of national trends and patterns in
voting behavior
Voting behavior is a form of Theories of political behavior, electoral behavior. Understanding voters' behavior can explain how and why decisions were made either by public decision-makers, which has been a central concern for political scientists, ...
, the development of the "
Party Systems" model, and the assembling of county election returns for the entire country. He was a professor in the political science department at the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...
.
Career
Burnham was born in 1930 in
Columbus, Ohio.
In 1951, Burnham received his AB from
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
in Baltimore, Maryland. He was awarded his
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in 1963 by Harvard University, where he worked with political scientist
V.O. Key, Jr. Prior to moving to Texas in 1988, he taught at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
and
Washington University
Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...
in St. Louis, Missouri. Burnham was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served as president of the Politics and History Section of the
American Political Science Association. Burnham retired in 2003 and was professor emeritus of government at the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...
, where he held the Frank Erwin Centennial Chair in Government, named for a former long-term University of Texas regent.
Burnham was a specialist in election returns, and the sources of data for the
ICPSR. He interpreted data in terms of statistical patterns and trends. He was primarily involved in American election data from 1824 to 1960. He died at the age of 92 in 2022.
[Walter Dean Burnham's obituary](_blank)
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The Alabama U.S. Senate race of 1962
In 1964, Burnham published an article on the 1962 U.S. Senate election in Alabama
(We dare defend our rights)
, anthem = "Alabama"
, image_map = Alabama in United States.svg
, seat = Montgomery
, LargestCity = Huntsville
, LargestCounty = Baldwin County
, LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham
, area_total_km2 = 135,765 ...
, when Republicans made their first strong showing for federal office since Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
in the state known as "The Heart of Dixie." The Republican James D. Martin of Gadsden, an oil products distributor, challenged veteran Democrat
Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to:
Politics
*A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people.
*A member of a Democratic Party:
**Democratic Party (United States) (D)
**Democratic ...
J. Lister Hill of Montgomery and fell only a few thousand votes short of victory. Burnham describes the Martin campaign as an aberration from the customary issueless, personalist southern primary elections. Martin's campaign was a pacesetter for subsequent southern elections in that it was waged over national issues—mobilizing the white backlash
White backlash, also known as white rage, is related to the politics of white grievance, and is the negative response of some white people to the racial progress of other ethnic groups in rights and economic opportunities, as well as their gro ...
against civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life o ...
; stressing what he saw as "free enterprise," "local control," and "individual freedom"; decrying federal spending programs; shifting emphasis from opposition to desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...
to the preservation of "states rights." Burnham found it ironic that a Republican from the populist
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against " the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term develop ...
North Alabama ran strongly in the cities and Black Belt, while the Democratic senator from the capital city of Montgomery appealed to the northern hill country, where voters appreciated programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...
and were less racially conscious because of the relatively small number of African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
s in their region. Martin fared best in those counties with non-voting blacks, prior to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All but one of the fifteen counties which showed a decline in the Republican vote between 1960 and 1962 were in the Appalachian section of North Alabama. Martin's showing along the Gulf Coast and the Florida Panhandle was paradoxical because southeast Alabama had been traditionally the most populist since the 1890s. Two years after the Hill-Martin race, Burnham correctly forecast that the inroads of presidential Republicanism would continue in the South, but competition at the state and local levels would take root slowly.
''Critical Elections''
Burnham's 1970 book ''Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics'' presented a theory of American political development that focused on the role of party systems that endure for several decades, only to be disrupted by a critical election. Such elections not only hand presidential and congressional power to the non-incumbent political party, but they do so in a dramatic way that repudiates the worn-out ideas of the old party and initiates a new era whose leaders govern on a new set of assumptions, ideologies, and public policies. The frequency of its citation in the footnotes of other works indicates that Burnham's article "The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe" (1965) was highly influential. The majority of citations focus on the themes of voter turnout decline, realignment in 1896, and explanations for voter decline. The theory of elite, capitalist control of the political system in the 20th century has gained less attention and support.[Beck (1986)]
Major publications
* '' Presidential Ballots, 1836–1892'' (1955) annotated compilation of county election results
* "Political immunization and political confessionalism: the United States and Weimar Germany." ''Journal of Interdisciplinary History'' 3.1 (1972): 1-3
online
* "Theory and voting research: some reflections on Converse's “Change in the American Electorate”." ''American Political Science Review'' 68.3 (1974): 1002-1023.
* "The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe" ''American Political Science Review'' 59.1 (1965): 7-28
in JSTOR
* ''The American party systems: Stages of political development'' edited by William Nisbet Chambers and Burnham (1975)
** "American politics in the 1970s: Beyond party." in ''The American Party Systems'' (1975) pp: 308-357.
* "Insulation and responsiveness in congressional elections." ''Political Science Quarterly'' 90.3 (1975): 411-435.
*''Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics'' (1970)
summary
*''Politics/America: The Cutting Edge of Change'' (1972)
*''The Current Crisis in American Politics'' (1982)
* ''The Evolution of American Electoral Systems'' (Contributions in American History) with Paul Kleppner, et al. (1981)
* with Richard Rose. "The appearance and disappearance of the American voter." in ''The political economy'' (1984) pp: 112-39.
*''Democracy in the Making: American Government and Politics'' (1986), textbook
* ''Voting in American Elections'' with Celia M. Wallhead (2009)
Video by Burnham
* Burnham, Walter Dean
April 5, 2006 video recording of Burnham retrospective on critical realignments
References
Further reading
* Beck, Paul Allen. "Micropolitics in Macro Perspective: the Political History of Walter Dean Burnham." ''Social Science History'' 1986 10(3): 221-245
in JSTOR
* Jensen, Richard. "The Changing Shape of Burnham's Political Universe," ''Social Science History'' 10 (1986) 209-1
in JSTOR
* Roberts, Sam. "Walter Dean Burnham, Who Traced Political Parties’ Shifts, Dies at 92: A noted political scientist, he saw parties periodically realigning themselves in stark fashion, presaging the rise of Donald Trump
* Velasco, Jesús. "Walter Dean Burnham: An American Clockmaker." ''Norteamérica'' 12.2 (2017): 215-249
online
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burnham, Walter Dean
1930 births
2022 deaths
Johns Hopkins University alumni
Harvard University alumni
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
University of Texas at Austin faculty
American political scientists
Writers from Columbus, Ohio