James Q. Wilson Has Died

Jim Wilson died yesterday.  He was 80 years old and had suffered from leukemia.  For those of you not familiar with his work, Wilson was one of the intellectual giants in political science, one whose research and writings influenced not just others in the discipline, but which had a major impact in the broader world of politics, policy and government more generally.   Although most of his obituaries (see here  and here) cited his “broken windows” thesis which he developed with George Kelling regarding crime prevention, Wilson was probably better known within academia for his study of government organizations – a line of research that began with his analyses of city politics and culminated in his classic work  Bureaucracy.  As the subtitle to that book indicates, Wilson sought to explain what government agencies do, and why they do it.  In so doing, he drew not only on his own work, but also on his experiences as a government consultant (he served on several presidential tasks forces on crime and drug prevention), as well as on the research of several generations of graduate students.   The book has all the characteristics of Wilson’s other writings: graceful prose, uncommon intellectual rigor and, perhaps most important of all given the state of the political science discipline today – it had relevance.  Indeed, if there was one hallmark of Wilson’s career – whether it was charting the rise of political issue activists in New York (The Amateur Democrat), examining the FBI and DEA (The Investigators) or developing a theory regarding why individuals join groups (Political Organizations) – it is that he spoke to important issues in a language that policymakers as well as students could understand.  It is, of course, impossible to do justice to the body of Wilson’s academic work here, but for those interested in a short-hand glimpse into how his mind worked, a sampling of his Wall St. op Ed pieces can be found here.

I did not know Wilson well, but I was fortunate to have taken courses with him and to have served as one of his many teaching assistants.  He was a skilled lecturer, but one who captivated you more by the lucidity of his thoughts than with the power of his oratory.   Although Wilson was born and raised in California, his emotional reserve – bordering on shyness – always struck me as more characteristic of a New Englander.  This extended even to his classroom demeanor; when he lectured he seemed to be focused on a point just above his audience’s heads, as if speaking to someone sitting in the top row of the bleacher seats.

Wilson knew a lot about the bleachers at Fenway Park – he was an unabashed Red Sox fan who moved back to the Boston area late in life to be closer to his children and grandchildren (he died in a Boston area hospital); as he told an interviewer  his descendants “feel a legal obligation to live within 30 minutes of Fenway Park.”  Indeed the most animated I ever saw him was during the 1986 World Series; I distinctly remember him at this time in a meeting with his teaching assistants, clearly agitated as he openly wondered why Red Sox manager John McNamara had not put Dave Stapleton in as a defensive replacement for Bill Buckner.  (This was more than a rooting passion for Wilson; for many years he  played in weekend government department softball games.)

He also had a sly sense of humor.  I recall another incident as his teaching assistant in a course he taught jointly with Professor Mo Fiorina.  In lecture one day, to illustrate a point about how individuals with shared interests form groups,  Fiorina put up a slide showing him proudly holding a good-sized fish – a brook trout, say, of 18 inches? – (forgive me, Mo, if I don’t remember the exact size or species) that Fiorina had caught.  When it next came time for Wilson to lecture, as he was speaking he flashed a slide of a man in scuba gear – presumably Wilson himself – swimming alongside a 20-foot shark – a picture that seemed totally unrelated to his lecture topic.   Noticing his students’ puzzled response, Wilson glanced at the slide, nodded in Fiorina’s direction and said, “I just wanted to show Professor Fiorina what a big fish really looks like.”   (Among his hobbies, Wilson was an avid scuba diver and he co-authored a book with his wife on fish life in the coral reefs.)

After more than two decades at Harvard, Wilson left and returned to California where he continued to write and lecture.  His departure came just as I was working up the nerve to see whether he might sit on my dissertation committee.  When I later returned to Harvard as a professor, I was responsible for teaching Government 1500 “Bureaucracy” – the very class I had taken with Wilson years before.  Fortunately, rather than delude myself into thinking I might somehow improve the course, I simply dusted off my lecture notes from Wilson’s class, updated the examples, and essentially taught Wilson’s ideas to a new generation of students.  I continue to do so today.  It is a testament to his knowledge of the topic that the conceptual framework he developed for understanding government bureaucracies is still relevant; I’ve used it in my own analyses of the Homeland Security department and reforms to the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Late in life Wilson focused his research on issues of morality, character and politics.  That culminated in the writing of what he often said was his most important book The Moral Sense, which he described as “an intuitively or directly felt belief about how one ought to act when one is free to act voluntarily.”  The book explores how individuals develop a moral sense, and focuses particularly on the role of family in instilling that sense.  For Wilson, developing that moral sense was crucial for a well-functioning social order.

It was for reasons of family, of course, that Wilson moved back to the Boston area, to be closer to his children and grandchildren.  And it is Wilson’s family that is in our thoughts and prayers today.

Rest in peace, James Q. Wilson.  You will be missed.