Academic career and contributions Merriam joined the faculty at the
University of Chicago in 1900 as the first member of the political science faculty. He moved up quickly in the department, reached the rank of full Professor in 1911, and served as chairman of the department of political science from 1911 until his retirement. From 1907 to 1911, he served as chairman of the College of Commerce and Administration (the precursor to the
Booth School of Business). Merriam significantly influenced the discipline of
political science in the United States during his years in academia. As two political scientists noted in their study of the discipline in 1985, "Merriam's hand can be seen in virtually every facet of modern political science." "As much as any single scholar during this period, Merriam set the standard for how American democracy should be studied within the academy" was the assessment of Merriam's thinking on the discipline by another political scientist in 2008. The political scientist
Gabriel Almond concluded, "The Chicago school is generally acknowledged to have been the founding influence in the history of modern political science, and Charles E. Merriam is generally recognized as the founder and shaper of the Chicago school." Merriam was a leading advocate of the use of data and quantitative analysis in the practice of political science (even though he himself had almost no training in mathematics or statistics), and he founded the
behavioralistic approach to political science. Merriam "denied the utility of theory" and advocated instead a "practical" political science aimed at creating a more harmonious, democratic, and pluralistic society. A corollary to this thinking was his "vision of social scientists as technical advisors to society's political leaders." Merriam also deeply influenced the administration of political science in academia. He assembled a faculty that represented some of the best scholars of the day, Merriam was a critic of the states system in the United States. He argued that the states system was a problem for cities, as the state governments neither governed the cities nor allowed the cities to govern themselves.
Local political career Merriam was a member of the Chicago City Charter Convention of 1906. He was commissioned by the
City Club of Chicago in 1906 to study Chicago's tax system, and later served as a vice president of that influential organization. He served as a
Chicago City Council alderman from the old
7th ward from 1909 to 1911, winning office (in part) due to the success of his 1903 textbook. Merriam and Ickes helped co-found the Illinois Progressive Party, and they supported
Robert M. La Follette for president until
Theodore Roosevelt defeated him for the Progressive Party nomination. He campaigned for former President Theodore Roosevelt under the "
Bull Moose" ticket in 1912.
Federal service at the White House in 1938. Charles E. Merriam was an advisor to several presidents, and had a lengthy career in federal service. In 1911, President
William Howard Taft offered him a seat on the Commission on Economy and Efficiency, a body established under the authority of the Civil Appropriations Act of 1910 to study the administration of the executive branch, but Merriam declined. In 1917, President
Woodrow Wilson asked him to serve on the newly formed Tariff Commission (now the
United States International Trade Commission), but again he declined federal service. During
World War I, the 43-year-old Merriam joined the
US Army Signal Corps, was commissioned a captain, and served on the federal government's Aviation Examining Board for the Chicago region. He was also on the federal government's
Committee on Public Information, From April to September 1918, he was American High Commissioner for Public Information in
Rome,
Italy, where he developed
propaganda designed to sway Italian public opinion. His mission was not only to encourage the Italian public to keep Italy in the war on the
Allied side but also to undermine support for
socialist and
communist political parties. He may even have used
Rockefeller Foundation money to help convince socialist leader
Benito Mussolini to support the war. During his time in Rome, however, Merriam usurped the prerogatives of the US ambassador and embassy staff, and his repeated clashes caused him to be sent back to the United States after just six months in the post. Merriam's contribution to the series,
The Making of Citizens (1934), was highly laudatory of
Soviet Russia,
Nazi Germany, and
Fascist Italy's use of these tools to strengthen the sense of national purpose and achieve policy goals. Merriam was highly critical of these regimes, though, and felt that a more scientific approach would avoid the
messianism on which these governments relied and strengthen
democratic and
pluralistic norms. He also helped organize the
Social Science Research Council (an outgrowth of the LCRC) in 1923 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and served as its first president in 1924. Merriam served as president of the
American Political Science Association in 1925. That same year, he authored the book
New Aspects of Politics, which called for marshalling the resources of political science research in a search for solutions to pressing social issues. Merriam returned to government service in 1929, serving as vice chairman on
President Herbert Hoover's President's Research Committee on Social Trends (PRCST). A landmark federal research initiative into demographics and emerging social issues, the PRCST "altered the direction and use of social science research in the United States." In July 1933, Harold Ickes (now
United States Secretary of the Interior) appointed Merriam to serve on the National Planning Board (and its successors, the National Resources Board and the National Resources Planning Board) Merriam was the body's most influential member. In this capacity, he helped draft proposals for an expansive
welfare state. Although President Roosevelt approved of the plans and proposed implementing them in his "
Four Freedoms" speech of January 6, 1941, the proposals were politically not viable and were never adopted. In 1934, Merriam served on the Commission of Inquiry on Public Service Personnel, a research group established by the Social Science Research Council to research, analyze, and make proposals regarding the federal
civil service and civil service reform (with an eye to the innovations made by the
Tennessee Valley Authority). and
Luther Gulick was the Commission's research director. The group made a number of important proposals regarding civil service reform, although not all were adopted. It did spark interest in the
merit system, and many of its civil service reform proposals were adopted by several states. Merriam believed that part of the success or failure of the National Planning Board's proposals depended on the administrative capacity of the executive branch to adopt and push for the recommended policies. Therefore, Merriam began lobbying President Roosevelt for a commission to study the structure and functions of the executive. Merriam assured the president that if he established a committee to review the administration of the executive branch, the committee's report could be written in such a way as to justify the president's reorganization goals while couching them in the neutral language of academic research. On March 22, 1936, Roosevelt established the
Committee on Administrative Management (commonly known as the Brownlow Committee) and charged it with developing proposals for reorganizing the executive branch. Besides himself, the three-person committee consisted of
Louis Brownlow, and Luther Gulick. On January 10, 1937, the committee released its report. Famously declaring "The President needs help," the committee's report advocated a strong chief executive, including among its 37 recommendations significant expansion of the presidential staff, integration of managerial agencies into a single presidential office, expansion of the merit system, integration of all independent agencies into existing
Cabinet departments, and modernization of federal accounting and financial practices. ==Retirement and death==