(second from left), Kenneth Haagensen (second from right), and Kenneth Youel (far right) 1960 Lipset was the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and Sociology at
Stanford University and a senior
fellow at the
Hoover Institution and then became the George D. Markham Professor of Government and Sociology at
Harvard University. He also taught at
Columbia University, the
University of California, Berkeley, the
University of Toronto, and
George Mason University, where he was the Hazel Professor of Public Policy. Lipset was a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
National Academy of Sciences, and the
American Philosophical Society. He was the only person to have been President of both the
American Political Science Association (1979–1980) and the
American Sociological Association (1992–1993).
Academic research "Some Social Requisites of Democracy" One of Lipset's most cited works is "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy" (1959), a key work on
modernization theory, on
democratization, and an article that includes the Lipset hypothesis that economic development leads to democracy. Lipset was one of the first proponents of the
theory of modernization", which states that
democracy is the direct result of
economic growth, and that "[t]he more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy." Lipset's modernization theory has continued to be a significant factor in academic discussions and research relating to
democratic transitions. It has been referred to as the "Lipset hypothesis" and the "Lipset thesis". The Lipset hypothesis has been challenged by
Guillermo O'Donnell,
Adam Przeworski and
Daron Acemoglu and
James A. Robinson. One of the debates as to how exactly democracy emerges, is between
endogenous or
exogenous democratization. Endogenous democratization holds the argument that democratization happens as a result of the country's previous history leading up to that point. So here economic development and expansion of the
middle class play a crucial role. Proponents of this viewpoint are
Carles Boix and
Susan Stokes. Exogenous democratization, on the other hand, argues that democratization happens as a result of external factors, such as the
zeitgeist of pro-democracy political movements seen across the world from the third wave of democratization up until the 1990s. According to
Adam Przeworski and
Fernando Limongi, the reason for the correlation between economic wealth and democracy is for the simple reason that once a country has transitioned to a democratic rule, it has a much better chance of staying democratic if it is wealthy, where as poor countries most often fall back into
autocratic rule.
Political Man Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, published in 1960, is an influential analysis of the bases of democracy,
fascism, communism ("
working class authoritarianism"), and other political organizations, across the world, in the interwar period and after
World War II. One of the important sections is Chapter 2: "Economic Development and Democracy." Larry Diamond and Gary Marks argue that "Lipset's assertion of a direct relationship between economic development and democracy has been subjected to extensive
empirical examination, both quantitative and qualitative, in the past 30 years. And the evidence shows, with striking clarity and consistency, a strong causal relationship between economic development and democracy." In Chapter V, Lipset analyzed "Fascism"—Left, Right, and Center, and explained that the study of the social bases of different modern mass movements suggests that each major
social stratum has both democratic and
extremist political expressions. He explained the mistakes of identifying extremism as a
right-wing phenomenon, and Communism with the left-wing phenomenon. He underlined that extremist
ideologies and groups can be classified and analyzed in the same terms as democratic groups, i.e., right, left, and center.
Political Man was published and republished in several editions, sold more than 400,000 copies and was translated into 20 languages, including: Vietnamese, Bengali, and Serbo-Croatian.
"Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments" In 1967, Lipset co-authored work with
Stein Rokkan, Lipset introduced
critical juncture theory and made a substantial contributions to
cleavage theory.
The Democratic Century In
The Democratic Century, published in 2004, Lipset sought to explain why North America developed stable democracies and Latin America did not. He argued that the reason for this divergence is that the initial patterns of colonization, the subsequent process of economic incorporation of the new
colonies, and the wars of independence varied. The divergent histories of Britain and Iberia are seen as creating different cultural legacies that affected the prospects of democracy. ==Public affairs==