Philip Converse

Philip Ernest Converse (November 17, 1928 – December 30, 2014) was an American political scientist. He was a professor in political science and sociology at the University of Michigan (PhD 1958) who was a seminal figure in the field of public opinion, survey research, and quantitative social science. He has been described as "one of the most important social scientists of the 20th century."

Converse's widely cited book chapter "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics" (Ideology and Discontent, edited by David E. Apter, 1964) held that most people lack structure and stability in their political views. With Angus Campbell, Warren Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, he co-wrote The American Voter, an instrumental work of political science using data from the American National Election Studies, a set of important surveys of American public opinion carried out by the University of Michigan Survey Research Center and the Center for Political Studies. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1969.

Personal Life & Academic Career

Converse was born November 17, 1928, in Concord, New Hampshire. He earned his B.A. in English at Denison University in 1949, and he earned a master's degree in English literature from the University of Iowa in 1950. Converse was drafted into U.S. military service during the Korean War, working as a newspaper editor on a base in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Converse studied for a time in France before returning to the United States to earn an M.A. in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1956, followed by a Ph.D. in social psychology at Michigan in 1958. As he began his graduate education, Converse worked as the assistant study director of Michigan's Survey Research Center, joining forces with Warren Miller and Angus Campbell to field the 1956–1960 National Election Study panel survey. That work produced the foundational text for political behavior, The American Voter (1960). He would serve in leadership roles for the Center and for the broader Institute for Social Research (ISR) in which it was housed for the rest of his career, including as director of the Center for Political Studies (1981–1986) and director of ISR itself (1986–1989).

In 1961, Converse married social scientist Jean G. McDonnell, an expert in interviewing techniques who directed the Detroit Area Study.

Converse became an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan in 1960, the same year as his co-authored seminal treatise The American Voter was published. He quickly earned tenure with promotion to associate professor in 1964, as his celebrated essay on belief systems was published. One year later, he was promoted to the rank of full professor in sociology and a joint appointment in political science. After being awarded two named chair positions in the 1970s and 1980s, Converse was selected as the 1987 Henry Russel Lecturer, the University's highest honor given to a senior faculty member.

Converse left the University of Michigan to become director of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 1989. He returned to the University of Michigan as an emeritus professor of sociology and political science in 1994.

Converse died December 30, 2014, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the age of 86. He was survived by his wife, Jean, and his two sons.

Research

Converse is best known for his work on ideology and belief systems, voters and elections, partisanship, political representation, party systems, the human meaning of social change, and political sophistication. His work drew on extensive public opinion survey data from the United States and France.

According to Professor Michael Traugott, director of the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies:

The central point of Phil’s work was the inability of citizens to deal with large quantities of political information and to make it logically consistent, so they are always faced with making decisions based on inadequate information....Phil’s original research even helps to explain elements of polarization....People have the ability to screen out discordant information, but they haven’t become more sophisticated.

The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics (1964)

In The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics, Converse challenged the notion that ordinary citizens share the sophisticated ideological structure in political thinking seen among political elites. He argues first that belief systems are ultimately about "constraint"—if one's view changes on an issue central to the belief system, that change shifts attitudes throughout the network of other views when constraint is high. In contrast, other views do not change in a low-constraint belief system when another attitude changes. Converse says belief systems are constructed by political elites, who decide the issue views that go together, and he says political information is key for determining whether members of the mass public are capable of following these connections in their own thinking.

Next, Converse empirically analyzes belief systems in the mass public using survey data from 1956, 1958, and 1960 American National Election Studies. He proceeds in four parts. In the first section, he shows that, when asked to describe their views on the political parties and candidates, very few Americans rely on abstract principles or other signs of ideological thinking ("ideologues"). Instead, the largest category of people think about politics and parties in terms of "group benefits" based on which prominent social groups they see as advantaged or disadvantaged by Democrats or Republicans. Others thought about parties based on the "nature of the times" or "no issue content." In sum, regular people don't talk about politics in ideological ways.

In the second section, Converse shows that when Americans are asked explicitly to explain the terms "liberal" and "conservative," many struggle to link those terms to the political parties and to give meaningful reasons for those pairings. This suggests a lack of ideological understanding and again pushed against the notion of an ideological public. In the third section, Converse presents evidence that issue preferences in the public show low constraint, as seen in low correlations between issue pairs. This stands in contrast to relatively high constraint observed in the views of political elites. Finally, Converse shows that political attitudes are highly unstable in the mass public over time. On some issues, the public provides such inconsistent responses over two and four years that they appear to be responding almost as if at random. If ordinary people had idiosyncratic belief systems, he argues their views would be stable over time. The instability he observes is the final strike against the notion of an ideologically sophisticated public.

Converse concludes that mass publics generally lack the structured belief systems seen in political elites, and he speculates that this finding from mid-century America applies broadly across publics in other places and eras.

In a 1970 essay, Converse calls these highly unstable political views "non-attitudes."

Converse's book Political Representation in France with Roy Pierce on mass politics in France draws similar conclusions about belief systems.

The American Voter (1960)

Converse also co-authored The American Voter with Angus Campbell, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes. The book is one of the earliest and most influential assessments of electoral behavior in political science. One of the book's primary contributions was the introduction of the social-psychological concept of partisan identity and investigations into its effects on political behavior. Partisanship, they say, is functions more as an attachment to a social group than as a mere summary of political values and attitudes, and it is the fundamental driver in vote choice and much else. This theory became known as the Michigan Model. They also find that citizens who choose not to identify with a political party are generally disengaged from politics and low in political knowledge, in contrast to idealized views celebrating the independent voter. Evidence for the book was drawn from analysis of the 1956–1968 National Election Studies panel. The American Voter also assesses factors that influence voter turnout, the influence of electoral rules, effects from social and economic conditions, the roles of group identity and socio-economic position, and it introduces some of the initial analysis that underlies Converse's 1964 "Nature of Belief Systems" essay. The book also introduces other important concepts like the "funnel of causality" modeling the long-term and short-term forces leading eventually to an individual's vote, and the "normal vote" model relating partisanship and turnout in election outcomes.

Awards & Recognition

Philip Converse is one of the most influential political scientists in history. His work has been cited by other scholars many thousands of times.

• Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1969.
• Member of The American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences.
• Awarded an honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago and Denison University.
• President of the American Political Science Association (1983–1984).
• President of the International Society of Political Psychology (1980–1981).
• Fellowships awarded: Guggenheim, Fulbright, Russell Sage.

Notable Publications

• Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W., & Stokes, D. (1960). The American Voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Converse, P. E. (1962). Information flow and the stability of partisan attitudes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 26(4), 578–599.
• Converse, P. E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D.E. Apter (ed.) Ideology and Its Discontent. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 206–261.
• Converse, P. E. (1969). Of time and partisan stability. Comparative Political Studies, 2(2), 139–171.
• Converse, P. E. (1970). Attitudes and Non-attitudes: Continuation of a dialogue. In E. R. Tufte (ed.) The Quantitative Analysis of Social Problems. Addison-Wesley, Mass.
• Markus, G. B., & Converse, P. E. (1979). A dynamic simultaneous equation model of electoral choice. American Political Science Review, 73(4), 1055–1070.
• Converse, P. E., & Markus, G. B. (1979). Plus ça change…: The new CPS Election Study Panel. American Political Science Review, 73(1), 32–49.
• Converse, P. E., & Pierce, R. (1986). Political Representation in France. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
• Converse, P. E. (1987). Changing conceptions of public opinion in the political process. Public Opinion Quarterly, 51(2), S12-S24.
• Converse, P. E. (2000). Assessing the capacity of mass electorates. Annual Review of Political Science, 3, 331–353.