Joseph LaPalombara

Joseph LaPalombara (May 18, 1925 – June 12, 2026) was an American political scientist who specialized in comparative politics, interest-group theory, and the foreign investments made by global firms. He was the Arnold Wolfers Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Management at Yale University, where he taught for more than fifty years. LaPalombara twice chaired the political science department at Yale and directed its Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Before joining Yale in 1964, he taught for three years at Oregon State University and eleven years at Michigan State University, where he chaired the political science department. He was widely regarded as the leading American scholar of Italian politics, and his books included the textbook Politics Within Nations and Democracy, Italian Style (1987). He was a vice-president of the American Political Science Association, president of the Conference Group for the Study of Italian Politics and Society, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Early life and education The son of Italian immigrants Luigi LaPalombara and Helen Teutonico, LaPalombara grew up in Chicago's Near West Side during the Great Depression. He left high school at the age of sixteen and worked in a variety of industrial plants, learning specialized trades that included the heat treatment of steel, and held defense-industry jobs during World War II.

A wartime admissions program allowed LaPalombara to enroll at the University of Illinois, from which he graduated with highest honors in 1947; he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and served as president of both the Student Senate and his senior class. He taught briefly at Oregon State University and was a teaching assistant at Princeton University, where he earned a Ph.D. in political science in 1954. He held a Fulbright scholarship in Italy in 1957–1958.

LaPalombara was widely regarded as the leading American scholar of Italian politics; the political scientist Robert D. Putnam called him "the dean of the study of Italian politics in America". He also received medals from the Italian Senate and Constitutional Court, and Yale's DeVane Medal for teaching and scholarship. and held fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Ford, Rockefeller and Twentieth Century funds and foundations.

Personal life and death LaPalombara was married twice; his first wife was Lyda, and his second wife, Constance, predeceased him in 2023.

Selected publications

Books

Articles and chapters "Political Party Systems and Crisis Governments", Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 2 (May 1958). "Conceptual and Operational Shortcomings of the Political Elite Model", in Political Sociology, Fourth World Congress of Sociology Proceedings, Associazione Italiana di Scienze Sociali, 1959.

"The Comparative Roles of Groups in Political Systems", SSRC Items, Vol. 15 (June 1969). "Italy: Fragmentation, Isolation and Alienation", in L. Pye and S. Verba (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, 1965), chapter 8. "Decline of Ideology: A Dissent and an Interpretation", American Political Science Review, Vol. 60 (March 1966).

"Political Power and Political Development", Yale Law Journal, Vol. 78 (July 1969), pp. 1253–1275. "Values and Ideologies in the Administrative Evolution of Western Constitutional Systems", in R. Braibanti (ed.), Political and Administrative Development (Durham, 1969). "Parsimony and Empiricism in Comparative Politics: An Anti-Scholastic View", in R. Holt and J. Turner (eds.), Methodology of Comparative Political Research (New York, 1969). "Political Participation as an Analytical Concept in Comparative Politics", in L. Pye and S. Verba (eds.), The Citizen and Politics: A Comparative Perspective (Stamford, CT: Greylock, 1978).

"Political Analysis and Forecasting in the Private Sector", Vierteljahresberichte (December 1982). "Totalitarianism: Some Enduring Conceptual Muddles", Global Perspectives, Vol. 2 (Fall 1984).

"Anti-Americanism in Europe: Corporate and National Dimensions", American Foreign Policy Interests, Vol. 26 (August 2004).

"The Organization 'Gap' in Political Science", in G. King, K. L. Schlozman and N. Nie (eds.), The Future of Political Science: 100 Perspectives (New York and London: Routledge, 2009). "Italy, It's That Way If You Think So", Italian Politics and Society, Spring 2012.