Miller, Warren 1924-1999

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Warren Edward Miller was a pioneering survey researcher and institution builder who helped transform the study of elections in political science.

Miller, who earned his doctorate at Syracuse University in New York in 1954, taught at the University of California, Berkeley, before arriving at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1956. At Michigan, Miller founded the Center for Political Studies (CPS) at the Institute for Social Research. The CPS’s biennial election surveys, which began in 1948, created the first longitudinal source of scientific data on public opinion. In 1960 Miller published The American Voter, written with social scientists Angus Campbell (1910–1980), Philip Converse, and Donald Stokes (1927–1997), an instant classic that drew on CPS data to offer the first systematic analysis of electoral behavior. Miller and his coauthors then produced an acclaimed follow-up titled Elections and the Political Order (1966).

In 1962 Miller founded and began serving as director of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), which was created in part to meet demand for scholarly access to CPS data. ICPSR subsequently became a central archive for quantitative social science data and methodological training, helping to further transform political science and its sister disciplines. Miller later served as director of CPS (1970–1981) and helped secure long-term support from the National Science Foundation for the biennial CPS election survey, which was renamed the National Election Studies (NES) in 1977.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Miller lent his expertise to the television networks as a consultant for their election coverage. He also served as president of both the American Political Science Association (1979–1980) and the Social Science History Association (1979). In 1982 Miller moved to Arizona State University in Tempe, where he continued to publish scholarly books and articles until late in his life, including The New American Voter (1996), cowritten with J. Miller Shanks.

Miller’s work on the CPS/NES helped launch the “behavioral revolution” in political science, a movement that revolutionized the field. By creating the first nationally representative survey datasets, Miller and his colleagues allowed researchers to study the correlates of vote choice and political opinion. In addition, by repeating a common set of questions in each study, they made it possible for researchers to study changes in public opinion and voting behavior over time. A vast literature quickly emerged on both topics.

Over time, however, this approach to voting research faced criticism for its theoretical and methodological weaknesses. Its proposed model of voting behavior, which was known as the “funnel of causality,” fell apart as researchers realized that the variables that were thought to influence vote choice were themselves affected by voter’s preferences toward candidates—a problem known as endogeneity. As a result, political scientists later shifted toward mathematical models and experiments, two techniques that many think provide additional leverage for understanding political behavior.

Nonetheless, Miller will be remembered as a trendsetting quantitative researcher who revolutionized the field of election studies. In the introduction to their 1994 edited volume in his honor, M. Kent Jennings and Thomas E. Mann write, “Warren Miller and the study of elections are synonymous. It is impossible to account for the institutional and intellectual developments that have shaped post-World War II scholarship on voting without acknowledging his crucial role” (p. 3).

SEE ALSO American National Election Studies (ANES); Divisia Monetary Index; Interest Rates; Monetary Base; Money; Money, Demand for; Policy, Monetary

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, Angus, Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.

Jennings, M. Kent, and Thomas E. Mann. 1994. Warren Miller and the Study of Elections. In Elections at Home and Abroad: Essays in Honor of Warren E. Miller, eds. M. Kent Jennings and Thomas E. Mann, 3–13. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Traugott, Michael. 1999. In Memoriam: Warren E. Miller, 1924–1999. Public Opinion Quarterly 63 (4): 590–591.

The University Record (University of Michigan News Service). 1999. Obituary: Warren E. Miller. 54 (18): February 8.

Brendan Nyhan