Theda Skocpol

Theda Skocpol (née Barron; born May 4, 1947) is an American sociologist and political scientist known for her work in historical sociology, comparative politics, American political development, and social policy. She is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. Her scholarship has examined the role of states and institutions in revolutions, welfare-state formation, civic associations, health-care politics, and contemporary American political polarization.

Theda Skocpol
Skocpol in 2011
Born	Theda Barron (1947-05-04) May 4, 1947 Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Spouse	William Skocpol
Awards	Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science James Madison Award Khaldun Award
Academic background
Education	Michigan State University (BA) Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Academic work
Discipline	Sociology Political science
Sub-discipline	Historical sociology Comparative politics American political development Social policy
Institutions	Harvard University University of Chicago
Notable works	States and Social Revolutions Protecting Soldiers and Mothers Diminished Democracy The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism

Skocpol's first book, States and Social Revolutions (1979), compared the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions and became one of the most influential works in comparative-historical sociology and the study of revolution. Her later books include Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (1992), a study of the origins of American social policy, and Diminished Democracy (2003), an account of changes in American civic life.

Skocpol served as president of the Social Science History Association in 1996 and of the American Political Science Association in 2002–2003. She received the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science in 2007, the American Political Science Association's James Madison Award in 2023, and the American Sociological Association Comparative-Historical Sociology Section's Khaldun Award in 2024. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences, and an international fellow of the British Academy.

Early life and education

Skocpol was born Theda Barron in Detroit, Michigan, on May 4, 1947. She grew up in Michigan and attended Michigan State University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1969. In a 2019 interview in the Annual Review of Political Science, Skocpol described her undergraduate years as politically formative, including involvement in the civil rights and antiwar movements and a period teaching at Rust College in Mississippi.

Skocpol entered graduate study at Harvard University, where she earned a master's degree in 1972 and a doctorate in 1975. Her dissertation work became the basis for States and Social Revolutions, published in 1979. At Harvard she studied in an intellectual environment shaped by comparative sociology, political sociology and historical social science, including the influence of scholars such as Barrington Moore Jr., whose work on the social origins of dictatorship and democracy became central to debates in comparative-historical analysis.

Academic career

Skocpol joined Harvard's faculty in the 1970s. After publishing States and Social Revolutions, she was denied tenure by Harvard's sociology department in 1980. The department had no tenured women at the time, and Skocpol filed an internal grievance alleging sex discrimination. A review committee later found that sex discrimination had influenced the decision, and Harvard president Derek Bok granted her tenure several years later.

Between 1981 and 1986, Skocpol taught at the University of Chicago. She then returned to Harvard as a tenured professor. At Harvard she became a leading figure in historical sociology, comparative politics and American political development. She directed the Center for American Political Studies from 2000 to 2006 and served as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 2005 to 2007.

Skocpol has also been active in public-facing social science. In 2009 she founded the Scholars Strategy Network, an organization that connects scholars with policymakers, civic groups and journalists, and served as its director until 2024. Harvard Magazine described the network as an effort to integrate scholarship into public policy and public debate.

Scholarship

Comparative-historical sociology and revolutions

Skocpol's early work helped define comparative-historical sociology and state-centered analysis. States and Social Revolutions compared the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution, arguing that social revolutions cannot be explained solely by class struggle, ideology or revolutionary organization. Instead, Skocpol emphasized the interaction of international pressures, state breakdown, agrarian class relations and peasant mobilization.

The book was influential because it treated states as autonomous organizations with their own structures and capacities rather than merely as instruments of dominant classes. Later scholarship in comparative politics and sociology frequently treated the book as a model of macro-comparative analysis. Margaret Weir wrote in PS: Political Science & Politics that Skocpol's research had influence across disciplinary boundaries and across subfields including comparative politics, American politics and comparative-historical analysis.

Skocpol's methodological work also contributed to renewed interest in the state in social science. She co-edited Bringing the State Back In (1985), a collection that became associated with institutional and state-centered approaches to politics and social change.

Social policy and American political development

Skocpol turned increasingly to American social policy and political development in the late twentieth century. Her book Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (1992) examined the development of social provision in the United States from the Civil War through the early twentieth century. The book argued that the United States developed a distinctive form of early social policy centered on Civil War pensions and maternalist reform rather than on the labor-centered welfare arrangements found in many European countries.

Protecting Soldiers and Mothers won the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book in government, politics or international affairs published in 1992. In a twenty-fifth-anniversary assessment, historian Marisa Chappell described the book as a landmark work in the history of the American welfare state, while also noting subsequent critiques from gender historians and others concerning race, gender and the interpretation of maternalist reform.

Skocpol also wrote on American health-care politics. With Lawrence R. Jacobs she published Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, which examined the politics of American health reform during and after the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Civic associations and democracy

A major strand of Skocpol's later work concerns voluntary associations and civic life in the United States. In Diminished Democracy (2003), she argued that American civic life had shifted from broad, membership-based federations toward professionally managed advocacy groups and donor-supported organizations. The book connected changes in civic organization to wider transformations in democratic participation, class inequality and political representation.

Skocpol extended this civic-institutional approach in collaborative work on African American fraternal groups and civic power. With Ariane Liazos and Marshall Ganz, she published What a Mighty Power We Can Be (2006), a study of African American fraternal organizations and their role in the struggle for racial equality.

Contemporary American politics

Skocpol has also studied contemporary American political movements and party polarization. With Vanessa Williamson she wrote The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (2012), based on interviews, fieldwork and organizational research on the Tea Party movement. In The New Yorker, Ryan Lizza listed the book among the best political books of 2012 and described it as a deep study of the movement.

In 2023, Skocpol and Lainey Newman published Rust Belt Union Blues, a study of the decline of local unions and the movement of working-class voters away from the Democratic Party in western Pennsylvania. Harvard describes Skocpol's current work as focusing on organizational bases of popular and elite politics, including the Tea Party, anti-Trump resistance, polarization and the radicalization of the Republican Party.

Honors and memberships

Skocpol was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2006 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2008. In 2023, the British Academy elected her an international fellow.

In 1993, Skocpol received the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. In 2007, she received the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, whose citation recognized her analysis of the importance of the state for revolutions, welfare and political trust. In 2023, she received the American Political Science Association's James Madison Award, which honors a political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science. In 2024, she received the Khaldun Award from the Comparative-Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association for lifetime contributions to comparative-historical sociology.

Selected bibliography

Books

• Skocpol, Theda (1979). States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521294997.
• Skocpol, Theda (1994). Social Revolutions in the Modern World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521409384.
• Skocpol, Theda (1992). Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674717657.
• Skocpol, Theda (1995). Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691037851.
• Finegold, Kenneth; Skocpol, Theda (1995). State and Party in America's New Deal. University of Wisconsin Press.
• Skocpol, Theda; Jacobs, Lawrence R. (1997). Boomerang: Clinton's Health Security Effort and the Turn Against Government in U.S. Politics. W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393315721.
• Skocpol, Theda (2000). The Missing Middle: Working Families and the Future of American Social Policy. W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393321135.
• Skocpol, Theda (2003). Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806150178.
• Skocpol, Theda; Liazos, Ariane; Ganz, Marshall (2006). What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691122991.
• Jacobs, Lawrence R.; Skocpol, Theda (2010). Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press.
• Skocpol, Theda; Williamson, Vanessa (2012). The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199832637.
• Newman, Lainey; Skocpol, Theda (2023). Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231208826.

Edited volumes

• Skocpol, Theda, ed. (1984). Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521297240.
• Evans, Peter B.; Rueschemeyer, Dietrich; Skocpol, Theda, eds. (1985). Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521313131.
• Weir, Margaret; Orloff, Ann Shola; Skocpol, Theda, eds. (1988). The Politics of Social Policy in the United States. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691028415.
• Skocpol, Theda; Fiorina, Morris P., eds. (1999). Civic Engagement in American Democracy. Brookings Institution Press.
• Skocpol, Theda; Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander; Mettler, Suzanne; Williamson, Vanessa, eds. (2020). Upending American Politics: Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance. Oxford University Press.

Further reading

• Goodwin, Jeff (1996). "How to Become a Dominant American Social Scientist: The Case of Theda Skocpol". Contemporary Sociology. 25 (3): 293–295.
• Chappell, Marisa (2018). "Protecting Soldiers and Mothers Twenty-Five Years Later: Theda Skocpol's Legacy and American Welfare State Historiography". The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 17 (3): 546–573. doi:10.1017/S1537781418000105.
• Munck, Gerardo L.; Snyder, Richard (2007). "Theda Skocpol: States, Revolutions, and the Comparative Historical Imagination". Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Weir, Margaret (September 2002). "Theda Skocpol: Probing the Institutional Roots of Politics". PS: Political Science & Politics.

External links

• Faculty profile at Harvard University
• Profile at Scholars Strategy Network
• Profile at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Profile at the National Academy of Sciences