Austin Ranney

Austin Ranney, the eminent political scientist and leading American authority on political parties and elections died, peacefully, at his home in Berkeley on July 24, 2006. He was 85 years old and for a number of years had been battling the debilitating effects of congestive heart failure and diabetes. Ranney's doctoral dissertation, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government (1954), and his Jefferson Lectures at Berkeley, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction (1975), are major explorations of the role that parties play in the overall scheme of the American political system. The broad-gauged view adopted by these studies, theoretically informed but also rigorously disciplined by wide-ranging empirical study, was typical of Ranney's style of work, which extended to important contributions on democracy and the party system, referendums, presidential primaries, the measurement of party competition, the impact of television on elections, and the recruitment of candidates for public office, among other topics. His collaborators in some of these projects included Willmoore Kendall of Yale University and David Butler of the University of Oxford

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