A. Lawrence Lowell Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Lawrence Lowell (1856–1943) was an American lawyer and educator. He wrote two major studies of European political institutions: Government and Parties in Continental Europe (1896) and The Government of England (1908). In 1909 he became president of the American Political Science Association and in the same year president of Harvard. Lowell was a Republican and a Unitarian. He endorsed the League of Nations.

At the time of the expansion of the right to vote and the growing importance of competitive elections, Lowell pioneered the comparative study of the role of parties in government. To advance the understanding of party systems different from the Anglo-American two-party model, he examined continental European countries with multiparty systems: Austro-Hungary, France, Italy, Germany and Prussia, and Switzerland. While Lowell’s books were theoretical, they were informed by discussions with politicians involved in these systems and carefully documented. The appendix to Government and Parties in Continental Europe included the texts of constitutions in French, German, or Italian because he claimed much of value could be lost in their translation. His books remain relevant in providing a comparative understanding of how parties operated in the new circumstances of competitive elections that were also very different from those of the contemporary democratic political system.

Lowell’s examination of politics in England occurred at the end of almost a century of gradual evolution from aristocratic government to party government dependent on success in competitive popular elections. As Lowell stated in The Government of England, it was a system in which the upper classes retained political privileges and ruled “by the sufferance of the great mass of the people and as trustees for its benefits.” Prefaces to subsequent editions of the book showed an awareness that the debate over the governance of Ireland, imperial issues, and the presence of working-class Labour representatives in Parliament were creating pressures for the system to adapt.

After becoming president of Harvard, Lowell pushed through measures raising its standard of education, introducing residential accommodation that followed the Oxford model, and calling for more attention to research as was found in the German university model. He endorsed Harvard maintaining a quota restricting the admission of Jews and blacks. Lowell retired as president of the university in 1933 and died in 1943.

Bibliography:

Lowell, Lawrence. Government and Parties in Continental Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1896.
The Government of England. London: Macmillan, 1908.

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