Obituary: Philip Converse

Philip (Phil) Converse, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at the
University of Michigan, died on December 30th in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the age of 86.

Converse (pictured) was born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1928. After gaining a BA in English from Denison University in Ohio in 1949, and a Master's in English Literature from the University of Iowa in 1950, he studied in France, and then enrolled at the University of Michigan (U-M), where he completed a Master's in Sociology in 1956, and a PhD in Social Psychology in 1958.

He then became a Study Director of the Survey Research Center at U-M's ISR (Institute for Social Research), and in 1960 he collaborated with fellow researchers Angus Campbell, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes to co-write 'The American Voter'; a book using data from the National Election Studies that claimed that most voters were unsophisticated in their thinking. He later honed that idea in his 1964 article: 'The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics', in which he claimed that most voters based decisions at the poll on how they felt a political party treated certain groups, and on whether they associated a party with a good or bad event. In this paper, Phil concluded that less than four percent of the voting public had a well-formed political belief system and the ability to think abstractly.

Phil served on the faculties of U-M's Sociology and Political Science departments, becoming Professor of Sociology and Political Science in 1965, and being named the Robert C. Angell Professor of Political Science and Sociology in 1975, and the Robert Cooley Angell Distinguished University Professor of Sociology and Political Science in 1982. Four years later he became the fourth Director of ISR.

In 1989, he left Michigan to become Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University, but after retiring from the Center in 1994 he returned to U-M, continuing his links to ISR. During this time, he provided support for the Philip Converse and Warren Miller Fellowship in American Political Behavior, to help graduate students make further breakthroughs in understanding American voting behavior.

During his career, Converse received honorary degrees from Harvard University, Denison University and the University of Chicago, and was awarded numerous fellowships, including the Fulbright, Guggenheim and Russell Sage. He was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences, and he was also selected as the 1987 Henry Russel Lecturer. In addition, he was a winner of the AAPOR Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement in 1986, and the WAPOR Helen Dinerman Award in 2003, for career contributions to innovative research and to research methodology.

According to Donald Kinder, a research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research, during his career he changed how the world understood political behavior: 'By brilliant example, in paper after paper, Converse demonstrated the value of a quantitative approach to understanding politics. His influence is profound. He is surely one of the most important social scientists of the 20th century,' Kinder states.

Phil Converse is survived by Jean, his wife of 63 years, and two sons. A memorial service will be held later this year, and the family has requested that memorial contributions be made to: the Philip Converse and Warren Miller Fellowship Fund in American Political Behavior .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.