- In full:
- Samuel Phillips Huntington
- Born:
- April 18, 1927, New York, N.Y., U.S.
- Died:
- Dec. 24, 2008, Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. (aged 81)
- Notable Works:
- “The Clash of Civilizations”
- Subjects Of Study:
- international relations
Samuel P. Huntington
-
Who was Samuel P. Huntington?
Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) was an influential American political scientist and consultant to U.S. government agencies. He earned a doctorate from Harvard, where he later became a professor and director of the Center for International Affairs and the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies.
Huntington's work spanned American politics, comparative politics, foreign policy, and modernization. His notable works include The Soldier and the State (1957) and Political Order in Changing Societies (1968). He is known for his controversial thesis, outlined in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), which posited that cultural and religious conflicts would dominate international relations.
Huntington founded the journal Foreign Policy in 1970 and advised Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter. He served as president of the American Political Science Association (1986–87).
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What field did Samuel P. Huntington study and work in?
Samuel P. Huntington was an American political scientist who consulted for U.S. government agencies and became an important political commentator. He earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1951 and became a faculty member. His research and analysis branched into comparative politics, foreign policy, international relations, and modernization. Huntington's work examined the relationship between military professionalism and political power. He founded the journal Foreign Policy in 1970 and served as president of the American Political Science Association from 1986 to 1987.
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What is Samuel P. Huntington best known for?
Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) was an American political scientist known for his works on civil-military relations, political development, and U.S. foreign policy.
Huntington's most influential work is likely Political Order in Changing Societies (1968), where he argued that political instability and decay were as likely as the development of liberal democracy in developing countries. He contended that the most important distinction between countries was their degree of government, not their form of government.
Huntington is also known for his controversial book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), where he asserted that conflicts between civilizations were replacing conflicts between states and ideologies as the primary characteristic of international relations. In this work, he emphasized the rise of East Asia and Islam. His thesis assumed that the post-Cold War world would be divided into regional alliances based on religious beliefs and historical attachments to various civilizations.
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What was Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' theory about?
In his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington contended that cultural and religious identities would be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world.
He argued that rather than conflicts between states or ideologies, the dominant form of conflict would be between large world civilizations, particularly between Islam and other civilizations. Huntington's thesis suggested that these civilizations would variously clash and cooperate. Though controversial and regarded by some as simplistic, his analysis gained traction, especially after the September 11 attacks.
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How did Huntington’s ideas influence political science or global politics?
Samuel P. Huntington's work significantly influenced political science, particularly in comparative politics, international relations, and modernization. His 1968 book, Political Order in Changing Societies, shifted the focus from the form of government to the degree of government, impacting the study of political development in developing countries.
Huntington's controversial thesis, outlined in The Clash of Civilizations (1996), posited that cultural and religious identities would be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world, sparking considerable debate and influencing discussions on international relations. Despite criticism, his ideas gained traction, especially after the September 11 attacks, shaping perspectives on global politics.
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What are some criticisms or debates surrounding Huntington’s theories?
Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" theory sparked considerable debate. Critics, as noted in a Britannica article, have called the theory simplistic and ill-informed. The main argument of the theory is that future conflicts will be characterized by clashes between civilizations, primarily based on religious differences. This framework has been criticized for overlooking the complexities within civilizations and overemphasizing the potential for conflict, while downplaying cooperation. Despite the criticism, Huntington's thesis gained traction, particularly after the September 11 attacks.
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Samuel P. Huntington (born April 18, 1927, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 24, 2008, Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.) was an American political scientist, consultant to various U.S. government agencies, and an important political commentator in national debates on U.S. foreign policy in the late 20th and early 21st century.
Huntington earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1946 and then served in the U.S. Army. Afterward he attended the University of Chicago, where he received a master’s degree in 1948, and Harvard University, where he earned a doctorate in 1951 and joined the faculty. In 1959 Huntington became associate director of the Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, but he returned to Harvard in 1962. At Harvard he served as chairman of the Department of Government (1967–69; 1970–71) and was director of the Center for International Affairs (1978–89) and of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies beginning in 1989. From 1996 to 2004 he served as chair of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.
Although Huntington began his career as a specialist in American politics, his research and analysis branched into comparative politics, foreign policy, international relations, and modernization. His first major work, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (1957), examined the relationship between military professionalism and political power and the contradiction between American liberalism and military conservatism and helped to set the terms of debate about the proper form of civil-military relations. Perhaps his most important work is Political Order in Changing Societies (1968), in which he argued that in developing countries political decay and instability were at least as likely as the development of liberal democracy and that the “most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government.”
Huntington founded the journal Foreign Policy in 1970 and later served as president of the American Political Science Association (1986–87). He was an adviser to Vice President Hubert Humphrey during Humphrey’s unsuccessful 1968 presidential campaign, chairman of the Democratic Party’s Foreign Policy Advisory Committee in the mid-1970s, and coordinator of security planning in the National Security Council (1977–79) during the administration of President Jimmy Carter.
Emphasizing the rise of East Asia and Islam, he argued in the controversial The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) that conflict between several large world civilizations was replacing conflict between states or ideologies as the dominant cleavage in international relations. Although he cautioned against intervention in non-Western cultures in The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington was generally identified with hawkish opinions on foreign policy and had been a target of leftist student protesters during the Vietnam War.
He published major works on various subjects, including national security strategy, defense policy making, American political ideology, transnational organizations, conservatism, the governability of democracies, processes of democratization, and the comparison of U.S. and Soviet governments. His books include The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics (1961); American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (1981), which assessed periodic attempts to make American political institutions and behaviour conform to the traditional national creed of liberty, equality, and hostility to authority; The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1991), which explained the process of widespread democratization of countries in the 1970s and ’80s and compared it with previous historical periods; and Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity (2004), which examined sources of U.S. political culture and emerging threats to unified national identity.