Joseph LaPalombara

LaPalombara has conducted extensive research inside the United States, as well as internationally in countries such as Italy and Vietnam. His research and writing on Italy has won him many awards; further, the publication of Democracy Italian Style (Yale University Press, 1987) won him plaudits from writers like Gore Vidal and Umberto Eco.

There then followed consultancies with U.S. corporations like IBM, Exxon-Mobil, E.R. Grace, Union Carbide, Praxair, General Electric and many others. In Italy his corporate clients have included ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi), Telecom Italia, FIAT and SIAD (Bergamo). Consultancies led him eventually to become a founder and first president of a New York consultancy, Multinational Strategies, Incorporated. In diplomacy he did a short stint (1980-1981) as First Secretary in charge of the cultural section of the U.S. Embassy, at Rome, Italy.

LaPalombara has been a leading figure in the sphere of political science denominated "comparative politics." He was for many years a member of the SSRC's well-regarded Committee on Comparative Politics. The Committee functioned as one aspect of a so-called behavioral revolution which pointed in a more empirical direction the comparative study of political systems. Along that same vein, LaPalombara also published (1974) a heralded textbook, Politics Within Nations a tome that sought to light the way to a more realistic study of the politics of many countries.

At Yale, in the early 1970s, LaPalombara joined with other faculty who favored the creation of the Yale School of Management (SOM). He taught in SOM for five years at that time, and again just before he formally retired in the year 2001. Since that time, and in every academic year that followed, he has taught for advanced undergraduate students a seminar on the overseas investments of global firms.

His research has been characterized by extensive writing on the topic of interest-group theory, and its application to political phenomenon both in the United States and abroad. LaPalombara in 1950 published both a monograph and an article in the American Political Science Review on the interest-group-centered study of political dynamics. He published, in English and in Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche, another article on this subject in 2017.

LaPalombara, a high-school dropout, spent the years of World War II at specialized jobs in defense industries. A special wartime-related admissions program of the University of Illinois permitted him to enroll in and eventually to graduate (with highest honors) from that institution. In addition to his academic honors (e.g., Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Beta Kappa, Bronze Tablet), LaPalombara was also president of the Student Senate and of his Senior Class. Following a short teaching stint (1947-1950) at Oregon State University, LaPalombara enrolled at Princeton University, the institution from which (1954) he was awarded the Ph.D. degree.

Joseph LaPalombara (born May 18, 1925) is an American political scientist who specializes in comparative politics, group interest theory, and the foreign investments made by global firms. He is the Arnold Wolfers Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Management at Yale University, where he has been teaching for over fifty years. LaPalombara has twice chaired the political science department at Yale and has also served as the director of the Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Prior to joining Yale in 1964, LaPalombara spent three years (1947-1950) at Oregon State University and an additional eleven years (1953-1964) at Michigan State University. At the latter institution he also chaired (1957-1962) the political science department.