Political Science Faculty

Dennis Hale

Professor

Biography

Dennis Hale did his undergraduate work at Oberlin College and received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1977. He has taught at Boston College since 1978, is a former department chair, was for several years the director of undergraduate studies and director of the honors program in Political Science. He has published essays on local government, American political thought, public administration, and the modern experience of citizenship. With Marc Landy, he has edited two volumes of essays by the French political scientist Bertrand de Jouvenel: The Nature of Politics (Transaction, 1992), and Economics and the Good Life: Essays on Political Economy (Transaction, 1999). His is the author, most recently, of The Jury in America: Triumph and Decline (University Press of Kansas, 2016). In addition to teaching introductory courses for the major—Fundamentals of Politics and Introduction to Modern Politics—he has taught courses on urban politics, public administration, American political thought, and a graduate seminar on The American Founding. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Political Science Quarterly, PS, Society, The Journal of Politics, the American Political Science Review, State and Local Government Review, Polity, Administration and Society, The Political Science Reviewer, The Washington Post, and Newsday.

Selected Publications

Books

The Jury in America: Triumph and Decline. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016.

Economics and the Good Life: Essays in Political Economy by Bertrand de Jouvenel. Edited and with an Introduction by Dennis Hale and Marc Landy. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999.

The Nature of Politics: Selected Essays of Bertrand de Jouvenel. Edited and with an Introduction by Dennis Hale and Marc Landy. New York: Schocken Books, 1987. Transaction Books edition, with a new Introduction by the editors, 1992.

The United States Congress: Proceedings of the Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr. Symposium on the United States Congress. Edited and with an Introduction by Dennis Hale. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Press, 1983.

Articles, Chapters, Book Reviews

“What is American Citizenship?” (with Marc Landy), Real Clear Politics/Public Affairs 

“A Riven USA: Still the Last, Best Hope?” Real Clear Politics, July 20, 2020

“Do We Need the Civil Jury? And What For?” Voir Dire 26, #1, Spring, 2019, pp. 8-11.

“Blame the Fathers” (with Marc Landy), a review of Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (Yale University Press, 2108), The Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2018, pp. 42-45.

“The Jury System as a Cornerstone of Deliberative Democracy” (with John Gastil), in The Cambridge Handbook of Deliberative Constitutionalism, edited by Ron Levy, Hoi Kong, Graeme Orr and Jeff King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 233-245.

Review of Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics, by Terry Golway, The Historian 78 (#4, December 2016): 747-749.

“On the Israeli Declaration of Independence,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, Volume 3 (2005): 5, ff.

Review of Madison’s Managers: Public Administration and the Constitution, by Anthony M. Bertelli and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. and The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure, by Arjen Boin, Paul ’t Hart, Eric Stern, and Bengt Sundelius, Perspectives on Politics 5 (#1, March 2007): 164-166.

Review of Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution, by Alan Dawley, Utopian Studies 17 (No. 2), 2006: 417-420.

“Communitarianism: The Highest State of Progressivism,” in The Active Society Revisited, edited by Wilson Carey McWilliams (Roman & Littlefield, 2006): 117-136.