Giovanni Sartori


Giovanni Sartori was an Italian political scientist specialized in the study of democracy and comparative politics.

Biography

Born in Florence in 1924, Sartori began his academic career as a lecturer in the History of Modern Philosophy. He founded the first modern Political Science academic post in Italy, and was Dean of the newly formed University of Florence's Department of Political Science. Sartori served as Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University from 1979 to 1994 and was appointed Professor Emeritus.
He was a recipient of a Prince of Asturias Award in 2005 and of the Karl Deutsch Award in 2009. of the International Political Science Association, which honours a prominent scholar engaged in the cross-disciplinary research.
Sartori's 1970 article "Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics" published in The American Political Science Review is prominent in the field, leading Gary Goertz to write, "There are few articles in political science that deserve the predicate "classic," but Sartori's... merits the label." Sartori's notions of "conceptual traveling" and "conceptual stretching" is influential in social science methodology. Conceptual stretching is frequently used as a criticism of studies that employ large-N quantitative analysis.
Sartori was also a regular contributor, as an op-ed writer, of the leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. In 1971 he founded and edited the periodical Italian Political Science Review.
In 2015, he received a mexican venera of the Order of the Aztec Eagle from president Enrique Peña Nieto.
Sartori died at the age of 92 in Florence from throat cancer on 4 April 2017.

Selected publications