I found this photograph for sale on EBay, which was serendipitous. I had not seen it previously. Apparently, it was taken at Banfield’s office at Harvard University.

It was addressed to James Wilhelm “Jim” Wiggins, who was an Associate Dean and Professor of Sociology at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The back of the photograph has handwritten notes indicating that Banfield was a commencement speaker at Converse in 1971. Banfield and Wiggins were at a Philadelphia Society conference the year prior.

Quite possibly, their relationship went back further. Wiggins coedited a volume titled, Foreign Aid Reexamined: A Critical Appraisal, in 1958. Banfield authored his own jaundiced assessment of American foreign aid (American Foreign Aid Doctrines) five years later, and may have read Wiggins’ volume. Additionally, Wigguns was a sociologist, and wrote about human behavior and coordination, which were topics central to Banfield’s research.

In February of 1971, Edward C. Banfield trekked to Connecticut College, located in the state of his birth, to discuss his book, The Unheavenly City. He declared before the audience that he wanted to challenge the gloomy “conventional wisdom” about the condition of cities.

Contrary to the claims of much of the liberal intellgentsia and the media, cities were not in terrible shape, and many of the problems were actually annoyances. As for the real problems, Banfield explained he was dubious that federal government intevrentions would improve them, and might well make them worse. He pointed out that “that urban renewal has destroyed more housing for lower income people than it has created.”

The reports in the student newspaper note that students argued with Banfield for much of the two hours he was in the lecture hall, and some walked out.

Source: https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=ccnews_1970_1971

A bibliography on research resources on appropriations mention an American Political Science Review article by Edward C. Banfield. The bibliography notes Banfield’s wry observation: “In all the discussion of congressional reform no one has suggested that the objective of budgeting and appropriating is to secure the most desirable allocation of resources among alternative uses.”

Banfield’s observation was not wrong then (1949) nor today. Despite the enactment of the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, which aimed to rationalize budgeting, pluralistic politics and the demadns of the administrative state still dominate budgeting decisions.

Martin W. Sandler located this letter some years ago, and shared it in his book, The Letters of John F. Kennedy (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013, pp. 237-238).

Banfield sent the letter on Harvard University letterhead just a few days after the Bay of Pigs Fiasco (April 17-20). He begins, “Dear former colleague,” leaving one to wonder whose name Banfield wrote on the envelope. Many who taught at Harvard went to wokr in the Kennedy Administration. More digging is needed to figure out the intended recipient.

The letter ended up in the Kennedy archive, and the above PDF came from Sandler when he sought permission to republish the letter from Banfield’s daughter.

One wonders how JFK —or whomever opened it– responded!

In this interview with Bill Kristol, Chris DeMuth, the former president of the American Enterprise Institute, describes why he shifted right. One factor was:

“stumbling into a friendship with a professor at Harvard named Edward C. Banfield. I first encountered Banfield in the form of a pamphlet published by the American Enterprise Institute, which one of my professors had assigned, I think as an example. They were trying to bow toward diversity of intellectual opinion. And he had written a piece on foreign aid. It challenged every doctrine, every precept, every pro-foreign aid argument, root and branch. And I remember being astounded by this publication.”

You can read the transcript and keyword search it for “Banfield” at https://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/christopher-demuth-transcript/.

Source: Thomas Lactot

Edward C. Banfield left the University of Chicago in 1959 to take a position at Harvard. (Leo Strauss, by the way, delivered remarks at Banfield’s farewell gathering.

When he returned to the University of Chicago in 1974 to give a speech on his text, The Unheavenly City, leftist radicals wrecked the event. As the above news story relates: “When Banfield was introduced inside the hall, about 10 members of the audience rushed the podium, knocking it over, and began calling Banfield a racist.” The protestors chanted for a hour, and Banfield left without ever getting the chance to speak.

Radical protestors disrupted Edward C. Banfield’s classes at Harvard. When he moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 1972, he was harassed there too.

This letter appeared in the Daily Pennsylvanian on April 11, 1973. Tom Lanctot and Andrew Vought were students of Banfield’s.

Daniel DiSalvo, Associate Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York, has written a fine essay that gives an overview of Edward C. Banfield’s views of politics and governance.

Central to the piece is the notion that the public increasingly expects far to much of politicians and far too much from government, and that we harm ourselves in the process.

“…Americans have come to firmly believe that we should have social policies — that government should do something to improve material and moral conditions. The problem is that such expectations lead to demands that government do what cannot be done, which threatens democratic institutions. Obama worship and Trump’s demagoguery are the most visible signs of such corrosive attitudes.

“In such an overheated situation, it is useful to revisit the work of Edward Banfield. On nearly all of the issues that comprise the contemporary policy debate — social class, race, employment, the minimum wage, education, crime, immigration, and housing — Banfield’s work still illuminates a great deal.

“Reflection on Banfield’s insights into human nature and the importance of culture provides one with an appreciation of the limits and pitfalls of political and policy reform. It also affords us the opportunity to gain insight into contemporary expectations of and dissatisfaction with American government. In particular, his thought offers a powerful case for why we should moderate our hopes and our fears about the trajectory of American politics and society.

A refresher course is therefore useful; however, such a course is unlikely to please liberals and may please only a few conservatives. Banfield delighted in debunking others’ arguments and assumptions. As James Q. Wilson said at the memorial of his mentor and frequent collaborator, “[G]etting a fuzzy thought past Ed was like throwing a lamb chop past a wolf.” This applied to liberal and conservative ideas alike. Rereading Banfield is a little like taking a cold shower — not something you want to do every day, but it’s periodically good for you….”

Read more at http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/edward-banfield-revisited

In the autumn 2015 copy of the Claremont Review of Books, Christopher DeMuth writes:

Political scientist Edward C. Banfield argued 40 years ago that corruption is an inherent feature of government. Like Cost, he believed fragmented government invites interest-group manipulation and extra-governmental authority structures, such as party organizations and public-private alliances. But Banfield described many other factors that are independent of political fragmentation, grounded instead in the nature of political decision-making and monopoly. These included: fragmented authority within government organizations; ambiguous and often conflicting goals; lack of objective metrics of performance; transitory leadership; inflexible pay scales and inability to punish even egregious misbehavior; captive “shareholders” (citizens); and the powerful lure of non-pecuniary incentives, especially the opportunity to wield power. The importance of these general characteristics is suggested by the prevalence of corruption and interest-group capture in state and local government, such as Plunkitt’s Tammany Hall machine, which are free of Cost’s mismatch.

DeMuth was a student and great friend of Banfield, and understands Banfield’s work better than anyone.

One can read Banfield’s “Corruption as a Feature of Governmental Organization” at http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/-here-the-people-rule_165254919061.pdf. Indeed, if one searches for the term “corruption” in the aforementioned text, one will see that Banfield wrote of corruption in other essays too, such as “”In Defense of the American Party System.”

Happily, the Harvard Crimson makes many of its articles about Banfield available online. You can see them at: http://www.thecrimson.com/search/?cx=013815813102981840311%3Aaw6l9tjs1a0&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=%22edward+c.+banfield%22&sa=

This one from December 2, 1971, regarding Banfield’s few-year departure from Harvard, features a leaf-raking James Q. Wilson, who was a student and dear friend of Ed’s. Read it at http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1971/12/2/banfield-quits-harvard-takes-position-at/