Alfred Diamant (September 25, 1917 – May 11, 2012) was an Austrian-born American political scientist.Robert Cecil Cook (ed.), Who's who in American education: a biographical dictionary of eminent living educators of the United States, Volume 23, Part 1. Hattiesburg, Miss.(Who's Who in American Education) 1968, p.204 His main contribution was in the field of comparative politics and comparative public administration. He was a member of the Comparative Administration Group (CAG) and a co-chairperson of the Council for European Studies based at Columbia University.See: Phyllis Ann Kaplan, Standard Education Almanac. Chicago (Marquis Academic Media) 1980, p.645. According to Peter Alexis Gourevitch, Diamant was both "on the Executive Committee of the Council for European Studies (based in New York) and the Interuniversity Center for European Studies in Montreal".See: Peter Alexis Gourevitch, “The State of West European Studies,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 2, issue 4, 1979, pp. 119ff. - The Council for European Studies provided grants to young academics focused on European Studies. The money came from the German Marshall Fund, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation etc. Diamant's areas of expertise were "Comparative Western European Politics and Social Policy".Editorial note, in: PS. Political Science and Politics, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Dec. 1990), p. 600. Together with his colleague, James Christoph, he "established Indiana University as a major site of the study of European culture, society and politics".Jeffrey C.Isaac, Norman Furniss: Professor of Political Science, Bloomington, Ind. (Indiana University) (internal university paper) n.d.; also published online. John D. Martz called the works of Maurice Duvergier, Sigmund Neumann and Diamant that focus on the study of political parties "Western European-oriented classics".Cf. John D.Martz, “Party Elites and Leadership in Colombia and Venezuela”, in: Journal of Latin America Studies, Vol. 24, No.1, Feb. 1992, p.87. The scope and significance of Diamant's studies and thus his scientific contribution transcended, however, research focused on parties. D.B. Robertson saw Diamant as "a gifted and humane scholar".David Brian Robertson, The Constitution and America's Destiny, Cambridge UK (Cambridge University Press) 2005, p.XVII.
Early life Diamant was born in Vienna, Austria, and came to the United States as a young man when the fascists gained power in Germany and Austria. During WWII, he served in the U.S. army.Kurt Van der Dussen, “Diamant still carries reminder of D-Day,” in: The Herald Times (Bloomington), June 7, 2004. He was married to Ann Diamant.World's Apart, World's United. A European-American Story. The Memoirs of Ann & Alfred Diamant, ed. by Alice Diamant. Bloomington, Ind. (Authorhouse) 2010.
Diamant wrote his M.A. thesis on "Prototypes of Austro-German Fascism" at Indiana University in 1948.Alfred Diamant. Prototypes of Austro-German Fascism. Bloomington, Ind. ( (Indiana University) 1948. M.A. thesis. By that time, it was already clear to him that he wanted to teach and do research at a university.
Democratic commitment
His focus on the anti-democratic developments in pre-WWII Europe is apparent in a number of large studies and minor contributions that he wrote since the 1950s. Diamant analyzed the role of Conservative political catholicism in Austria and its contribution to the rise of the clerical fascist Dollfuss regime.C.J. Wrigley is one of the many authors writing about this phase of Austrian history who quote Diamant. Wrigley says that “it was the Catholic Centre Party under Dollfuss that replaced parliamentary democracy with the corporate state. (…) (A)s Diamant has written, ‘Catholic politicians simply picked out whatever seemed the most effective anti-republican and anti-democratic argument (…)’. Dollfuss himself loathed ‘Red Vienna’ and could draw on Austrian Catholic political traditions. In 1933 he made his aim explicit, “(…) We demand a social, Christian, German Austria on a corporate basis and under strong authoritarian leadership.’ (…)” – C.J. Wrigley. ‘Counter-revolution and the ‘failure’ of revolution in interwar-Europe”, in: David Parker (ed.), Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West, 1560-1991. New York (Routledge) 2000, pp177f. See also: Alfred Diamant, Austrian Catholics and the First Republic. Democracy, Capitalism and the Social Order, 1918-1934. Princeton, N.J. (Princeton University Press) 1960; A. Diamant, Austrian Catholics and the Social Question, 1918-1933. Gainesville (University of Florida Press) 1959 [Monographs. Social Sciences, No. 2]; A. Diamant, “[Book review of] Reinhard Knoll, Zur Tradition der christsozialen Partei. Ihre Früh- und Entwicklungsgeschichte bis zu den Reichsratswahlen von 1907 [On the Tradition of the Christian Social Party. Its Early History and Development up to the 1907 election of the Reichsrat/Council of the Empire] [and review of] Gerhard Silberbauer, Österreichs Katholiken und die Arbeiterfrage [Austria's Catholics and the Workers’ Question]”, in: Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 11, Jan. 1975. He also focused on the strengths and failures of the left in (above all) Austria and Germany that preceded their defeat by fascism.See: Alfred Diamant, “[Review of] The German Social Democratic Party, 1914-1921 [by A. Joseph Berlau, New York 1949]”, in: The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 4, Dec. 1950, pp. 638-639; A. Diamant, Alfred. “[review of] The Transformation of Austrian Socialism. By Kurt L. Shell”, in: The Journal of Politics, vol. 24, no. 4, Nov. 1962. Such works were motivated by a desire to enlighten people concerning the root causes and to prevent a return of what had occurred, no matter whether it might reappear in the form of a tragedy or as a farce. He was convinced that the repeat of mistakes, the return of the same was not inevitable. Instead of pessimism (which would have been understandable), a democratic optimism prevailed.See: “Comparative Politics: The Myth of the Eternal Return”, in: PS: Political Science and Politics, vol. 23, no. 4, Dec. 1990, pp. 598-600
At the same time, Diamant also took a stand back home in the U.S., with regard to U.S. affairs. Like other open-minded, nonconformist intellectuals, he was opposed to witchhunts of the type practiced by Senator Joseph McCarthy. As early as 1950, he took a stand when he reviewed the book "Character Assassination" by Jerome Davis that had just appeared.At a time when the witchhunt of McCarthy was under way, Diamant wrote that the book by Davis was “clearly a ‘tract for the times’ (…) In this book, Davis has set himself the task of recording the methods by which, since the seventeenth century, the ‘powers that be’ (…) have attempted to subdue racial, social, religious, economic, or other ‘undesirable’ groups (…) by impugning their motives and by assassinating their character.” See: Alfred Diamant.“[Review of] Character Assassination” [by Jerome Davis, Introd. by Robert Maynard Hutchins. New York (Philosophical Library) 1950] in The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1, March 1951, pp. 172f. – At the time, the HUAC “published names of organizations it deemed subversive (…)”. See Howard D. Mehlinger. The Best That I Can Recall. Bloomington (authors house) 2009. Diamant found the “partisan attacks” in “recent years” especially objectionable when they had been “given scientific trappings.” Another article published in the 1950s in The Western Political Quarterly also reflects his democratic commitment, arguing in favor of improved local government.William C. Havard; Alfred Diamant, “The Need for Local Government Reform in the United States”, in: The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 4, Dec. 1956, pp. 967-995. Similarly, he defended the right of Vietnam War opponents to dissent in an article jointly written with two colleagues and published in the New York Times in 1965.See: Wallace T. MacCaffrey / Alfred Diamant / Marcel M. Gutwirth, “Right of Dissent,” in: The New York Times, Nov. 17, 1965.
Critical study of Max Weber's institutional frameworks In the 1960s, Diamant focused increasingly on the critical study of institutional frameworks and thus, above all, on bureaucracy. Max Weber, the conservative he initially looked at without much sympathy, was now critically received and his writings were adapted to fit the needs of a democratic societal project. (In similar fashion, progressives have been open to the reception of Clausewitz since the 1960s.) An essay by Diamant titled The Bureaucratic Model: Max Weber Rejected, Rediscovered, Reformed, reveals this critical yet decisive reception of Weber. The author of "The American Bureaucracy", Richard J. Stillman, calls it an "insightful piece".Richard Joseph Stillman II, Public Administration: Concepts and Cases. Boston (Wadsworth) 2010, p76. Dwight Waldo thinks it is important to direct the reader's attention to it. As Waldo notes, it is in this essay that Diamant "reviews the vast array" of scholarly publications on bureaucracy respectively bureaucracies while at the same time "carefully and penetratingly examin[ing] what Weber wrote on, and relating to, bureaucracy". Diamant "evaluates, relates, and classifies; and ends up by setting forth proposals 'for the comparative analysis of bureaucracies; using the Weberian ideal-type'" – as he had modified it.Dwight Waldo, “Comparative Public Administration: Prologue, Performance, Problems, and Promise”, in: Eric E. Otenyo and Nancy S. Lind (eds.), Corporate Public Administration: The Essential Readings. Amsterdam; Oxford; San Diego (Elsevier) 2006, pp.129-170. The quotation is from p.148.
Diamant emphasized that Weber "associated bureaucracy with a legal-rational authority system".See: Ralph Braibanti (ed.), Political and Administrative Development. Durham NC (Duke University Press) 1969, p.171. This was what made it modern and what constituted its essence. Ideally, a bureaucratic (or administrative) apparatus (or institution) had to be rational in order to function well. It also was tied to the rule of law (as opposed to absolutist or dictatorial arbitrary suspension of such rule of law). Ideally, this made its functioning dependable and foreseeable. Both qualities, rationality and rule of law, made bureaucracy a modern phenomenon. And its authority – the fact that it was accepted by the population – depended on both traits. There was nothing specifically Prussian about either rationality or rule of law. If the specific Prussian way of applying rationality and rule of law was deficient (or if, somewhat later, the bureaucratic rationality of the fascists who organized the holocaust was horrible, just like the Nuremberg laws () were horrible), this did not mean that the ideals had to be discarded as meaningful guideposts. Instead, they had to be filled, again and again, in given historical situations, with a material content that reflected both humane values and the concrete needs of the citizens.