R.J. Rummel: An Assessment of His Many Contributions

Frontmatter

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Chapter 1. R.J. Rummel—A Multi-faceted Scholar

Abstract

Rudolph J. Rummel always published just as R.J. Rummel but was well known in the profession as Rudy. He was a man of many talents, and to some of his readers he may also have seemed to present many different faces. He came from a broken home, yet became a devoted husband and father. He had an extensive academic publication record, but he also wrote six novels. He was an academic loner, but acquired a wide following, which has continued to expand after he withdrew from the academic scene and promises to continue to grow even after his death.

Nils Petter Gleditsch

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Chapter 2. Dad

Abstract

In 1980, I left Hawaii to attend American University in our nation’s capital. My first class was Introduction to American Politics and the professor called out roll on the first day. After I’d heard my name and raised my hand, the professor paused and looked me over. ‘Are you related to Professor Rudolph Rummel in Hawaii?’ Stunned, I said, ‘He’s my father.’ I had sat at the back of a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of tables and chairs, and everyone turned to look at me while the professor launched into an adoring speech about the value of my father’s research and theories. I basked in a brief sensation of being the child of a celebrity.

Dawn Akemi

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Chapter 3. R.J. Rummel, Citizen Scholar: An Interview on the Occasion of His Retirement

Abstract

Rudy Rummel’s motivating passion—his lifelong aversion to conflict and violence—was eclipsed only by the fierce independence born of his experience as a homeless youth from a broken family. His scholarship was characterized by his exceptionally rigorous and open-minded quest to test theoretical explanations with empirical data while explicating the associated assumptions and normative implications. His legacy, however, lives on in his example of a citizen scholar, whose commitment to take intellectual discussions beyond the academy into practice as he sought in everything he did to realize freedom and dignity with peace.

Doug Bond

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Chapter 4. Rummel as a Great Teacher

Abstract

Professor R.J. Rummel passed away in the spring of 2014. The ashes of his body are now floating on the waves of the beautiful Kaneohe Bay he had loved so much, but his soul and teaching will live on in the minds of his students. For them he will forever remain a ‘Great Teacher.’

Sang-Woo Rhee

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Chapter 5. Contextualizing Rummel’s Field Theory

Abstract

I first met Rudy in 1962 when I was an incoming graduate student at Northwestern University. Harold Guetzkow was then the principal investigator of the Dimensionality of Nations (DON) Project, Harold appointed Rudy as his project supervisor while Rudy was working on his dissertation. I was recruited by Harold to work on the project as a data collector and statistical analyst. We worked well together because of the rigor with which Rudy pursued his work on the DON Project, an integral part of his thesis research.

Richard W. Chadwick

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Chapter 6. R.J. Rummel, Nuclear Superiority, and the Limits of Détente

Abstract

Amid the intense security competition of the Cold War, the decade-long détente between the United States and Soviet Union stands out to many as a moment of pragmatic cooperation among rivals. The 1970s saw, among other developments, the adoption of arms control treaties such as SALT I and II, scientific collaboration between astronauts and cosmonauts, and the expanding of trade ties between Washington and Moscow.

Matthew Kroenig, Bardia Rahmani

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Chapter 7. Rummel’s Unfinished Legacy: Reconciling Peace Research and Realpolitik

Abstract

Rudy Rummel consistently was a bold and innovative scholar. In the 1960s, the field of international relations was still in the grip of contemporary and diplomatic historians or international lawyers. This did not satisfy him. He looked for a more scientific approach modeled on the natural sciences.

Erich Weede

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Chapter 8. Understanding Conflict and War: An Overlooked Classic?

Abstract

Soon after it was published, a perspicacious review of R.J. Rummel’s Understanding Conflict and War (UCW) predicted that the work would ‘not have the immediate impact … that one might otherwise expect from a work of such scope written by one of the more famous names in the field’ (Ray, 1982: 185). By 1988, Rummel himself acknowledged regarding UCW that ‘I did not expect it to be a hit’, but that ‘I was not prepared … for UCW to be so widely ignored’ (personal correspondence).

James Lee Ray

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Chapter 9. Rummel and Singer, DON and COW

Abstract

When the scientific revolution in the study of international relations (IR) started in the 1960s, two prominent early pioneers who had particularly lasting impact on the field were Rudolph J. Rummel and J. David Singer.

Frank Whelon Wayman

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Chapter 10. Regime Type Matters

Abstract

Rummel’s pioneering work is giving us a revolutionary, practical solution to violence between states (war) and between people and state (democide): democracy. He finds ‘regime type’ (kind of government) to be one of the strongest explanations for war and democide because it deals with restraining government power

H.-C. Peterson

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Chapter 11. Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence

Abstract

In his seminal book Power Kills, Rummel (1997) summarizes decades of research on the democratic peace to make a single, pointed argument: that the worst kinds of violence—mass killings carried out by governments—are entirely explained by the tyrannical nature of the regime that commit such crimes.

Erica Chenoweth

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Chapter 12. The Comparative Analysis of Mass Atrocities and Genocide

Abstract

Rudolph Rummel and I are both products of Northwestern University’s Ph.D. program—although I graduated 18 years later. Thanks to him, I already knew something about factor analysis, having read his dissertation. I was equally familiar with arguments about peace among democratic states, because my major was in international relations with a minor in jurisprudence (i.e. international law) and another in comparative studies. The democratic peace argument filtered much later into comparative studies of civil conflict in democratic societies and made much sense to me in theory, the way it became a major focus in Rudy’s work on mass death and genocide.

Barbara Harff

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Chapter 13. Curriculum Vitae and Publications

Abstract

BA, political science, 1959, University of Hawaii.

Rudolph J. Rummel

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Backmatter

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