Negro Politics: The Search for Leadership

James Q. Wilson, Negro Politics: The Search for Leadership (The Free Press, 1960, 1965, 1967; Octagon Books, 1980).

“In his 1960 book, Negro Politics, [Wilson] compared two diverse styles of politics of the most prominent black congressmen of the day, William Dawson and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Mr. Dawson, loyal to Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, was a classic machine politician who attracted… More

The Amateur Democrat: Club Politics in Three Cities

James Q. Wilson, The Amateur Democrat: Club Politics in Three Cities (University of Chicago Press, 1962; paperback edition, 1966, 1970, 1972, 1974).

“In 1962, Wilson wrote The Amateur Democrat: Club Politics in Three Cities. In certain respects, The Amateur Democrat is Wilson’s most prophetic work. Political party regulars, he grasped, were losing their grip on the elctoral process. They were being replaced by… More

City Politics

Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson, City Politics (Harvard University Press and MIT Press, 1963, 1965; Vintage paperback edition, 1966, 1967).

“On the very first page of City Politics, published in 1963, the reader is told that the day-to-day workings of city government are best understood ‘by looking at the differences of opinion and interest that exist within cities, at the issues that arise out of these… More

Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy

James Q. Wilson, editor, Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy (MIT Press, 1966; paperback edition, 1967, 1968).

This volume, organized under the auspices of the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies, was published in 1966 at the height of the Great Society. Among the authors are influential urbanists including Raymond Vernon, Chester Hartman, Norton Long, William Alonso, Martin Anderson,… More

The Metropolitan Enigma: Inquiries into the Nature and Dimensions of America’s “Urban Crisis”

James Q. Wilson, editor, The Metropolitan Enigma: Inquiries into the Nature and Dimensions of America's "Urban Crisis" (Harvard University Press, 1967, 1968; revised edition,1970).

In January 1966, the Task Force on Economic Growth and Opportunity of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies to assemble a series of background papers on urban issues. Wilson, then the center’s director, assembled an all-star cast of… More

City Politics and Public Policy

James Q. Wilson, editor, City Politics and Public Policy (John Wiley & Sons, 1968; paperback edition, 1968).

“In his introduction of City Politics and Public Policy (1968), Wilson noted that research on urban politics taught us ‘a great deal about who governs but surprising little about what difference it makes who governs.’ The ‘best empirical political science,’… More

Varieties of Police Behavior: The Management of Law and Order in Eight Communities

James Q. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior: The Management of Law and Order in Eight Communities (Harvard University Press, 1968, 1978).

“Varieties of Police Behavior encapsulates a central feature of James Q Wilson’s political science. He was interested in identifying key problems of governing — in this case, controlling crime and disorder — which can only be handled, not solved; in exploring the various… More

Political Organizations

James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations (Basic Books, 1974, 1977; Princeton University Press paperback edition, 1995).

The core of Political Organizations “is a ‘theory of incentives’ that Wilson and a friend of his from graduate school, Peter Clark, co-developed under [Edward] Banfield’s tutelage in 1961. The theory, which undergirds all his subsequent work on bureaucracy,… More

Thinking About Crime

James Q. Wilson, Thinking About Crime (Basic Books, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1983, Vintage revised paperback edition, 1985).

“If George Orwell was right — that all great writers have one title that captures the theme of the all their works – that title for Wilson was Thinking About Crime, which first appeared in 1975, then in a much expanded edition in 1985. The crucial word was… More

The Investigators: Managing FBI and Narcotics Agents

James Q. Wilson, The Investigators: Managing FBI and Narcotics Agents (Basic Books, 1978).

In the early 1970s, Wilson served as a consultant to the Drug Enforcement Agency and as an informal adviser to Clarence M. Kelley, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1973 to 1978. One result of these experiences was The Investigators, an examination of how the DEA… More

The Politics of Regulation

James Q. Wilson, editor, The Politics of Regulation (Basic Books, 1980, 1982).

In the late 1970s, Wilson sent some of his students out to explore the politics of regulation — “how goals were determined, conflict resolved or managed, standards set, and policy enforced” — in government agencies in order to test empirically some prominent economic… More

Crime and Public Policy

James Q. Wilson, editor, Crime and Public Policy (ICS Press, 1983).

“By the time Jim published his Crime and Public Policy book in 1983, his critique of academic criminologists had softened. In fact, he chose to compile that book precisely because he felt that the study of crime had become more scientific and that its findings should be widely… More

Crime and Human Nature: The Definitive Study of the Causes of Crime

James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature: The Definitive Study of the Causes of Crime (The Free Press, 1985, 1986, 1998).

“In the early 1970s, Wilson began to teach a core curriculum course for Harvard undergraduates with the psychologist Richard Herrnstein. Their collaboration eventually led to one of his few books not appropriate for a general audience, Crime and Human Nature: The Definitive Study of… More

Understanding and Controlling Crime: Toward a New Research Strategy

David P. Farrington, Lloyd E. Ohlin, and James Q. Wilson, Understanding and Controlling Crime: Toward a New Research Strategy (Springer, 1986, reprinted 2012).

Wilson “played a major role in persuading the MacArthur Foundation of the need for longitudinal research in criminology, and he coauthored the MacArthur-sponsored book Understanding and Controlling Crime: Toward a New Research Strategy in 1986 with Lloyd Ohlin and myself. In chapter… More

Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It

James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (Basic Books, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2006).

“Many of us consider Bureaucracy to be Wilson’s most important book. It is without doubt the greatest book on bureaucracy written by an American, and the greatest book on American bureaucracy written by anybody.” R. Shep Melnick (2012)

Drugs and Crime

Michael Tonry and James Q. Wilson, editors, Drugs and Crime (University of Chicago Press, 1990, 1991).

Crime

James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia, editors, Crime (ICS Press, 1995).

The Moral Sense

James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (The Free Press, 1993, 1995; paperback edition 1997, 1998).

“The Moral Sense towers tall and apart on the Wilson skyline. It seems not to be about politics or policy at all. Its subject is benevolence: how self-interested human beings come to consider and promote the welfare of others, even when doing so is costly to themselves. This he calls… More

Moral Intuitions

James Q. Wilson, Moral Intuitions (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2000).

The Marriage Problem: How Culture Has Weakened Families

James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem: How Culture Has Weakened Families (Harper Collins, 2002, 2003).

In The Marriage Problem, Wilson “attributes the troubling decline of marriage we see around us not to ‘the ’60s’–the all-purpose nemesis of the right–but to the very individualism Americans of all political persuasions so strenuously champion. The… More

American Politics Then and Now and Other Essays

James Q. Wilson, American Politics Then and Now and Other Essays (AEI Press, 2010).

This book “collects 15 essays, most of which appeared initially in The Public Interest, Commentary, and City Journal. They are written for a general audience, not in the sense of being dumbed-down, but of addressing questions of concern to the educated public in a manner free from… More

Crime and Public Policy

James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia, editors, Crime and Public Policy (Oxford University Press, 2011).