David Ernest Apter was an American political scientist. He was Henry J Heinz Professor Emeritus of Comparative Political and Social Development and Senior Research Scientist at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

.

He was born on December 18, 1924. He taught at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

, the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 (where he was the Executive Secretary of the Committee for the Comparative Study of New Nations), the University of California

University of California

The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...

, (where he was director of the Institute of International Studies

Institute of International Studies

Institute of International Studies or Institute for International Studies may refer to:-United States:* Institute of International Studies at University of California, Berkeley* Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California...

), and Yale University, where he held a joint appointment in political science and sociology and served as Director of the Social Science Division, Chair of Sociology, and was a founding fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

 in 1966.

He wasa Guggenheim Fellow, a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study

Institute for Advanced Study

The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...

 at Princeton, New Jersey

Princeton, New Jersey

Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...

, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science in Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

, a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study

Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study

The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, is an independent research institute in the field of the humanities and social and behavioural sciences founded in 1970...

, as well as a Phi Beta Kappa Lecturer. He has done field research on development, democratization and political violence in Africa, Latin America, Japan, and China.

In 2006 he was the first recipient of the Foundation Mattei Dogan

Foundation Mattei Dogan

Fondation Mattei Dogan is located in Paris, France, and is devoted exclusively to the social sciences. The Fondation is recognized by the French and American governments as a non-profit organization...

 prize for contributions to Interdisciplinary research.

Apter died in his home in North Haven, Connecticut

North Haven, Connecticut

North Haven is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut on the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut.North Haven is less than ten miles from downtown New Haven and Yale University. It is near Sleeping Giant State Park and home the Quinnipiac University School of Health Sciences, the School of Nursing,...

, from complications due to cancer on May 4, 2010.

Literary works

• The Gold Coast in Transition, 1955
• The Politics of Modernization, 1965
• Political Change, 1973
• Choice and the Politics of Allocation, 1972 (received the Woodrow Wilson Foundation award for the best book of the year on government, politics, or international affairs)
• Ghana in Transition (Princeton)
• The Political Kingdom in Uganda (Princeton PUP; London: Frank Cass)
• The Politics of Modernization (Chicago, Japanese, Turkish, and Indonesian editions)
• Against the State (Harvard; Iwanami, Japanese ed)
• Political Discourse in Mao's Republic, with Tony Saich (Harvard)
• The Legitimization of Violence (Macmillan; NYU)