Giovanni Sartori

Giovanni Sartori studied at Faculty of Political Science “Cesare Alfieri”. The recorded working language is Italian and English. The field of work recorded is comparative politics. Places of work recorded in the authority are Florence. Employment is recorded with Columbia University and University of Florence. Positions recorded include rector. Work by Giovanni Sartori is recorded in the collections of Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, Commander of the Order of the Southern Cross and honorary doctor of the University of Madrid Complutense.

• Name — Giovanni Sartori • Born — 13 May 1924 • Birthplace — Florence, Italy • Died — 4 April 2017 • Place of death — Rome, Italy • Citizenship — Italian • Occupation — Professor, political scientist • Fields — Comparative politics • Workplaces — Stanford University, Columbia University • Doctoral Students — Gianfranco Pasquino • Awards — Princess of Asturias Awards for Social Sciences (2005) • Education — University of Florence

Sartori was born in Florence in 1924. He graduated in Political and Social Sciences at the University of Florence in 1946.

Sartori stayed on at the University of Florence, teaching History of Modern Philosophy and Doctrine of the State starting in 1946. He became a lecturer in Modern Philosophy (1950–1956) and in Political Science (1956–1963), and subsequently professor of Sociology (1963–66). Sartori became full professor of Political Science and taught at Florence University from 1966 to 1976. During this time, Sartori founded the first modern Political Science academic post in Italy, and was Dean of the newly formed University of Florence's Department of Political Science. He also taught at the European University Institute (1974–1976) and then became professor of Political Science at Stanford University (1976–79). Finally, Sartori served as Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University from 1979 to 1994 and was appointed professor emeritus. Sartori was president of the Committee for Conceptual and Terminological Analysis (COCTA) of IPSA, the International Sociological Association (ISA), and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) from 1970 to 1979. He was founder and editor of the Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica (Italian Political Science Review) from 1971 to 2003. Sartori was also a regular contributor, as an op-ed writer, of the leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. He died at the age of 92 in Rome from throat cancer on 4 April 2017.

Sartori was deeply interested in the formation, analysis, and use of political concepts. He observed that political science, for better or worse, lacked the coordination in terminology that he presumed to exist in the physical and biological sciences. He encouraged a more "intentional" use of concepts, with the objective of furthering a shared understanding of ideas. In 1970, he and others established the first permanent research committee of the newly created International Political Science Association (IPSA). The committee, Research Committee on Concepts and Methods (RC 01), was intended to ameliorate the "Tower of Babel problem" in political science, and is still active. Sartori's 1970 article "Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics" published in The American Political Science Review is prominent in the field, leading Gary Goertz to write, "There are few articles in political science that deserve the predicate 'classic,' but Sartori's... merits the label." In his article, Sartori presented the notion of a Ladder of abstraction, which captured how any concept can shift from abstract to concrete by adding properties to it and vice versa. Sartori used the ladder to explore the problem of abstract concepts traveling between fields of information and might be stretched beyond meaning. Sartori's notions of "conceptual traveling" (the application of a concept from one case to a new case) and "conceptual stretching" (the mismatch that happens when a concept does not fit a new case) is influential in social science methodology. Conceptual stretching is frequently used as a criticism of studies that employ large-N quantitative analysis.

Sartori's Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (1976) provides a comprehensive and authoritative approach to the classification of party systems. It is seen as having "outstanding, lasting significance to the field" on study on political parties.

Sartori, in his 2000 work Pluralismo, multiculturalismo e estranei: saggio sulla società multietnica, which has not been translated in English yet, remained reluctant to accept the possibility of authentic "integration" of different cultures. According to his position he distinguishes "pluralism" which in his view means shared civic values and reciprocal integration from "multiculturalism" which is regarded as a cause of social fragmentation that undermines common principles of coexistence. In this sense, he sustained that integration requires a social recognition of core civic principles, such as the separation of religion from political authority and the protection of universal individual rights. Following that hypothesis, for instance, Sartori suggested that certain forms of political islam suppose a challenge as far as its integration into western democracies is concerned, considering that islamic world view doesn´t accept separation of Church and State. Alongside, Quranic law doesn´t recognize universal and inviolable individual rights.

• Collier David, and John Gerring. 2009. "Giovanni Sartori & His Legacy," in David Collier and John Gerring (eds.), Giovanni Sartori, Concepts and Method in Social Science. The Tradition of Giovanni Sartori. New York and London: Routledge. • Cotta, Maurizio. 2017. "Sartori: a towering figure of international political science, the founder of contemporary Italian political science and a mordant political polemicist." European Political Science 16(3): 430–435. • Kubát, Michal, and Martin Mejstřík. (eds.). 2019. Giovanni Sartori. Challenging Political Science. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. • Pasquino, Gianfranco (ed.). 2005. La Scienza Politica di Giovanni Sartori. Bologna: Il Mulino. The chapters of this book are celebration notes by Italian scholars (Domenico Fisichella, Angelo Panebianco) that have had some kind of collaboration with Sartori. • Pasquino, Gianfranco. 2005. "The Political Science of Giovanni Sartori." European Political Science 4(1): 33–41. • Pasquino, Gianfranco. 2020. Bobbio y Sartori. Comprender y cambiar la política. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. • Rubí Calderón, José Ramón López (ed.). 2009. Para Leer a Sartori. Mexico,. This book is in Spanish, featuring articles by Gianfranco Pasquino and Dieter Nohlen, and is wide in scope. Besides, it seems, is more critical and more student-oriented. It covers the very Political Science part of Sartori's bulk of work, as well as the books that he has published dealing with such themes as multiculturalism, "videopolitics" and the environment. • Sartori, Giovanni. 1999. "Chance, Luck and Stubbornness," pp. 93-100, in Hans Daalder (ed.), Comparative European Politics. The Story of a Profession. New York: Casell/Pinter. • Sartori, Giovanni. 2018. "Note biografiche e bibliografia".

Giovanni Sartori worked in comparative politics. He was employed by Columbia University and University of Florence. Recorded position is rector. He belonged to Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He worked at Florence.