Daniel Druckman’s career as a social psychologist began at Northwestern University in the 1960s where he earned a distinguished doctoral degree but was also much influenced by work of the University’s leading political scientist, Harold Guetzkow. At that time, Guetzkow was developing an interest, and a major research program, focused on large-scale political simulations known widely as the Inter-Nation Simulation (INS), a multi-team exercise based on elements of the then fashionable “Balance of Power” theory.
From these early beginnings, Dr. Druckman moved on to a career which took his thinking and writing in a variety of directions. Central to much of his scholarly work was a focus on bargaining and negotiation, and one of his earliest edited volumes - Negotiations: Social-Psychological Perspectives (Sage: 1977) - exemplifies his continuing dedication to this area of the conflict resolution field. In a short time, Druckman had established himself as a leading member of a group of distinguished scholars who were working together on what had, up to then, been the neglected field of “political negotiation” - Dean Pruitt, William Zartman, Terrence Hopman, and Bertram Spector - all of whom became major figures in the International Association for Conflict Management (IACM).
Over the next forty years, Druckman continued to produce a stream of papers and journal articles on all aspects of his central topic, but in addition, he wrote on other topics such as nationalism, turning points and triggers, the idea of flexibility, peacekeeping and the nature of leverage, as well as on analyses of real world negotiations over US bases in Spain and the Philippines. This body of work, frequently co-authored with his students and younger colleagues, was carefully based on sound data sources – often quantitative – and rigorous analysis.
Dan Druckman has always been interested in methodology and the business of doing meticulous research, so one of his most recent works is a distinguished guide on the question of how to do detailed work in the field. Doing Research: Methods of Inquiry for Conflict Analysis should be required reading for the next generation of scholars in the field.
Dr. Druckman has held a variety of research and teaching posts throughout his career, most notably at the National Academy of Science in Washington, and at George Mason University in Virginia. He has been a distinguished Visiting Professor at Sabanci University in Turkey, at the Universities of Queensland and of Melbourne in Australia, and at the University of Science and Technology in Taiwan. In 1998, he received a Teaching Excellence Award from George Mason University and, in 2003, a Lifetime Achievement award from IACM. He is currently an Emeritus Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at GMU.
JB/CRM
