Banfield, Edward C.

Edward Christie Banfield (November 19, 1916 – September 30, 1999) was an American political scientist, best known as the author of The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (1958), and The Unheavenly City (1970). His work was foundational to the advent of the policing tactic of broken windows theory, which was first advocated by his mentee James Q. Wilson in an Atlantic Monthly article entitled "Broken Windows". One of the leading scholars of his generation, Banfield was an adviser to three Republican presidents: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Banfield began his academic career at the University of Chicago, where he was a friend and colleague of Leo Strauss and Milton Friedman. In the latter half of the twentieth century Banfield contributed to shape American conservatism through the publication of sixteen books and numerous articles on urban politics, urban planning and civic culture. In 1959, Banfield went to Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his career except for a brief tenure at the University of Pennsylvania.