Our dear friend and respected colleague Giacomo Sani died on Sunday, June 20, 2010, in Milan, Italy, at the age of 78. He is survived by his wife, Marina Dotti, his children, Giulia and Laura, and two grandchildren.
Giacomo was educated in both Italy (Universities of Padua and Bologna) and the United States (University of California at Berkeley). He began his academic career at the University of Florence (1963–69) and in the department of political science at the Ohio State University in autumn of 1967 as a visiting associate professor. He returned to Ohio State a year later as a full professor and was a valued member of the department until his departure for the University of Pavia in the autumn of 1991.
Giacomo's specialization lay in comparative mass political behavior, with an emphasis on the social factors conditioning people's voting choices. He brought a uniquely cosmopolitan combination of European political sociology and American political behavior research to his studies. When he joined the department, it was already building itself toward national and world prominence in the field of voting behavior, and Giacomo's contributions in this area helped immeasurably in moving the department forward. His chapter, “Polarization, Fragmentation, and Competition in Western Democracies,” co-authored with Giovanni Sartori, continues to be a touchstone for research on the dynamics of party systems. He published widely on European political phenomena in a variety of leading American and European political science journals. He was co-principal investigator, along with his junior colleagues at the time, Dick Gunther and Goldie Shabad, of one of the first systematic studies of the creation of Spain's party system in the post-Franco era. The NSF-funded project culminated in Spain after Franco: The Making of a Competitive Party System (University of California Press, 1986), as well as numerous journal articles.
Although in his own research, Giacomo's approach to the study of comparative politics reflected the triumph in the 1970s of behavioralism and quantitative analysis in American political science, he was far from an ideologue intellectually or methodologically. Rather, in his own work, one sees both sensitivity to normative issues and a deep appreciation of the cultural and historical context of the phenomena he studied. Indeed, Giacomo was an effective and always collegial voice in the department for the virtues of multiple and pluralistic approaches to the study of politics. In this respect, many of us recall what a generous mentor he was to his junior colleagues, regardless of the type of political science in which they engaged. He encouraged each of us to think independently, to formulate problems and methods we thought important, and to develop our own approaches with confidence. And he followed through in annual faculty review, promotion, and tenure meetings, in which he explained and defended our achievements to senior colleagues.
Giacomo's teaching contributions were also very significant for departmental development at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. He was a core figure in the graduate program, chairing the Graduate Studies Committee, and teaching the basic comparative methods and theory course and newly developed courses on comparative political parties and comparative voting behavior. To undergraduates, Giacomo brought a voice of experience and realism into courses on European politics.
Apart from his contributions while at Ohio State to both scholarship and teaching, Giacomo added another important ingredient to the life of the department. He was for a long time the only non-American faculty member among many who were raised and educated in the Midwest. His cosmopolitan manner and European perspective broadened our intellectual horizons and, indeed, our palates. Two of our now senior colleagues, Herb Weisberg and Herb Asher, fondly recall enjoying calamari for the first time in Giacomo's home on Erie Road in the quiet old-fashioned suburb of Clintonville just north of the Ohio State campus. Bill Liddle remembers hours of conversation accompanied by countless after-dinner cups of strong coffee made in Giacomo's classic stovetop espresso pot. For awhile, Bradley Richardson and Giacomo engaged in real estate speculation (not necessarily successfully) through the vehicle of San-Rich enterprises. Herb Asher fondly remembers heading out with Giacomo and Bradley on Saturday mornings to the Huddle for the breakfast special—two eggs over easy, hash browns, sausage, toast, coffee, and great conversation. All of these fond memories speak to how another former colleague, John Champlin, described Giacomo: “He had the gift of friendship and gave it with both hands.”
In 1988, Giacomo began splitting his time between Ohio State and the University of Pavia. He continued to teach at Ohio State for part of each academic year, but then resigned his position in the autumn of 1991 after making important contributions to our collective enterprise in research, teaching, and service for more than two decades. He became an emeritus professor at Ohio State in 1992. When Giacomo departed Columbus, he left behind many good friends, and he was sorely missed.
