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the foremost living theorist of democracy, is the emeritus Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1940 and where he spent virtually his entire academic career. After five years working for the government-as a management analyst at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, then as an economist in the Office of Price Administration and the War Production Board, and finally as a member of the Army-he returned to Yale in 1946. With colleagues Charles Lindblom, Robert Lane, and others, he helped build the first modern department of political science, a department that asked major substantive questions while using the best social science techniques available at the time.In the interview that follows, which I conducted on March 30, 2008, Dahl grounds his motivation for studying democracy not only in his academic encounters but also in his experiences growing up in Alaska, attending public schools there, and working with longshore workers as a boy. He does not want to replicate the utopian visions of classical philosophers. His commitment is to the development of an empirical model of democracy that guides scholars in their efforts to determine the extent of democratization throughout the world as well as in the United States. Normatively, he is committed to a democracy that recognizes the rights and voice of all who have a legitimate claim to citizenship.Although he is known for his arguments about the procedures democracy requires, some of his most important work deals with the distribution of power. He engaged in debate with elitist theorists such as C. Wright Mills and Floyd Hunter, who argued that a small elite determined virtually all important policy decisions. Dahl's book Who Governs?, winner of the 1962 Woodrow Wilson Prize of the American Political Science Association, makes a very different set of claims. There Dahl analyzes decision making in several policy arenas and finds different key actors influencing the outcomes. The debate did not stop there, 1 Click here for quick links to Annual Reviews content online, including: • Other articles in this volume • Top cited articles • Top downloaded articles • Our comprehensive search Further ANNUAL REVIEWS

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