FRED W. RIGGS, Professor Emeritus (Ph.D., Columbia, 1948). Trained in international relations and Chinese philosophy, Fred Riggs subsequently specialized in comparative and development administration and became interested in the conceptual and terminological problems involved in writing about phenomena not recognized in conventional Western social science vocabularies. Under the auspices of UNESCO and the International Social Science Council, he organized an interdisciplinary committee that developed a new "onomantic" (i.e, naming or non-semantic) framework that uses hypertext technology on the WWW and e-mail listservs to disseminate glossaries for interactive use on a global multi-lingual basis.

Recently, he has also developed a neo-institutional comparative framework for understanding political and administrative problems usually ignored by comparativists. In this context, he points to the political role played by public bureaucracies, including military officers, in all countries, including the United States, but especially in the third world. When the ordinary political institutions of democratic government are weak and ineffectual, he argues that bureaucrats, led by military officers, often seize power and establish bureaucratic authoritarianism. Among the constitutional democracies of the third world, he thinks that those based on the American presidentialist model rooted in the separation of powers are the most fragile and likely to collapse, whereas those grounded in parliamentarism have better prospects for survival. He has explained why the U. S., as the only notable exception to this rule, has sustained its constitutional system for more than two centuries.

Since retiring from teaching, he has been promoting an understanding of these issues through numerous papers and publications, plus the launching of a global network of concerned scholars and practitioners: the Committee on Viable Constitutionalism (COVICO). Drafts and more details can be found on his Home Page Home Page He has recently focused his energy on the increased violence of ethnic nationalism around the world and the need for viable constitutional democracy in order to replace civil war with non-violent politics. He has organized a global network for liaison officers of the major groups, organizations, and committees promoting research on ethnic problems--and has created a Web site to support this activity. Most recently, he has been studying "globalization" as a contemporary process with far-reaching causes and consequences, especially in relation to the problems of democratization as it evolves when military authoritarianism or one-party dictatorship collapses -- see: DEMOGLO and the Forum for Global Studies.

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Updated: 29 September 2000

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