Zimmerman, William

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University of Michigan School of Law

Michigan Journal of International Law Volume 24 Issue 4 2003 The Michigan Way William Zimmerman University of Michigan Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil  Part of the Legal Biography Commons Recommended Citation William Zimmerman, The Michigan Way, 24 MICH. J. INT'L L. 1037 (2003). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil/vol24/iss4/6  This Tribute is brought to you for free and open access by the Michigan Journal of International Law at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Journal of International Law by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact mlaw.repository@umich.edu. THE MICHIGAN WAYWilliam Zimmerman*Harold Jacobson was a man of many parts. He was an accomplished andskilled administrator, who was Chair of the Department of Political Science,Director of the Center for Political Studies, acting Director of the Institutefor Social Research, and interim Associate Vice President for InternationalAffairs. In those roles and in many others, he was the best person in a com-mittee I ever saw. He was very smart, and even more so, wise. He thoughtstrategically and politically. Time and time again, I witnessed him interject,with exquisite timing, a remark that turned a discussion in exactly the rightway. He would agree with everything someone said but then add a briefcodicil that resulted in a better outcome than that person had advocated.Moreover that person often did not even notice that his or her position hadbeen altered. After having watched Jake on the Executive Committee ofMichigan's College of Literature Science and the Arts, the former Dean,Peter Steiner, said admiringly of Jake that Jake was the only person he,Steiner, knew who 'could remove someone's socks without taking off theirshoes.'His extraordinary service record extended well beyond the confines ofthe University. He was enormously active in service-related termsinternationally as well, receiving the 1995 Award for International ScienceCooperation of the American Association for Advancement of Science. Hetraveled so much to do so many good things-to advise the SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations or to work on projects regarding statebehavior and the implementation of environmental accords-that when mylast words of a phone conversation were "have a good trip," my wife wouldalways ask, "how's Jake?" Occasionally, I would have been talking tosomeone else but far more often she would be right.He was a beloved teacher at all levels, a fact recognized by his receipt ofthe University of Michigan Good Teaching Award and the Excellence inEducation Award. He supervised scores of dissertations and prepared gradu-ate students superbly for the time when, as young faculty members, theywould be doing research without a mentor. For years, he taught the core* William Zimmerman is Professor of Political Science and Senior Research Scientist inthe Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. His articles have appeared in theleading political science and Slavic studies journals and he has authored or edited numerous books,the most recent being THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE AND FOREIGN POLICY: RUSSIAN ELITE AND MASSPERSPECTIVES, 1993-2000 (2002). With Harold K. Jacobson, he co-edited THE SHAPING OF FOR-EIGN POLICY (Harold K. Jacobson & William Zimmerman, eds., 1969) and with Elena Nikitina andJames Clem contributed The Soviet Union and the Russian Federation: A Natural Experiment inEnvironmental Compliance to ENGAGING COUNTRIES: STRENGTHENING COMPLIANCE WITH IN-TERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL ACCORDS (Edith Brown Weiss & Harold K. Jacobson, eds., 1998).1037Michigan Journal of International Lawproseminar in world politics. In addition to teaching his undergraduatecourses in international organization, he reached thousands of undergraduatestudents over the years as a lecturer for the introductory course in world poli-tics, Political Science 160.Jake was also a prolific scholar. He authored, edited, or co-edited adozen books on American foreign policy, international organization and law,and global environmental policy. His first monograph concerning Soviet be-havior in the economic and social organs of the United Nations was astandard source on Soviet behavior in international organization.' His text-books in American foreign policy were widely adopted.' The book on thenuclear test ban treaty co-authored with Eric Stein of the University ofMichigan Law School received the University of Michigan Press award forthe best book the Press had published in the year the book came out. He andour former colleague, Michel Oksenberg, produced an important study onChina's growing involvement in the world economy. When he died, he andCharlotte Ku of the American Society of International Law were on theverge of completing a project that addressed the crucial issue of the democ-ratic accountability of interventions under the auspices of internationalorganizations. 5 That book has been published posthumously. It is, in manyrespects, a fitting ending to his scholarly career. Jake could be very hard-nosed in his thinking about how states behaved in world politics. At the sametime, his belief that States, especially democratic States, could overcome thecollective action problems endemic in world politics through the develop-ment of law and organization was a common theme throughout his scholarlycareer.In this brief tribute, though, I want to address in somewhat greater detailhis penultimate book, a major volume he edited with Edith Brown Weissentitled Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with InternationalEnvironmentalAccords.6 It is a nice exemplar of Jake's organizational skillsand his notions about how he and others should do research, notions thatresulted in what must be a real rarity, namely, an edited and multi-authoredvolume receiving honorable mention by an International Studies AssociationI. Harold K. Jacobson, THE USSR AND THE UN's ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES(1963).2. See, e.g., THE SHAPING OF FOREIGN POLICY (Harold K. Jacobson & William Zimmer-man, eds., 1969), AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY (Harold K. Jacobson ed., 1960).3. Harold Karan Jacobson & Eric Stein, DIPLOMATS, SCIENTISTS, AND POLITICIANS: THEUNITED STATES AND THE NUCLEAR TEST BAN NEGOTIATIONS (1966).4. Harold K. Jacobson & Michel Oksenberg, CHINA'S PARTICIPATION IN THE IMF, THEWORLD BANK, AND GAIT: TOWARD A GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER (1990).5. DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND USE OF FORCE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW (CharlotteKu & Harold K. Jacobson eds., 2003); see also Charlotte Ku, When Can Nations Go to War?Politics and Change in the UN Security System, 24 MICH. J. INT'L L. 1077 (2003).6. ENGAGING COUNTRIES: STRENGTHENING COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL ENVI-RONMENTAL ACCORDS (Edith Brown Weiss & Harold K. Jacobson eds., 1998).1038 [Vol. 24:1037The Michigan Wayprize committee. Engaging Countries demonstrated all of Jake's talents andpredilections. The introductory chapters and the conclusion written by Jakeand Edith Brown Weiss built on the individual chapters in ways that werecharacteristic of Jake and of what Jake often termed "the Michigan way."For Jake, the Michigan way involved the assumption that there was noscience without measurement. Measurement, in turn, implied quantificationand the careful operationalization of key concepts. This led him to produce anumber of quantitative studies in realms of international organization, suchas state behavior in the United Nations General Assembly, where verbal de-scription had been the norm.But quantification for Jake needed some underlying theory in order tohave value. He was often sharply critical of quantitative work that producedlimited findings because, he thought, the author(s) had failed to bring a theo-retical perspective to the data they had amassed. He also was a presumptiverationalist. As a student of Arnold Wolfers, it is scarcely surprising that hewould emphasize that national interest was an ambiguous symbol. That be-ing said, his predilections were to assume rationality on the part of individualdecision makers and states and then to modify the rationality assumption inlight of evidence.Jake's quest for rigor and quantification carried over from areas like vot-ing behavior in the UN General Assembly, where quantification was anatural, to addressing such fuzzy matters as international treaty compliance.It would have been very easy for the editors to have abandoned the effort atrigor and to write introductory and concluding chapters permeated by 'Onthe one hand, . . . On the other hand .. .' and to be satisfied with countrychapters that were not explicitly comparable with one another.Jake and Professor Brown Weiss did not take the easy way out. Rather,they pushed us (the country-chapter authors) to follow explicit criteria and toutilize data wherever possible. In doing so, they pushed themselves to pro-duce cutting-edge scholarship about a topic that will be of great importancethroughout the 21st century. They began with what they termed a "tradi-tional, stylized view of international law." But they were driven by theirconceptualization and the data about treaty compliance on the part of coun-tries, large and small, democratic and authoritarian, to depict an internationalenvironment that was quite different from the states-as-sole-actors, hierar-chical approach that has characterized much of the study of bothinternational politics and international law. Rather, the world they describe isone populated in part by States-they remain the primary international actorswhich levy taxes and conscript and raise armies-but it also includes a bevy ofIGOs, NGOs, enterprises, other nonstate actors, and even individuals.1039Summer 20031Michigan Journal of International LawIn such a world, "there are various reasons that countries find [interna-tional treaties] in their interests."7 Governments, it turned out, sometimesbandwagon and sometimes comply "because of pressures from other gov-ernments," but they also comply because "domestic interests ... force theissue." 9 In that world, the reason for the title of the volume becomes crystalclear: to increase international compliance, states and other relevant actorsneed to be engaged "from the beginning and [kept] engaged."' °Engaging Countries thus illustrates the quality of his scholarship and hispenchant for collaborative, co-authored ventures. But it also nicely showsJake as the academic entrepreneur and advocate for the global disseminationof scientific social science that he was. He had the clever idea of having eachchapter be co-authored by two persons, one an American and the other a na-tive of the country. While by the time of his death in 2001 co-authoredarticles by, for instance, American and Russian scientists were no longer ararity, they were a novelty at the outset of the research project. Readers willhave their own judgment about the success of the various chapters. Writingas an American who co-authored one of the chapters and for whom this wasone of my first experiences in co-authoring an article with a Russian, it wasa wonderful experience and produced a valuable exchange of expertise andresulted in genuine synergism. Neither of us could have written the chapterwe did without the participation of the other-and I am virtually certain thisis a view that other country-chapter co-authors share.Jake was an excellent scholar and an entrepreneur. He also had panache.He addressed the issue of providing incentives for the chapter authors ofEngaging Countries by organizing some of the most enjoyable bookconferences I ever attended. Because half the authors were Americans andhalf were not, our first meeting took place in Bermuda where we worked andplayed very hard. With a straight face Jake justified our meeting site on thegrounds that it was equidistant between the United States and Europe andwas thus saving the funders' money. When I suggested we could have met inReykjavik and flown Icelandic, he said, with the same straight face, that ithadn't occurred to him.Jake's departure has left a huge hole in all of our lives, in part for hisacademic accomplishments. Mostly though, he will be remembered for whohe was and the way he did what he did. In my own case, he was a mentor,friend, confidant, colleague, and co-author over a stretch of almost 40 years.We will all miss him enormously.7. Id. at2.8. Id.9. Id.1O. Id. at 552.1040 [Vol. 24:1037

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