Ian Shapiro

Ian Shapiro (born September 29, 1956) is an American legal scholar and political scientist who serves as the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He served as the Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center at Yale University from 2004 to 2019. He is known primarily for interventions in debates on democracy and on methods of conducting social science research.

In democratic theory, Shapiro has argued that democracy's value comes primarily from its potential to limit domination rather than, as is conventionally assumed, from its operation as a system of participation, representation, or preference aggregation. In debates about social scientific methods, he is chiefly known for rejecting prevalent theory-driven and method-driven approaches in favor of starting with a problem and then devising suitable methods to study it. His most recent work, coauthored with Michael J. Graetz, Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It, proposes achievable policies and strategies to mitigate economic insecurity in the United States.