[6] Charles E. Merriam Sr. owned a dry goods store and was postmaster and president of the school board in Hopkinton.

Among his mentors from whom he adopted much of his early political thought were Frank Johnson Goodnow, Otto von Gierke, and James Harvey Robinson.

[20][21] Merriam "denied the utility of theory" and advocated instead a "practical" political science aimed at creating a more harmonious, democratic, and pluralistic society.

[28] He served as a Chicago City Council alderman from the old 7th ward from 1909 to 1911,[1][28][29] winning office (in part) due to the success of his 1903 textbook.

[28][30] Although he won the Republican primary by a very wide margin, he narrowly lost the general election to Carter Harrison IV[31] Merriam and Ickes helped co-found the Illinois Progressive Party, and they supported Robert M. La Follette for president until Theodore Roosevelt defeated him for the Progressive Party nomination.

In 1911, President William Howard Taft offered him a seat on the Commission on Economy and Efficiency, a body established under the authority of the Civil Appropriations Act of 1910 to study the administration of the executive branch, but Merriam declined.

[32][35] During World War I, the 43-year-old Merriam joined the US Army Signal Corps, was commissioned a captain, and served on the federal government's Aviation Examining Board for the Chicago region.

[2][36][39][40] His mission was not only to encourage the Italian public to keep Italy in the war on the Allied side but also to undermine support for socialist and communist political parties.

[36][41] He may even have used Rockefeller Foundation money to help convince socialist leader Benito Mussolini to support the war.

[36][42] During his time in Rome, however, Merriam usurped the prerogatives of the US ambassador and embassy staff, and his repeated clashes caused him to be sent back to the United States after just six months in the post.

[36] Back in Chicago, Merriam coordinated and edited a series of comparative studies by political scientists on the use of expertise in policy making, civic education, and public opinion.

[43] Merriam's contribution to the series, The Making of Citizens (1934), was highly laudatory of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy's use of these tools to strengthen the sense of national purpose and achieve policy goals.

[44] Merriam was highly critical of these regimes, though, and felt that a more scientific approach would avoid the messianism on which these governments relied and strengthen democratic and pluralistic norms.

[44] He co-founded the Local Community Research Committee (LCRC) in 1923 with money from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation, he set up programs to collecting data on urban problems, and disseminating current policy ideas.

[45] He also helped organize the Social Science Research Council (an outgrowth of the LCRC) in 1923 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and served as its first president in 1924.

[64] Merriam believed that part of the success or failure of the National Planning Board's proposals depended on the administrative capacity of the executive branch to adopt and push for the recommended policies.

The Supreme Court had struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act (a key legislative accomplishment of the New Deal) in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), and significantly limited the president's power to remove members of independent executive agencies in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 (1935).

[71] Famously declaring "The President needs help,"[70][72][73] the committee's report advocated a strong chief executive, including among its 37 recommendations significant expansion of the presidential staff, integration of managerial agencies into a single presidential office, expansion of the merit system, integration of all independent agencies into existing Cabinet departments, and modernization of federal accounting and financial practices.

The University of Illinois picks a distinguished academic to honor with the Charles E. Merriam Award for Outstanding Public Policy Research.