[1][2] He helped establish University of Rochester as a center of the behavioral revolution in political science.
[8] Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Kenneth Shepsle in their memoir write that "These have proved crucial to predictive tests for political theory.
In his book Liberalism Against Populism, he argued that the instability of majority rule, demonstrated in Arrow's impossibility theorem and the McKelvey–Schofield chaos theorem, meant that "populist" interpretations of democracy as implementing a collective will of the people were untenable.
Instead, democratic leaders aimed to build disparate coalitions; a piece of successful coalition-building could cause realigning elections, in which blocs of voters swiftly changed their allegiance.
The William H. Riker Prize for excellence in undergraduate teaching is awarded by the University of Rochester bi-annually in his honor.