Professor Sprague has written on voting and elections, the history of socialist voting, voting patterns in the US Supreme Court, lawyers in politics, and crime including homicide. His academic career has been wholly at Washington University, St Louis, where he has been chair of the Department of Political Science. He is the author of Voting Patterns on the US Supreme Court (1969), Lawyers in Politics (with Heinz Eulau, 1984), The Dynamics of Riots (with Barbara Salert, 1980), Systems Analysis for Social Scientists (with Fernando Cortez and Adam Prseworski, 1974), Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (with Adam Przeworski, 1988) and Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication (with Robert Huckfeldt, Cambridge, 1995). He has contributed articles to the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, the American Journal of Political Science, Political Methodology, Criminology, and other journals.
