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Richard A. Cloward (December 25, 1926 - August 20, 2001) was an American sociologist and political activist. He influenced the Strain theory of criminal behavior and the concept of anomie, and was a primary motivator for the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 known as "Motor Voter". He taught at Columbia University for 47 years.

Born in Rochester, New York, Cloward served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy in World War II from 1944 to 1946. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester in 1949, and then a master's degree from the Columbia University School of Social Work in 1950. He then served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army from 1951 to 1954, and later worked as a social worker in an army prison in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. Cloward became an assistant professor at Columbia's School of Social Work in 1954, and had visiting posts at the Hebrew University, the University of Amsterdam, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Arizona State University. He received a doctorate in sociology from Columbia in 1958.

Cloward argued that Robert King Merton's theories should specify two rather than one structure of opportunity to reflect both legitimate and illegitimate avenues of structure. An illegitimate opportunity is more than simply the chance to get away with a criminal or deviant act; it involves learning and expressing the beliefs necessary for subcultural support. Consequently, just as any given individual may not have equal access to legitimate means of achieving goals, the same individual may not have equal access to illegitimate means of achieving the same goals. Merton had proposed that the Retreatist would not turn to illegitimate means due to an internalised mechanism. Cloward, however, believed that the Retreatists suffered from a "double failure", i.e. there was no opportunity for them to succeed through either legitimate or illegitimate means.

In 1966, Cloward co-founded the National Welfare Rights Organization, which advocated federalizing Aid to Families with Dependent Children by building local welfare rolls. In 1982, he and Frances Fox Piven founded "Human SERVE" (Service Employees Registration and Voter Education), which established motor-voter programs in selected states as precedents for the Motor Voter Act enacted in 1993.

He died of lung cancer and was survived by his wife, the influential sociologist Frances Fox Piven.

• Why Americans Don't Vote: And Why Politicians Want it That Way (Beacon, 1988)
• Poor People's Movements: Why the Succeed, How they Fail (Pantheon, 1977)
• The Breaking of the American Social Compact (New Press, 1997)
• Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (Pantheon, 1971)

• Obituary at Columbia News