List of political scientists

A

Alan Abramowitz – expert in American politics, political parties, ideological realignment, elections, and voting behavior.

David Adamany – public law specialist and President of Temple University

Nayef Al-Rodhan – philosopher, neuroscientist and geostrategist, and author of Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man, Emotional Amoral Egoism and Symbiotic Realism

John Aldrich – political parties expert at Duke University, author of Why Parties?

Graham Allison – early proponent of the bureaucratic politics model, author of Essence of Decision, national security specialist, former Dean of Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University

Gabriel A. Almond – originator of the culturist movement in comparative politics

Gar Alperovitz – political economist

Ambedkar – jurist, economist and Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution of India

William Anderson – specialist in public administration

Robert Axelrod – expert on game theory and complexity theory, wrote extensively on the Prisoner's Dilemma, former president of American Political Science Association

B

Fatih Baja – Gar Yunis University teacher and member of the National Transitional Council in charge of political affairs

Moniz Bandeira – Brazilian writer, professor, political scientist, historian and poet

Benjamin Barber – proponent of participatory democracy and local governance teaching at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland College Park

James David Barber – developed a classification system of the personality types of American presidents, successfully predicted Richard Nixon's resignation from the office of the president

Stephen Barber – noted for his work on political strategy and political economy, author of Political Strategy

Michael Barnett – specialist in international relations

Thomas P.M. Barnett – security strategist

Simion Bărnuţiu – noted for his work on political strategy in Austria and Romania

Larry Bartels – democracy and voting expert at Vanderbilt University

Gad Barzilai – Law and Politics, Human Rights and Politics, Communities and Law at University of Washington

Richard K. Betts – prize-winning author in a number of political science areas

Mark Bevir – professor of political science and Director of the Center for British Studies at the University of California, Berkeley; known for his work on governance

Thomas A. Birkland – author of Lessons of Disaster

Duncan Black – responsible for unearthing the work of many early political scientists, including Charles Dodgson

Hans T. Blokland – author of Freedom and Culture in Western Society and Modernization and its political consequences

Jean Blondel – comparative politics at University of Siena, emeritus at European University Institute

Jean-Charles de Borda – 18th-century mathematician who devised the Borda count

Steven Brams – expert on voting systems

Ahron Bregman – expert on the Arab–Israeli conflict

Ian Bremmer – political risk specialist

Stephen Brooks – international relations scholar

Robert X. Browning – specialist in American politics and chief archivist for C-SPAN

Zbigniew Brzezinski – Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman; served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981; in September 2007 during a speech on the Iraq war, Obama introduced Brzezinski as "one of our most outstanding thinkers"

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita – pioneering game theorist with applications to international relations, author of selectorate theory, seminal book The War Trap

Ralph Bunche – American political scientist and diplomat; received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine; first person of color to win

Walter Dean Burnham – expert in the field of realigning elections, emeritus at University of Texas at Austin

Charles Burton – expert on China and Western nations' China policy

David Butler – pioneer of modern British political science, invented the concept of swing

C

Ira Carmen – co-founder of the social science subdiscipline of genetics and politics

Edward Hallett Carr – international relations theorist

Alfredo Castillero Hoyos – democracy and human rights; former member of the United Nations's Human Rights Committee

George Catlin (1896–1979) – English political scientist and philosopher; strong proponent of Anglo-America cooperation; worked for many years as a professor at Cornell University

Partha Chatterjee – Indian postcolonial critic, political and social scientist

Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri – international relations, Indology at Institute of Commonwealth Studies

John Coakley – specialist in ethnic conflict and Irish politics

Benjamin Cohen – leader in the field of International Political Economy

Stephen P. Cohen – Middle East specialist

James Smoot Coleman – early Africanist, founded the UCLA African Studies Center

Josep Colomer – institutionalist, comparativist, and game theorist scholar

Marquis de Condorcet – 18th-century mathematician and philosopher who contributed the often used "Condorcet criterion" and devised the concept of a Condorcet method

Ralph W. Conant – author of The Prospects for Revolution and Toward a More Perfect Union: The Governance of Metropolitan America

Philip Converse – public opinion scholar, author of The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics

Timothy E. Cook – politics and media

Clyde Coombs – voting systems expert, designed "Coombs' method"

Philip Cowley – author of Revolts and Rebellions

D

Robert A. Dahl – American politics specialist, author of On Democracy

Jouke de Vries – Frisian politician and professor at the university of Leiden

Ronald Deibert – Canadian political scientist and founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto

Daniel Deudney – writer and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University; author of Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village

Karl Deutsch – political scientist, focused on political communication

Larry Diamond – comparative democratization specialist; professor at Stanford University

Thomas Diez – Chair in International Relations at the University of Birmingham

John DiIulio – American politics expert at the University of Pennsylvania;

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll) – author of Alice in Wonderland and professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford; devised Dodgson's method of voting

Robert Donaldson – professor at University of Tulsa and specialist in US/Russian foreign policy

Anthony Downs – has contributed to democratic theory, elections studies

Donald Downs – professor at University of Wisconsin; researcher for Independent Institute

Michael W. Doyle – international relations theorist, author of Empires

Daniel Drezner – professor at Tufts University, specializing in international politics

Murray Dry – professor at Middlebury College, specializing in constitutional law

John Dryzek – professor at the Australian National University, specializing in deliberative democracy and environmental politics

John Dunn – political theorist at the University of Cambridge

Maurice Duverger – French lawyer and sociologist responsible for Duverger's law

Rand Dyck – Canadian politics expert and professor at Carleton University

Thomas R. Dye – elite theory vs. pluralism; author of The Irony of Democracy and Who's Running America?

E

David Easton – originator of systemic theory

Daniel J. Elazar – American federalism and political culture scholar, founder of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, political science professor at Bar Ilan (Israel) and Temple University

Jean Bethke Elshtain – American political philosopher focusing on gender, ethics, American democracy, and international relations

Jon Elster – Norwegian social and political theorist authored works in the philosophy of social science and rational choice theory and a notable proponent of Analytical Marxism

Cynthia Enloe – international relations scholar focusing on Feminism in international relations, editor for such scholarly journals as Signs and the International Feminist Journal of Politics

F

Amir Farmanesh – Iran studies expert; Opinion polling in difficult environments

James D. Fearon

Peter D. Feaver – international security expert

David Fellman – Constitutional scholar

Richard Fenno – Congress scholar, author of Home Style: House Members in their Districts

Thomas Ferguson – politics and economics

Samuel Finer – academic and author on political science and history of government

Norman Finkelstein – author on political science, notable for The Holocaust Industry

Martha Finnemore – international relations and international organizations scholar

Morris P. Fiorina – American politics; proposed retrospective vote theory

Peter Fishburn – operations analysis and probability theory expert

Keith Fitzgerald – immigration politics expert

James H. Fowler – expert on political participation, the evolution of cooperation, and social network theory (UCSD)

Daniel P. Franklin – American politics; politics of the presidency and Politics and Film

Annette Baker Fox – international relations scholar

William T. R. Fox – international relations theorist, coiner of the term "superpower"

Ernst Fraenkel

Francis Fukuyama – international political theory and biopolitics

Archon Fung

G

Scott Gates – specialist in international relations

Anthony Giddens – political sociologist originator of the Third Way

Robert Gilpin – international political economy specialist

Benjamin Ginsberg – professor at Johns Hopkins University focusing on American politics

Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson – Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland focusing on political theory

Sheldon Goldman – expert on American federal courts; professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

David F. Gordon – political risk specialist, former US Director of Policy Planning

Harold Foote Gosnell – research and writings on American politics, elections, and political parties in political science

Colin Gray – international security

Donald Green – Professor of Political Science at Columbia University focusing on field experiments in American politics

Ted Robert Gurr – specialist on conflict and violence

Amy Gutmann – political theory expert; President of the University of Pennsylvania (2004–present)

H

Jacob Hacker – Professor of Political Science at Yale University

Harry Harding – China specialist

Thomas Hare – devised single transferable vote (also known as Hare's method)

Jeremy Harris – American politics specialist

Michael Hart – British twentieth-century politics specialist

Louis Hartz – American author of The Liberal Tradition in America

Colin Hay – influential British political scientist

Marc Hetherington – author of Why Trust Matters; offered a new participation paradigm

Christopher J. Hill – international relations scholar, Professor and Director of the Cambridge Centre of International Studies

Roger Hilsman – aide to John F. Kennedy, Columbia University professor, and prolific author

Thomas Holbrook – public opinion and elections research, author Do Campaigns Matter?

Donald L. Horowitz – pioneered political science models for assessing ethnic conflict

Mark Huddleston – former President of Ohio Wesleyan University and President of the University of New Hampshire

Samuel P. Huntington – author of Clash of Civilizations and The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century; comparativist

I

Kancha Ilaiah – Dalit scholar and social scientist

Ronald Inglehart – professor at the University of Michigan; founder of the World Values Survey

J

Gary Jacobson – Constitutional Law Expert

Gary Jacobson – United States Congress expert

Dayan Jayatilleka – Sri Lankan diplomat, political scientist, and author

Robert Jervis – international security specialist

Chalmers Johnson – comparative theorist

Jason A. Johnson – campaign management

Loch K. Johnson – United States intelligence expert

Charles O. Jones – specialist in American politics

Bertrand de Jouvenel – French political scientist; co-founder of Mont Pelerin Society

K

Peter Katzenstein – professor at Cornell, former president of the American Political Science Association

Ira Katznelson – specialist in American and comparative politics

Dennis Kavanagh

Michael Keating – specialist in nationalism, European integration and regionalism

Edmond Keller – specialist in African politics

Willmoore Kendall – political theorist; teacher of William F. Buckley, Jr.

Robert O. Keohane – interdependence theory author

Ben Kerkvliet – specialist in comparative politics

Cornelius Kerwin – President of American University

V.O. Key, Jr. – elections, parties and public opinion scholar

Gary King – professor at Harvard, political methodologist

John W. Kingdon – specialist in American politics

Grayson L. Kirk – specialist in international relations and President of Columbia University

Henry Kissinger – former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to President Richard M. Nixon

Herbert Kitschelt – author on new radical right parties

Stephen D. Krasner – international regimes author, Director of Policy Planning under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and professor at Stanford University

Michael Krassa – elections, social context, architecture and society; lobbyist, consultant, political sociologist and Chair of Human Dimensions of Environmental Systems department at University of Illinois at Urbana

Oskar Krejčí – theory of international relations, elections and political psychology, former advisor to two Czechoslovak premieres

James Kurth

Will Kymlicka – originated the theoretical foundations of multiculturalism

L

Guy Laforest – liberalism (John Locke) scholar; Quebec and Canadian politics specialist

Harold Lasswell – political communications, pioneered early efforts to establish the policy sciences and influential contributor to the Stages Heuristic

Jack Layton – former leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, Ph.D in Political Science

Richard Ned Lebow – constructivist, Cold War expert, author of Tragic Vision of Politics

Michael Leifer – international relations, South Asian Studies, London School of Economics

Margaret Levi – scholar of comparative political economy, labor politics, democratiic theory, former American Political Science Association president

Carl Levy – Goldsmith's College, University of London

Robert C. Lieberman – scholar of American politics and provost of Johns Hopkins University

Arend Lijphart – originator of consociationalism

Juan Linz – democracy specialist

Dan Lipinski – U.S. House of Representatives (IL-D, 3rd)

Seymour Martin Lipset – political theorist on democracy and development and parties; taught at Stanford University

Ramon Llull – discoverer of Condorcet Criterion and Borda Count

Theodore Lowi – major scholar of American politics at Cornell University

Ian Lustick – state territoriality ethnic conflict and computer modelling in political science; University of Pennsylvania

M

Niccolò Machiavelli – considered the originator of historically based political science; author of The Prince

Jane Mansbridge – scholar of social movements, gender, and democratic engagement (Harvard University), former American Political Science Association president

Harvey C. Mansfield – political philosophy (Harvard University)

Zeev Maoz – Arab-Israeli Conflict and international relations expert

George Marcus – Democratic theory, political psychology

Jose M. Maravall – political economist

David Marsh – influential British political scientist

Juraj Marusiak – Slovak expert for Central and Eastern Europe

David R. Mayhew – U.S. legislative behavior and political parties expert

James McAllister – International Affairs

John McCormick – specialist in European Union politics

Michael McFaul – Russia specialist, professor and director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University

John McGarry – ethnic conflict specialist

John Mearsheimer – international relations theorist and national security expert

Samuel Merrill III – voting behavior and party competition

George Michael – specialist in right-wing extremism

Peter Middlebrook – political economist specialising in transition economies

David Miller – political philosopher, specialized in theories of social justice

Charles Mills – political philosopher specialising in race relations; author of The Racial Contract

Terry M. Moe – specialist in American politics

Malcolm Moos – former President of the University of Minnesota

Andrew Moravcsik – professor at Princeton University, liberal IR theorist, specialist on European Union politics

Hans Morgenthau – realist, international relations specialist

James D. Morrow – international relations expert and game theorist

Michael Munger – trained as an economist, chair of political science at Duke University, running for governor of North Carolina as a Libertarian

Clark A. Murdock – Senior Adviser, Center for Strategic and International Studies

N

Arthur Naftalin – specialist in American politics and former Mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota

Amrita Narlikar – President of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies and former Director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Rising Powers

Antonio Negri

Franz Leopold Neumann – known for analysis of National Socialism

David Nolan – founder of the United States Libertarian Party

Douglass North – Nobel laureate

Pippa Norris – Harvard comparative political scientist

Philip Norton – British politics expert

Joseph Nye – "soft power" international security specialist; Kennedy School Dean

O

Brendan O'Leary – ethnic conflict specialist

Cornelius O'Leary – Irish historian and political scientist

Bertell Ollman – political theorist

Mancur Olson – international political economy specialist; expert on collective action problems; taught at the University of Maryland, College Park

A.F.K. Organski – developed power transition theory in his 1958 book World Politics

Elinor Ostrom – specialist on common pool resources; winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics

P

Thomas Pangle – political theorist at University of Texas at Austin

Michael Parenti – political scientist and author

Vilfredo Pareto

W. Robert Parks – former President of Iowa State University

Gianfranco Pasquino – Italian political scientist; electoral systems, comparative politics

Gleb Pavlovsky – Russian political scientist

Sergei M. Plekhanov – Russia relations expert

Dianne Pinderhughes – scholar of race and gender inequality & public policy, former American Political Science Association president

Nelson W. Polsby – American politics scholar

Samuel L. Popkin – early expert on rational choice theory

Karl Popper – theorist, originated the open society theory

Adam Przeworski – Democratic transitions theorist, author of Democracy and Development; member of the September Group

Robert D. Putnam – social capital theorist, author of Bowling Alone

R

Douglas W. Rae – equality theorist

Mahesh Rangarajan – Indian political analyst and researcher with a focus on contemporary Indian politics and the politics of wildlife conservation in India

John Rawls – political philosopher

R. A. W. Rhodes – public administration scholar, pioneer of the study of policy networks in British government

Condoleezza Rice – former National Security Advisor; former Secretary of State; professor at Stanford University

Floyd M. Riddick – Parliamentarian of the United States Senate from 1964 to 1974, and developer of Riddick's Senate procedure

William H. Riker – 20th-century political scientist who applied game theory to political science

Patrick T. Riley – political theorist and Kant scholar

David Rohde – Congress scholar

Stein Rokkan – expert on political parties and movements, founder of the Institute for Comparative Politics

Richard Rose – American political scientist, Professor of Politics at the University of Aberdeen

Richard Rosecrance – international relations and political economy expert

Clinton Rossiter – American government and constitutional history theorist

Susanne Hoeber Rudolph – scholar of political economy and political economy, former American Political Science Association president

John Ruggie – international relations theorist, social constructivist

S

Larry Sabato – University of Virginia professor, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and popular political analyst

Scott Sagan – Stanford professor and notable critic of deterrence theory

Slobodan Samardžić – research includes political ideas and institutions, federalism, constitutionalism, and European Union

David Samuels – comparativist scholar of Brazilian politics and political institutions

Austin Sarat – public law specialist

Giovanni Sartori – comparativist, expert on constitutional theory and party systems; author of Parties and Party Systems

E.E. Schattschneider – early political parties expert, author of Party Government and The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America

Cliff Schecter – political commentator and operative

Steven Schier – specialist in American Politics

Warner R. Schilling – specialist in international relations and military technology

Gesine Schwan – political scientist, president of the Viadrina European University, and nominated twice as a candidate for the federal presidential elections of Germany

James C. Scott – political economist, Southeast Asia area specialist

Hossein Seifzadeh – Iranian Professor of Political Science at University of Tehran; expert on strategic and security issues in the Middle East

Mitchell A. Seligson – Centennial Professor of Political Science Vanderbilt University; founder of Latin American Public Opinion Project and AmericasBarometer

Donna Shalala – former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services

Matthew Soberg Shugart – scholar of constitutional design and electoral systems

Beth Simmons – international relations scholar focusing on human rights

Herbert A. Simon – Nobel Prize-winning professor at Carnegie Mellon; a founder of artificial intelligence research; received his Ph.D in political science from the University of Chicago

Theda Skocpol – comparative sociologist; former president of American Political Science Association, Harvard University

Stephen Skowronek – presidency and American political development scholar (Yale University)

Anne-Marie Slaughter – scholar of international relations, former president of the American Society of International Law

Jean Edward Smith – political economist, biographer, international relations, constitutional law

Rogers Smith – Pulitzer Prize finalist, American politics expert at the University of Pennsylvania

Steven S. Smith – American politics, congressional politics, Russian politics; Director, Weidenbaum Center

Peverill Squire – Americanist

Michael Steed – British political scientist, developed the concept of "Steed swing" as distinct from "Butler swing"

Alfred Stepan – comparativist, Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University

Zeev Sternhell – theorist, political historian of political ideology

John G. Stoessinger – international relations theorist, author of The Might of Nations: World Politics in our Time

Donald Stokes – former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton; expert on elections

Herbert Storing – American politics expert

Susan Strange – British expert in international relations; taught at the London School of Economics

Carol Swain – Professor of Law and Political Science at Vanderbilt University; expert of immigration and race

T

Rein Taagepera – comparativist, expert on electoral systems and history of government

Colin Talbot – British political scientist; 2013 Chair of Government in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester; adviser to various Parliamentary Committees of the United Kingdom

Marco Tarchi – professor at University of Florence, right-wing militant and creator of Nouvelle Droite

Dennis Thompson – political theorist at Harvard University

J. Ann Tickner – feminist international relations theorist and current president of the International Studies Association (ISA)

Virginia Tilley – specialist on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Charles Tilly – professor at Columbia University, his work includes contentious politics and evolution of modern states

Herbert Tingsten – professor of political science at Stockholm University

George Tsebelis – game theorist notable for his general theory of veto players and for describing the Robinson Crusoe fallacy

V

Stephen Van Evera – MIT international relations expert, known for proposing the Offense-Defense theory

Tatu Vanhanen – democratization and ethnic nepotism

Sidney Verba

Eric Voegelin – in his major work, Order and History in five volumes, he rejected the notion that political science should become a positivistic social science

W

Helen Wallace – international relations specialist

Stephen Walt – international relations specialist

Kenneth N. Waltz – founder of the neorealist international relations school

Michael Walzer – international relations, just war theory

Patricia A. Weitsman – international relations scholar, alliance theory

Alexander Wendt – social constructivism proponent

Darrell M. West – specialist in electronic government, Brookings Institution director of Governance Studies

John Henry Whyte – specialist in Northern Irish politics

Aaron Wildavsky – author of Risk and Culture

Bruce A. Williams – specialist in American politics

Danny Williams – Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador

James Q. Wilson – former President of the American Political Science Association

Woodrow Wilson – former Professor of Politics at Princeton University and former US President

William Wohlforth – international relations scholar

Susan L. Woodward – professor at the graduate program at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Y

Atilla Yayla – Professor of Politics, Political Economy and Political Philosophy at Gazi University in Turkey; president of the Association for Liberal Thinking

M. Crawford Young – comparativist, Africa scholar

Z

Fareed Zakaria – international relations expert

John Zaller – author of The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion; at UCLA