36 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Abbott Lawrence Lowell was President of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933, who built Harvard into a modern research university while attempting to impose antisemitic enrollment quotas.
French political thinker and historian — author of Democracy in America (1835–40) and The Old Regime and the Revolution — who produced the most penetrating external analysis of American democracy and predicted the soft despotism of modern mass democracy.
British-American political scientist who wrote Imagined Communities — the most influential account of nationalism — arguing that nations are imagined communities made possible by print capitalism.
Robert Putnam's 2000 documentation of the decline in American civic engagement — using 500,000 interviews to show that Americans participate less in civic organizations, trust their neighbors less, and maintain fewer social connections than in previous generations — the most cited political science book of the 2000s.
Richard Hanania's research center producing heterodox scholarship on political psychology, partisanship, and ideology — outside the mainstream of academic political science.
Alexis de Tocqueville's two-volume analysis of American democracy (1835, 1840) — the most important outside analysis of American political culture — which identified both the strengths (civic associations, federalism, local government) and dangers (tyranny of the majority, soft despotism) of democratic equality.
German-American political philosopher who wrote The New Science of Politics and Order and History — arguing that modern totalitarian ideologies (Nazism, Communism, progressivism) are forms of Gnosticism — immanentizing the eschaton (bringing the Kingdom of Heaven down to earth) — whose thought provides the philosophical analysis of political religion.
American political scientist who declared the end of history — the triumph of liberal democracy — in 1989, and has spent subsequent decades writing about political order and identity.
The theory that long-run economic development is determined primarily by political and economic institutions — specifically whether institutions are 'inclusive' (distributing power and opportunity broadly) or 'extractive' (concentrating power for elite extraction).
American political theorist who wrote The Managerial Revolution, The Machiavellians, and The Suicide of the West — beginning as a Trotskyist intellectual and ending as a founding figure of National Review conservatism — whose managerial revolution thesis (that a new class of managers, not capitalists or workers, would come to control modern society) anticipated the professional-managerial class analysis.
American political scientist who has written the most important critiques of state power and modernist schemes of improvement — from the perspective of the people they affect.
British-American political scientist and economist who co-developed with Daron Acemoglu the institutions-based theory of comparative development.
The political doctrine developed by Lenin combining Marxist theory with the vanguard party model — holding that a disciplined revolutionary party must lead the proletariat to seize state power.
American social worker, political scientist, and management consultant who pioneered the concepts of power-sharing, participatory management, and conflict resolution in organizations — decades before they became mainstream — and who influenced Drucker and the entire human relations school of management.
German sociologist and political economist — author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Economy and Society, and Science as a Vocation — who created the concepts of ideal types, bureaucracy, legitimacy, and disenchantment — one of the three founders of sociology (with Marx and Durkheim).
Niccolò Machiavelli was an Italian Renaissance political philosopher and diplomat whose The Prince pioneered political realism by separating politics from conventional ethics.
American political scientist at Harvard's Kennedy School — founding editor of Education Next — a leading researcher on school choice, vouchers, and urban education reform.
American psychologist who conducted the most rigorous long-term study of expert political forecasting — finding that experts perform barely better than random chance — and subsequently studied the characteristics of 'superforecasters.'
The political doctrine that the legitimate authority of government derives from the consent of the governed — the people are the ultimate source of political sovereignty.
American political scientist — president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI) — author of The Origins of Woke — who writes on DEI, foreign policy, and political psychology with a willingness to engage heterodox positions — whose anonymous past writing under a pseudonym expressed views he has since partially distanced himself from.
British-American scholar at the Brookings Institution and founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men, whose book Of Boys and Men documented the falling behind of boys and men across education, employment, and health — bringing rigorous social science to the male gender crisis debate.
American political scientist — Harvard — author of Bowling Alone and Making Democracy Work — who created the social capital concept and documented its decline in America — the most influential political scientist of the last 30 years.
American political scientist who popularized social capital — the civic networks and norms of reciprocity that enable collective action — and documented its decline in American life.
American political scientist who predicted that post-Cold War conflict would be organized along civilizational rather than ideological lines — in The Clash of Civilizations.
James C. Scott's 1998 argument that high-modernist state planning (Soviet collectivization, Le Corbusier urban planning, scientific forestry) systematically fails because it imposes legible, simplified order on the complex, tacit knowledge of local practice — and that the combination of authoritarian states, modernist ideology, and weak civil society is catastrophic.
The political theory that leader behavior is best explained by the size of the winning coalition (those whose support the leader needs to maintain power) and the selectorate (all those with a nominal say) — explaining autocracy, democracy, and foreign policy as leader survival strategies.
Ancient Indian treatise on statecraft, economic policy, and military strategy — attributed to Kautilya (Chanakya), minister of the Maurya Emperor Chandragupta — the most comprehensive ancient manual for governance, combining realism about power with systematic policy advice.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith's 2011 popularization of selectorate theory — arguing that all political systems (democratic and authoritarian) follow the same logic: leaders do what keeps their coalition of supporters satisfied, and the smaller the required coalition, the more corrupt and extractive the regime.
The political philosophy associated with Blair, Clinton, and Giddens that sought a synthesis between traditional social democracy and free-market liberalism — accepting markets while retaining social investment.
American political scientist — author of Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind — whose quantitative research at UCLA produced the most rigorous academic measurement of media political bias.
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson's 2012 argument that nations fail because of extractive economic and political institutions — and succeed when they develop inclusive institutions that distribute power broadly — contrasting with geographical, cultural, or leader-based explanations of development.
Bryan Caplan's argument that voters are not merely ignorant but systematically irrational — holding biased beliefs about economics that democracy selects for because the personal cost of wrong political beliefs is zero.
Bryan Caplan's application of public choice theory to foreign policy — arguing that the concept of coherent national 'grand strategy' is largely an illusion produced by bureaucratic incentives and self-interested decision-makers.
Bryan Caplan's public choice analysis of politician behavior — arguing that politicians are neither especially virtuous nor especially evil, but are constrained by political incentives that systematically produce bad policy.
Political economist who studies governance in ungoverned spaces — most notably prison gangs as institutions that provide order and contract enforcement in environments where the state cannot.
American defense policy analyst and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, known for work on US military strategy, NATO policy, and defense transformation. Collaborator of Frederick Kagan and prominent neoconservative voice on military affairs.