List of political scientists

This is a list of notable political scientists. See the list of political theorists for those who study political theory. See also political science.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

A

• Robert Abelson – Yale University psychologist and political scientist with special interests in statistics and logic
• Henry J. Abraham – American scholar on the judiciary and constitutional law and James Hart Professor of Government Emeritus at the University of Virginia
• Alan Abramowitz – expert in American politics, political parties, ideological realignment, elections, and voting behavior; professor at Emory University
• Paul R. Abramson – American political scientist known for his research and writing on American, European, and Israeli elections and professor of political science at Michigan State University
• As'ad AbuKhalil – Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus.
• Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
• Brooke Ackerly – expert on grounded normative theory, feminist theory, feminist international relations, and scholar activism, professor at Vanderbilt University
• Martha Ackelsberg – American political scientist and women's studies scholar at Smith College
• David Adamany – public law specialist and President of Temple University
• Charles R. Adrian – American professor of political science who specialized in municipal politics
• Vinod Aggarwal – American political scientist specializing in international political economy
• Robert Agranoff – American political scientist and public administration scholar and author
• Arun Agrawal – political scientist in the School of Natural Resources & Environment at the University of Michigan
• Janet Ajzenstat – Canadian political historian at McMaster University
• Adeolu Akande – professor of political science at the Igbinedion University
• Bolaji Akinyemi – Nigerian professor of political science
• Bethany Albertson – American political psychologist
• Daniel P. Aldrich – American political scientist, public policy and Asian studies scholar at Northeastern University
• John Aldrich – political parties expert at Duke University, author of Why Parties?
• John R. Alford – political science professor at Rice University who researches genopolitics
• Hayward Alker – professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, MIT and Yale who specialized in research methods, core international relations theory, international politics, and security
• Danielle Allen – American classicist and political scientist
• Graham Allison – early proponent of the bureaucratic politics model, author of Essence of Decision, national security specialist, former Dean of Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University
• Gabriel A. Almond – originator of the culturist movement in comparative politics
• Gar Alperovitz – political economist
• Karen Alter – American academic who conducts interdisciplinary work on international law's influence in international and domestic politics
• Scott Althaus – professor of political science and communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the director of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the university
• Micah Altman – American social scientist who conducts research in social science informatics
• R. Michael Alvarez – professor of political science at California Institute of Technology and co-director of the Voting Technology Project
• Tabata Amaral – Brazilian political scientist and federal deputy for São Paulo
• Ambedkar – jurist, economist and chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution of India
• Thomas Ambrosio – professor of political science in the Criminal Justice and Political Science Department at North Dakota State University
• Kristi Andersen – American political scientist at Syracuse University who studies party realignment
• Walter K. Andersen – American academic known for his studies of the Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
• Benedict Anderson – Chinese-born Irish political scientist and historian in the US, author of Imagined Communities
• Lisa Anderson – American political scientist and the former president of the American University in Cairo
• Walter Truett Anderson – American political scientist, social psychologist, and author of non-fiction books and articles
• William Anderson – specialist in public administration
• Mina Andreeva – Bulgarian political scientist and chief spokesperson for the European Commission
• Marimba Ani – anthropologist and African Studies scholar best known for her work Yurugu
• Stephen Ansolabehere – professor of government at Harvard University
• William Antholis – Greek-American political scientist, director and CEO of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia
• David Apter – American political scientist and sociologist who was Henry J. Heinz Professor of Comparative Political and Social Development and senior research scientist at Yale University
• Asher Arian – American and Israeli political scientist who was an expert on Politics of Israel and election studies
• Hadley Arkes – American political scientist and the Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions emeritus at Amherst College
• John Alexander Armstrong – Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Larry Arnhart – Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Northern Illinois University
• Richard Ashcraft – American political theorist and professor of political science at UCLA
• Herb Asher – professor emeritus of political science at Ohio State University
• Richard K. Ashley – postmodernist scholar of international relations
• Ronald Asmus – diplomat and political analyst and then senior think tank policy analyst
• Scott Atran – American-French political and cultural anthropologist
• Sharon Wright Austin – Director of the African-American Studies Program and a professor of political science at the University of Florida
• Deborah Avant – American political scientist at the University of Denver
• Bill Avery – politician from the state of Nebraska and retired political scientist who specializes in international trade and foreign relations
• Robert Axelrod – expert on game theory and complexity theory, wrote extensively on the Prisoner's Dilemma, former president of American Political Science Association
• Julia Azari – American political scientist, professor of political science at Marquette University and contributor to FiveThirtyEight
• Jeremy Azrael – American political scientist known for his expertise on the economy of the Soviet Union

B

• Andrew Bacevich
• Gawdat Bahgat
• Kathleen Cordelia Bailey
• Fatih Baja – Gar Yunis University teacher and member of the National Transitional Council in charge of political affairs
• Susan Baker – Irish scholar of environmental governance in the European Union and ecofeminism, gender and the environment at Cardiff University
• Lisa Baldez
• Michel Balinski
• Moniz Bandeira – Brazilian writer, professor, political scientist, historian and poet
• Mary Jo Bane
• Edward C. Banfield
• Benjamin Barber – proponent of participatory democracy and local governance teaching at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy
• James David Barber – developed a classification system of the personality types of American presidents
• Stephen Barber – noted for his work on political strategy and political economy, author of Political Strategy
• Line Bareiro – Paraguayan political scientist, civil rights activist and feminist
• Joel Barkan
• Lucius Barker
• Michael Barkun
• A. Doak Barnett
• 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
• Bethany Barratt
• Matt A. Barreto
• David M. Barrett
• Larry Bartels – democracy and voting expert at Vanderbilt University
• Robert V. Bartlett
• Gad Barzilai – Law and Politics, Human Rights and Politics, Communities and Law at University of Washington
• Sylvia Bashevkin – Canadian scholar of women and politics
• Stephen Baskerville
• Amrita Basu
• Robert Bates
• Frank Baumgartner
• Phineas Baxandall
• David H. Bayley
• Elmira Bayrasli
• Robert J. Beck
• Holmes Beckwith
• Francis Beer
• Samuel Beer
• Edward Beiser
• Linda Royster Beito
• Charles Beitz
• Aaron Belkin
• Adolphus G. Belk Jr.
• Alon Ben-Meir
• Daniel Benjamin
• Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi – Moroccan political scientist, author and professor at the University of Lausanne
• Linda L. M. Bennett
• W. Lance Bennett
• William Benoit
• Myriam Benraad
• Richard Bensel
• Arthur F. Bentley
• Suzanne Berger
• Adam Berinsky
• Peter Berkowitz
• Ilan Berman
• Marshall Berman
• Sheri Berman
• Nancy Bermeo
• William D. Berry
• Michele Betsill
• 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
• Seweryn Bialer
• Thomas J. Biersteker
• Leonard Binder
• Sarah Binder
• Thomas A. Birkland
• Sarah Birch – professor in comparative politics at King's College London
• Thomas A. Birkland – author of Lessons of Disaster
• Rachel Bitecofer
• Duncan Black – Spatial voting theorist
• Earl Black
• Merle Black
• Chris Blattman
• 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
• Lincoln P. Bloomfield
• Virgil Blum
• Mark Blyth
• Lawrence Bobo
• Alan Bock
• Sophie Body-Gendrot
• Vernon Bogdanor
• B. Anthony Bogues
• Jean-Charles de Borda – 18th-century mathematician who devised the Borda count
• David Bositis
• Eileen Hunt Botting
• Catherine Boone
• Ammar Bouhouche – Algerian political and military leader and academic political scientist
• Terry Bouricius
• Donna Lee Bowen
• Shaun Bowler
• Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier
• Mark A. Boyer
• Jules Boykoff
• Paul Bracken
• David W. Brady
• Henry E. Brady
• Ralph Braibanti
• Steven Brams – expert on voting systems
• Laurie Brand
• Paul Brass
• Ahron Bregman – expert on the Arab–Israeli conflict
• Ian Bremmer – political risk specialist
• Emma_Briant - expert on propaganda and information warfare, Associate Professor of News and Political Communication at Monash University.
• Janine Brodie – Distinguished University Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Social Governance at the University of Alberta
• Stephen Brooks – international relations scholar
• Lara Brown – American political scientist and director of the Graduate School of Political Management at the George Washington University
• Nadia E. Brown – uses intersectionality to study identity politics, legislative studies, and Black women's studies
• Robert X. Browning – specialist in American politics and chief archivist for C-SPAN
• Zbigniew Brzezinski – Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman
• Bruce Bueno de Mesquita – pioneering game theorist with applications to international relations, author of selectorate theory
• Ralph Bunche – American political scientist and diplomat; received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine
• Walter Dean Burnham – expert in the field of realigning elections, emeritus at University of Texas at Austin
• David Butler – pioneer of modern British political science, invented the concept of swing

C

• William A. Callahan
• Melani Cammett – Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs and director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
• Linda Cardinal – University Professor and a Canada Research Chair in Canadian Francophonie and Public Policies at the University of Ottawa
• 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
• Jocelyne Cesari – French political scientist
• Pamela Chasek – international environmental policy expert
• Partha Chatterjee – Indian postcolonial critic, political and social scientist
• Rumman Chowdhury – Bengali-American political scientist and data scientist at Accenture
• Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri – international relations, Indology at Institute of Commonwealth Studies
• Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook – Director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations and co-founder and executive director of the Future of Diplomacy project, at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
• John Coakley – specialist in ethnic conflict and Irish politics
• Benjamin Cohen – leader in the field of international political economy
• Elizabeth F. Cohen – American expert on citizenship and immigration
• Stephen P. Cohen – Middle East specialist
• James Smoot Coleman – early Africanist, founded the UCLA African Studies Center
• 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"
• Morgan Lyon Cotti – professor, associate director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics
• Philip Cowley – author of Revolts and Rebellions
• Edvin Kanka Ćudić – Bosnian political scientist and human rights activist, founder and coordinator of UDIK in Bosnia and Herzegovina

D

• Alison Dagnes – American specialist in politics and the media, politics and humor, and political scandal
• Robert A. Dahl – American politics specialist, author of On Democracy
• Jouke de Vries – Frisian politician and professor at the university of Leiden
• Vera Micheles Dean – Russian American political scientist, former head of research for the Foreign Policy Association, and leading international affairs authority in the 1940s and 1950s
• Ronald Deibert – Canadian political scientist and founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto
• Fatima Denton – Ethiopian political scientist, Officer-in-Charge of the Special Initiatives Division and the Co-ordinator for the African Climate Policy Centre of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
• 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
• Michelle Dion – professor in the department of political science and the Senator William McMaster Chair in Gender and Methodology at McMaster University
• John DiIulio – American politics expert at the University of Pennsylvania
• Ruth Dixon – winner of the Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration and the W. J. M. Mackenzie award of the Political Studies Association.
• 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 – 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
• Susan Eaton – American political scientist and workers' rights activist
• 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
• Keisha Lynne Ellis – Bahamian political scientist
• 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
• Jadwiga Emilewicz – Polish politician, political scientist, and government minister
• 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
• Eqbal Ahmed – Pakistani political scientist and Third World scholer

F

• C. Christine Fair – American political scientist who studies counter-terrorism and South Asian topics
• James D. Fearon – American political scientist focusing on theory of civil wars, international bargaining, war's inefficiency puzzle and audience costs
• Peter D. Feaver – international security expert
• Dafydd Fell – British political scientist
• David Fellman – Constitutional scholar
• Richard Fenno – Congress scholar, author of Home Style: House Members in their Districts
• Thomas Ferguson – politics and economics
• Joel S. Fetzer – comparative politics specialist; distinguished professor at Pepperdine University
• 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
• Naika Foroutan – German political scientist studying immigration and integration
• 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 – German political scientist and one of the founding fathers of German political science after World War II
• Doris Fuchs (scientist) – German political scientist and Professor of International Relations and Sustainable Development at the University of Münster
• Francis Fukuyama – international political theory and biopolitics
• Archon Fung

G

• Michael Gallagher
• Krenar Gashi – Ghent University political scientist and former Financial Times reporter
• Lisa García Bedolla – UC Berkeley professor, Vice Provost for Graduate Studies, and dean of the Graduate Division
• Scott Gates – specialist in international relations
• Barbara Geddes – scholar of authoritarianism and authoritarian regimes
• Anthony Giddens – political sociologist originator of the Third Way
• Elisabeth Gidengil – Hiram Mills Professor of political science at McGill University studying political engagement and Canadian politics
• 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
• Marianne Githens – political scientist, feminist, author, professor, and co-founder of the Women's Study Program at Goucher College
• Betty Glad – American researcher of the American presidency and American foreign policy
• Siri Gloppen – Norwegian political scientist
• Sheldon Goldman – expert on American federal courts; professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Grigorii Golosov – expert on political institutions and electoral systems, professor at European University at Saint Petersburg
• 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
• Marie Gottschalk – American political scientist known for her work on mass incarceration in the United States
• Heather Grabbe – political scientist, activist, and director of the Open Society European Policy Institute in Brussels, Belgium
• Doris Graber – American pioneer in the field of political communication
• Colin Gray – international security
• Donald Green – Professor of Political Science at Columbia University focusing on field experiments in American politics
• Jane Green – professor of political science at the University of Manchester and co-director of the British Election Study who specialised in public opinion and electoral behaviour
• Liah Greenfeld – Israeli, American, and Russian social scientist
• Anna Grzymala – American political scientist, currently at Stanford University and previously also the Ronald Eileen Weiser Professor at University of Michigan
• Rhiana Gunn-Wright – American policy director
• Yaprak Gürsoy – Turkish political scientist and associate professor in the Department of International Relations at the Istanbul Bilgi University
• Ted Robert Gurr – specialist on conflict and violence
• Amy Gutmann – political theory expert; president of the University of Pennsylvania (2004–present)

H

• Michael Haas – Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Hawai'i
• Jacob Hacker – Professor of Political Science at Yale University
• Henrike Hahn – German political scientist and politician who is a Member of the European Parliament
• Paul Y. Hammond – American foreign policy and national security specialist at University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere
• 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
• Mary Hawkesworth – American political scientist and Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University
• Colin Hay – influential British political scientist
• Clarissa Rile Hayward – professor at Washington University in St. Louis studying the theory of political power and political identities
• Katharine Hayhoe – atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University and director of the Climate Science Center
• Susan Hekman – professor of political science and director of the graduate humanities program at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)
• 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
• Nancy Hirschmann – Professor of Politics at the University of Pennsylvania working in the intersection of political theory and public policy
• Sara Hobolt – Danish political scientist who specialises in European politics and electoral behaviour
• Thomas Holbrook – public opinion and elections research, author Do Campaigns Matter?
• Christopher Hood – author of The Art of the State and A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less?
• Donald L. Horowitz – pioneered political science models for assessing ethnic conflict
• Mala Htun – studies women's rights and the politics of race and ethnicity in a comparative context
• Evelyne Huber – studies democracy and redistribution with a focus on Latin America
• 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
• Shanto Iyengar – American political scientist

J

• David J. Jackson – Entertainment/celebrity and politics expert
• Lawrence R. Jacobs – American political scientist and founder and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota
• Gary Jacobson – Constitutional law expert
• Ashley E. Jardina – American political scientist and assistant professor of political science at Duke University
• Attahiru Jega – Nigerian political scientists specialised in political development. former INEC chairman and also Former vice Chancellor of Bayero University.
• Robert Jervis – international security specialist
• Chalmers Johnson – comparative theorist
• Jason A. Johnson – campaign management
• Loch K. Johnson – United States intelligence expert
• Timothy R. Johnson, political science and law; noted for his work covering the Supreme Court of the United States
• Charles O. Jones – specialist in American politics
• Bertrand de Jouvenel – French political scientist; co-founder of Mont Pelerin Society

K

• Kelly Kadera – professor at University of Iowa studying international relations, democratic backsliding, and gender in politics using dynamic models
• Alice Kang – professor at University of Nebraska at Lincoln, expert in African politics and gender research
• Nazokat Kasimova – Uzbekistani political scientist, also noted for her work within the field of higher education reform
• Nina Kasniunas – author and the Arsht Professor in Ethics and Leadership at Goucher College
• Nancy Kassop – Professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz
• 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
• Margaret Keck – developed the study of international activist movements and networked advocacy
• 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 – Former president of American University
• V.O. Key, Jr. – elections, parties and public opinion scholar
• Laleh Khalili – Iranian American and professor in Middle Eastern politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies
• Ilona Kickbusch – German political scientist best known for her contribution to health promotion and global health
• 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
• Samara Klar – professor and founder of Women Also Know Stuff
• 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 at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
• Oskar Krejčí – theory of international relations, elections and political psychology, former advisor to two Czechoslovak premieres
• Sarah Kreps – foreign and defense policy, nuclear proliferation, and government transparency
• James Kurth
• Will Kymlicka – originated the theoretical foundations of multiculturalism

L

• Guy Laforest – liberalism (John Locke) scholar; Quebec and Canadian politics specialist
• Celinda Lake – American survey methodologist, pollster, and political strategist
• Enid Lakeman – British political reformer, writer and politician, noted for her long-standing championship of the Single Transferable Vote system of elections
• Laura Langbein – American quantitative methodologist and professor of public administration and policy at American University
• Harold Lasswell – political communications, pioneered early efforts to establish the policy sciences and influential contributor to the Stages Heuristic
• Adria Lawrence – American political scientist and the Aronson Associate Professor of International Studies and Political Science at Johns Hopkins University
• 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
• Noémi Lefebvre – French political scientist at the Instituts d'études politiques of Grenoble II
• Margaret Levi – scholar of comparative political economy, labor politics, democratic theory, former American Political Science Association president
• Carl Levy – Goldsmiths College, University of London
• Robert C. Lieberman – scholar of American politics and provost of Johns Hopkins University
• Arend Lijphart – originator of consociationalism
• Fernando Limongi – professor in the São Paulo School of Economics at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas
• 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
• Leslie Lipson – was scholar of comparative politics and democracy at UC Berkeley
• Ramon Llull – discoverer of Condorcet Criterion and Borda Count
• Claudia López Hernández – Colombian political scientist and politician who was a Senator of the Republic of Colombia
• 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

• Mizanur Rahman Shelley – was a minister of the Government of Bangladesh, political analyst, political scientist and educationalist.
• Niccolò Machiavelli – considered the originator of historically based political science; author of The Prince
• Beatriz Magaloni – political scientist at Stanford University
• Pia Mancini – political scientist, activist and technical project leader from Argentina
• 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
• Jose M. Maravall – political economist
• Helen Margetts – Formerly Director of the Oxford Internet Institute and current director of the Public Policy Programme at the Alan Turing Institute
• David Marsh – influential British political scientist
• Juraj Marusiak – Slovak expert for Central and Eastern Europe
• Joanna Marszałek-Kawa – Polish lawyer, political scientist, professor and lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
• David R. Mayhew – U.S. legislative behavior and political parties expert
• Amy Mazur – American political scientist and professor at Washington State University
• John McCormick – specialist in European Union politics
• Tara McCormack – lecturer in international relations at the University of Leicester
• Rose McDermott – Professor of International Relations at Brown University
• 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
• J. Patrice McSherry – professor of political science at Long Island University
• John Mearsheimer – international relations theorist and national security expert
• Samuel Merrill III – voting behavior and party competition
• George Michael – specialist in right-wing extremism
• David Miller – political philosopher, specialized in theories of social justice
• Charles Mills – political philosopher specialising in race relations; author of The Racial Contract
• Sara McLaughlin Mitchell – American political scientist and the F. Wendell Miller Professor of Political Science at University of Iowa
• 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
• Rebecca Morton – expert in American Politics, Political Economy, and Experimental Methods; professor at New York University
• Gerardo L. Munck – comparative politics specialist, expert on democratization and Latin America
• Michael Munger – trained as an economist, chair of political science at Duke University, running for governor of North Carolina as a Libertarian
• Naomi Murakawa – American political scientist and associate professor of African-American studies at Princeton University
• Mohammed Barkindo – He is Nigerian political scientists and petroleum economist. current secretary general of OPEC.
• Clark A. Murdock – Senior Adviser, Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Diana Mutz – Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics
• Harris Mylonas – Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers

N

• Brigitte L. Nacos – professor in political science at Columbia University
• 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
• Kalypso Nicolaïdis – Professor of International Relations and director of the Center for International Studies at Oxford University
• David Nolan – founder of the United States Libertarian Party
• Douglass North – Nobel laureate
• Pippa Norris – Harvard comparative political scientist
• Philip Norton – British politics expert
• Julie Novkov – American political scientist at SUNY Albany studying the history of American law, American political development, and subordinated identities
• Joseph Nye – "soft power" international security specialist; Kennedy School Dean

O

• Karen O'Conner – political science professor at American University in Washington, D.C. and the founder and director emerita of the Women & Politics Institute
• Aloysius-Michaels Nnabugwu Okolie – professor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka
• Guillermo O'Donnell – democracy specialist
• 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
• Norman Ornstein – American political theorist; American Enterprise Institute (AEI) resident scholar
• 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
• Tiago C. Peixoto – Brazilian political scientist in e-democracy and participatory democracy
• Armand Peschard-Sverdrup – U.S.-Mexico binational relations expert
• 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
• Emilia Justyna Powell – Polish-American political scientist known for her expertise on international dispute resolution, the Islamic legal tradition, Islamic international law, and Islamic constitutionalism
• Jewel Prestage – first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science, former dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Southern University
• 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
• Vicky Randall – scholar of political science and gender
• 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
• Gary D. Rawnsley FRSA – British political scientist whose research is located at the intersection of international relations and international communication.
• Dan Reiter – political scientist, specialized on military conflicts and war; professor at Emory University; author of How Wars End
• 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
• Pearl T. Robinson – American professor of political science at Tufts University
• 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
• Irene S. Rubin – Emerita at Northern Illinois University focusing on interview methodology and public budgeting in American government
• 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
• Eliz Sanasarian – professor of political science at the University of Southern California
• Emanuele Santi – Italian development economist, political scientist and author
• Virginia Sapiro – American political psychologist
• Austin Sarat – public law specialist
• Giovanni Sartori – comparativist, expert on constitutional theory 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
• Steven Schier – specialist in American Politics
• Warner R. Schilling – specialist in international relations and military technology
• Kay Lehman Schlozman – J. Joseph Moakley Professor of political science at Boston College and an expert in American political participation and gender and politics
• Vivien A. Schmidt – Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration Professor of International Relations in the Pardee School of Global Studies and professor of political science at Boston University
• Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey – professor in Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science
• Victoria Schuck – Professor of Political Science who spent much of her career (1940–1976) at Mount Holyoke College
• Ekaterina Schulmann – associate professor of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration and legal specialist
• 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
• 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
• Jim Sidanius – American political scientist
• Matthew Soberg Shugart – scholar of constitutional design and electoral systems
• Yekaterina Shulman – scholar specializing in lawmaking
• 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
• Valeria Sinclair-Chapman – studies American political institutions, the representation of minority groups in the United States Congress, and minority political participation
• 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
• Allison Stanger – American political scientist and the Russell J. Leng '60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College
• 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 E. Stokes – former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton; expert on elections
• Susan Stokes – Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science department of the University of Chicago and the faculty director of the Chicago Center on Democracy
• Herbert Storing – American politics expert
• Susan Strange – British expert in international relations; taught at the London School of Economics
• Dara Strolovitch – studies the politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the context of intersectional societal inequality
• Carol Swain – Professor of Law and Political Science at Vanderbilt University; expert on immigration and race
• Stephen Szabo is an American political scientist and educator who specializes in foreign policy.
• Abdullahi Aliyu Sumaila a Nigerian political scientist, author of The Rise and Fall of Kano Peoples Party, Secretary-General People's Redemption Party 1980–1983, Campaign Manager of Nigerian People's Party –1983

T

• Rein Taagepera – comparativist, expert on electoral systems and history of government
• Colin Talbot – Chair of Government 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
• Katherine Tate – Professor of Political Science at Brown University
• Merze Tate – international relations expert and first African-American woman to attend University of Oxford and receive a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University
• Anthony Teasdale - specialist in European Union politics
• Sally Terry – political science professor at Tufts University from 1975 until her retirement in 2002
• Dennis Thompson – political theorist at Harvard University
• Marianne Thyrring
• 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
• Jeanne Theoharis – Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College.
• Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay – Canadian political scientist, former senior academic administrator, and an expert on Kashmir and India-Pakistan
• George Tsebelis – game theorist notable for his general theory of veto players and for describing the Robinson Crusoe fallacy
• Jeffrey K. Tulis – professor at The University of Texas at Austin
• Tijjani Muhammad Bande – Nigerian political scientist permanent representative of Nigeria to the UN and former president of UNGA

U

• Patrick Utomi – political economist

V

• Stephen Van Evera – MIT international relations expert, known for proposing the Offense-Defense theory
• Tatu Vanhanen – democratization and ethnic nepotism
• Sarojini Varadappan – Indian social worker who earned her PhD at the age of 80
• Sidney Verba – American political scientist, librarian and library administrator
• Mieke Verloo – Professor of comparative politics and inequality issues at Radboud University
• 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
• Margaret Vogt – Nigerian diplomat and political scientist who served as Special Representative and head of the United Nations Integrated Peace-building Office in the Central African Republic
• Leah Vosko – professor at York University

W

• Helen Wallace – international relations specialist
• Denise Walsh – studies the relationship between women's rights and political inclusion and level of democracy
• Stephen Walt – international relations specialist
• Kenneth N. Waltz – founder of the neorealist international relations school
• Michael Walzer – international relations, just war theory
• John Wanna – Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government
• Georgina Waylen – comparative politics, political economy, and gender
• Linda Weiss – professor of political science at the University of Sydney
• Patricia A. Weitsman – international relations scholar, alliance theory
• S. Laurel Weldon – Canadian and American political scientist and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University
• Alexander Wendt – social constructivism proponent
• Martin Westlake - specialist in European Union politics
• 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
• Arnold Wolfers – international relations scholar, classical realism
• Elisabeth Jean Wood – studies sexual violence during war, the emergence of political insurgencies and individuals' participation in them, and democratization
• Ngaire Woods – founding dean of the Blavatnik School of Government
• Susan L. Woodward – professor 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
• Yelyzaveta Yasko – Ukrainian political scientist and politician who is a member of the Ukrainian Parliament
• 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
• Elizabeth Zechmeister – comparativist at Vanderbilt University, Latin American politics and public opinion expert, director of the Latin America Public Opinion Project (LAPOP)
• Zhang Weiwei – Chinese political scientist
• Ina Zhupa – Albanian political scientist who studies Democratization and Values of Albanian Society

See also

• Political theorist
• Oxford Handbooks of Political Science