List of political scientists

The following is a list of notable political scientists. Political science is the scientific study of politics, a social science dealing with systems of governance and power.

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 – Palestinian-American academic and professor for political science at Northwestern University for 34 years.
 * 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