Talk:List of political scientists

Criteria for listing
I don't think I understand this article - something's wrong when the list doesn't include Plato and Machiavelli, who to my knowledge were the only political scientists to actually apply scientific methods. Peter Grey 18:35, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Gray: Plato and Machiavelli were political theorists or philosophers, not political scientists in the contemporary academic sense.  Your knowledge is completely wrong; neither Plato or Machiavelli applied scientific methods to political phenomena the way that the individuals on this list do.  Go pick up a copy of APSR or another journal somewhere.  THAT is political science.  BUT, my problem with the list is that Fareed Zakaria is listed as a political scientist, while Lipset, Wildavsky, Key, and others do not appear.  Zakaria does have a PhD, but he writes for Newsweek primarily, doesn't he, and not in the journals or serious academic discussion?  Either way, he hasn't done nearly as much as MANY unlisted people.

It does seem clear that we need to discuss the criteria for listing. I agree with anonymous that Lipset, Wildavsky, Key, etc., belong, and Zakaria probably doesn't. Looking over the history, there are a number of people added, then deleted, either by vandals or more likely by someone who disagrees on the criteria for listing. So rather than that, let's talk criteria:

1. Actual political scientists, doing the kind of work APSA would recognize.

2. Influential in some way: Their work is assigned in classes, or cited by others in similar work (e.g., you can't write on political parties without citing Why Parties?). Still A Student 15:30, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

However, there are still theory papers that make their way into APSR. I'm thinking of creating a List of political theorists article and putting a differentiating header at the top. Edit: It's been done, so perhaps we just need blurbs at the top of each article that mention the difference?

--Vince | Talk 17:55, 27 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I see this has been done. I'm not sure I would have agreed. PT is one of the subfields of Pol Sci. But it is an ill-defined discipline. Still A Student (talk) 16:25, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Why is ASPA and the APSR assumed to be the arbiter of what counts (and doesn't) as political science? If that becomes the criterion, then the list will be continually criticised for its parochialism - and rightly so in my view. Also be casreful about the distinction between 'political science' and 'political theory'. Political theory is commonly thought of as a sub-field of political science (toegther with comparative politics and international relations). Even your 'APSA as adjudicator' approach would throw that one out! 137.205.8.2 17:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I didn't mean for APSA to be an adjudicator, but -- why throw out political theory? The discipline is large, mushy, etc. So the kind of work that is done at the major gatherings of political science would seem to be a good and appropriately vague criterion. Another would be to say that any work in the four or five general subfields of the discipline (CP, IR, PT, Methods and, in the U.S., AP) would count. APSA would recognize all of that. It's a starting point, but what would APSA recognize that should not be counted? What should be counted that APSA (or other organizations) would not?

Is it just me or this list is awfully too much concenstrated on the english-speaking world? Yes, I know very well that probably 90+% of political science is in english language, however, surely there's not that large majority of UK/USA-based authors compared to rest of the Western World for example? And I'm sure Japan, for example, has his "famous people" too!

Point being - this might be "english wikipedia", but the list should still try to cover political scientists equally from all around the world.

-- Androg.

What about breaking this down more by subfield than political science in general? The debate can then move toward which subfield someone falls into instead of whether or not they belong on this list on grounds of being a real "political scientist." The only criteria would be that they fall into some field and that they are recognizable within that field of making a valid contribution. -urbanski

Make this list more representative
This list is overwhelmingly slanted towards political scientists working in the United States. It is also - as some of the comments already made here betray - operating with a partial conception of 'political science'. Of course, the vast majority of the world's political scientists (past and present) are/have been based in the US and so perhaps there should be more Americans/US-based academics as a proportion of the total. But some serious attention should be given to non-Americans and particularly to non-Anglophone academics. But it's not just about geographic spread; the list should also be representative of the diversity of the discipline in terms of epistemological and methodological approaches. The APSR is not the only journal of political science in the world and as such should not be treated as the arbiter of what counts (and what doesn't) as legitimate and notable political science. Rozza1965 21:17, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Sadly, 12 years after this was posted, of the 323 political scientists on this list only 41 are women, which is truly shocking. Time to actually do something about this - Astrophobe (talk) 20:24, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Commie alert
What about comrade Marx. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.68.209.79 (talk) 09:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Given the way this comment was phrased, I don't think the author intended it seriously, but in any case, Marx would most certainly not be a political scientist since his work was largely theoretical and not quantitative (and about economics). He would belong on the List of political theorists if anything.

--Vince | Talk 20:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

So by your reckoning, anything that is (a) theoretical, (b) qualitative and (c) concerned with the economy is not political science? A lot of political scientists would have a big problem with that! --137.205.8.2 17:07, 30 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Not necessarily by my reckoning - see above for discussion of criterion. I'm only following precedent. However, I don't think these are bad criterion in separating political theorists from political scientists - propose an alternative.--Vince | Talk 07:13, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Intellectual narcisissm
This page is not necessary and should be deleted. Any political scientist needing a wikipedia page to make him feel notable is not worth his salt. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.227.142.148 (talk) 19:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * There is no reason to believe that Wikipedia pages about political scientists are there to make said scholar feel notable. There are people who are notable. (Many on this list, IMHO, are not so, but...) Those people should have pages. Someone who wanted to use wikipedia to help introduce themselves to the discipline would find this page very useful. Still A Student (talk) 16:02, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Redlinks
All redlinks on this list should be deleted, per Verifiability, unless they can be connected with reliable sources which affirm that the individual is genuinely notable. --Elonka 19:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, the entire list should be deleted per WP:V. Wikipedia can not be used as a source, so the existence of an article on WP is not able to be used as a source. Funnily enough, I have now provided the only source for a person on the list, who just so happens to be a redlink. --Russavia Dialogue 20:43, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd have no objection to deleting this list, though perhaps this should be discussed at Template talk:Politics, since it's linked from there, and that template is used on many other pages. --Elonka 20:23, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

cleaned up the redlinks. everyone on here is now notable, until they are nominated for deletion. the list should probably deleted. --Buridan (talk) 03:43, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Move
List of political scientists → Civil government political scientists &mdash; These scientists only deal in civil government, not in politics (eg religiuos politics, ...) as a whole. User:91.176.13.181 13:43, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Please discuss this multiple page move request here. Jafeluv (talk) 02:34, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Move discussion in process
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Politician which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. RFC&#32;bot (talk) 01:00, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment on the removal of Gleb Pavlovski
Gleb Pavlovsky is by no means a political scientist. He is a political visionary and organiser of pro-Putin think tank (rather philosophical than scientific, for they never were seriously based on an empirical science of any sort) until he was fired when Vladislav Surkov came out of favour. There are quite a few political scientists in Russia or of Russian origin (consider Vladimir Gel'man or Grigorii Golosov, e. g.) but Pavlovsky is clearly not one of them. Alexei Kouprianov (talk) 06:59, 19 September 2017 (UTC)


 * PS. Added by an anonymous user without any justification. Alexei Kouprianov (talk) 09:02, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

"Political scientist" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Political scientist. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. From UnnamedUser (open talk page) 04:04, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Profession-based lists
I've been trying to get clarity on why profession-based lists across all of enwiki nearly always have many fewer people in them than profession-based categories, but I haven't had any luck. See for example this question I asked over at WP Lists with no engagement so far. So as a next step I'm noting my intention to add to this list the many people who are implicitly considered notable by virtue of having unchallenged Wikipedia pages and who are already classed as political scientists by means of categories, but without having been added to this list yet. If anybody objects to that, I would be curious to hear the basis of that objection now before I import several hundred names onto this page, and if there are objections then I'd like to pursue consensus at a higher level so we can have a standard approach to these lists. I'll wait a while (probably a few weeks) to give time for either explicit or tacit consensus. Thanks. - Astrophobe  (talk) 17:50, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Generally lists are preferred to categories for BLPs because list entries can be explicitly referenced while categories cannot. This can be a problem with lists such as this one, however, where the great majority of entries have no explicit references. In principle every entry should have a simple reference sufficient to demonstrate that the subject is indeed a political scientist. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 17:57, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the response. That's great, and makes a ton of sense. I actually added almost all of the references on this page back in December/January, and I'm happy to finish that job whenever I find the time. But then my question is why has explosively more pages than this list does (this is easiest to see by glancing at the page counts in  ). And as I noted over at WP Lists, this is not unique to political scientists, but is true across the board on these lists based on professions. If all those people were named here I suspect the page might be uncomfortably long, but I can't find any discussion of how names would be chosen to be included or excluded. -  Astrophobe  (talk) 18:04, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Haha I always forget that linking to cats on talk pages is a ridiculous mistake. One time I accidentally categorised a user's talk page as a University of Wisconsin faculty member by doing this ... - Astrophobe  (talk) 18:07, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the explanation is nothing more than laziness and ignorance: when I create a new stub I usually start by cloning an existing similar article to make sure that I remember all the key elements and categories (after suitable adjustmenst of course). But I generally don't even know that a list exists, and it can be quite hard to stumble across them unless you make a lot of use of "what links here". By the way, I think the syntax you want is Category:Political scientists by nationality which creates Category:Political scientists by nationality which gives a link to the category without adding the page. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 13:21, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for the useful discussion,, and for the wiki code tip! Looks like there's a whole lot of editing ahead :) - Astrophobe  (talk) 18:18, 10 June 2020 (UTC)