Category: Political Science Essay Examples
See our collection of political science essay examples. These example essays are to help you understanding how to write a political science essay. Political science is not merely an academic discipline, and political scientists do not just study the anatomy of politics. Political science is renewed with every political administration and with every major political event and with every political leader. Influential political leaders construct their own -isms (Fidelism/Castroism, Maoism, Gandhism, Reaganism, and so on) so that the political philosophies and ideologies that undergird the discipline have to be reinvented constantly. Also, see our list of political science essay topics to find the one that interests you.
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was a German-Jewish social theorist and political activist. He was a member of the majority faction of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) between 1917 and 1919. After World War I (1914–1918), he participated in Berlin’s revolutionary Soldiers’ Council. However, he resigned from both the …
A marginal district is a legislative district in which the electorate is closely divided between supporters of opposing parties. The relative electoral fortunes of the parties in marginal districts serve as indicators of national trends, because the narrow margin of victory renders them more susceptible to change than …
José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930) was a Peruvian activist, political theorist, and writer. He was born in Moquegua in 1894. His father abandoned his family, creating economic difficulties that were further exacerbated by a serious injury to Mariátegui’s left leg that left him in poor health for much of …
Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) of France was one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century, and he dominates Catholic social thought as a defender of human rights and freedom. Born in Par is, he was brought up as a liberal Protestant but converted to Catholicism in …
Market socialism is a political economic system employing the marketplace to distribute goods and services while still adhering to the basic egalitarian values of Marxism. Market socialism arose as an alternative to the centrally planned economy in the Soviet Union. Karl Marx criticized capitalism and the use of …
The Marshall Plan was a broad package of economic and commercial aid that the United States granted to European countries in the aftermath of World War II (1939–1945). The aid was intended to provide Europe with money to restart international trade in food, to avoid starvation, and to …
Marsilius of Padua (1275–1343) was an Italian scholar, educated as a physician, whose intellectual outlook was typical of the secular, educated classes residing in the Italian city-states of his time. His major political work, The Defender of the Peace (Defensor Pacis, 1324), addressed such questions as the nature …
Martial law consists of transitory rule by military authorities of a designated area inhabited by civilians during periods of emergency. In theory, martial law is temporary, but a state of martial law in a jurisdiction may persist indefinitely (as observed in Egypt, which has been under martial law …
Known as the father of socialism, political theorist and economist Karl Heinrich Marx (1818–1883) was born in the Rhineland area of Prussia (Germany) near the French border. Marx’s Jewish family converted to Christianity and moved to England where he became a radical. In England, Marx met philosopher Friedrich …
Marxism is an ideology that derives from Karl Marx’s (1818–1883) critique of capitalism. As the third child in a middle-class Jewish family, Marx studied law at the University of Bonn and wrote his dissertation, The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, in 1841. Aristotle, who …
Karl Marx said little about the political party as such. Marx assumed that the party was the essential means of expression of the proletariat, the class he saw as having a vocation to usher in a new world. In the first chapter of his 1848 Communist Manifesto, Marx …
The Arabic word for “the East” (literally, “where the sun rises”), the Mashriq (sometimes written “Mashreq”) is a vague geographic ter m specifically used, particularly in moder n times but in varying ways by earlier Arab geographers, for the eastern part of the Arab world. This sometimes extends …
While human beings have migrated across the planet in large numbers for millennia, political concerns about immigration arose following the emergence of the modern nation-state, which increasingly desired to define its territorial boundaries, regulate who entered, and conscript and tax citizens. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, enormous …
Mass political behavior, mass action, and collective action for political purposes take place when a large number of people choose to participate in an action for political ends. While time, effort, and risk can be great, pressure may be needed to secure an individual’s limited participation or contribution. …
A mayor is the highest-ranking official of a city or municipal government. A mayor can wield extensive power in large American cities such as New York and Chicago or play a mostly ceremonial role in, for example, a modern English borough or town. In most countries, mayors are …
Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957), a charismatic Republican from Wisconsin, became one of the most reviled and feared figures in the history of U.S. politics. His aggressive campaign to remove perceived communists from positions of influence during the anticommunist movement is known as McCarthyism. McCarthy’s campaign began with an …
Richard McKelvey (1944–2002) was an American political scientist whose ideas influenced statistical methodology, game theory, coalitions, political information, behavioral economics, and the study of voting. Generally, he is best known for work that clarifies essential properties of democratic institutions. He received his degrees from Oberlin College, Washington University …
Measurement—defined as the process of assigning numbers to objects in meaningful ways—is fundamental to the process of testing scientific theories. Measurement theory considers (1) the conditions under which such numerical assignments are possible, (2) procedures for making these assignments, and (3) appropriate interpretation of the resultant numbers, after …
Political commentary, prior to the mass media age, was predominantly the preserve of poets and philosophers. Once the industrial age created the market and the means for mass communication, the demands of poetry on the reader led to it becoming increasingly marginalized. For most of its existence, the …
This article first defines the media in the context of the rapidly changing contemporary environment and then reviews fundamental dynamics of media and politics within the framework of a three-way relationship among the media, politicians/government, and the public, paying attention to differences across political and media systems. It …
