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.
The term normative theory gained currency in American political science in the post–World War II (1939–1945) period as a consequence of the behavioral revolution and the rise of positivist-empiricist political science. Behaviorists sought to draw a distinction between scientifically oriented political inquiry and evaluative forms of political inquiry …
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a regional agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States to implement a free trade area—the world’s largest, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. It was officially signed in 1992 and entered into force on January 1, …
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance of twenty-eight countries from North America and Europe committed to fulfilling the goals of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty. In accordance with this treaty, NATO’s fundamental role is to safeguard the freedom and security of its member countries by …
When Ireland gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1921 after two years of violent “troubles,” six counties in the northern province of Ulster remained within the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland, with a population of around one and one-half million, was established to satisfy the demands of a …
The term North-South relations refers to the relationship between the advanced industrialized countries in the global North and the developing countries of the global South. It is used in contrast to the superpower conflict between East and West. Of course many parts of the global South became directly …
Alec Nove (1915–1994) was an influential British scholar and one of the key founders of the discipline of Soviet studies. By the early 1960s, he was internationally recognized as the leading Western authority on the dynamics of the Soviet centrally planned economy. The author of eleven widely regarded …
American literary critic and political activist Irving Howe defines the political novel as a novel in which the dominant element is either political ideas or a political milieu. Howe’s pioneering study, published in 1957, still serves as a point of departure for studies of connections between politics and …
Robert Nozick (1938–2002) was a twentieth-century American political philosopher who worked at Harvard University. He is most well-known for his 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia, in which he defends the libertarian ideal of the minimal state against utilitarianism, egalitarian, and socialist redistributive politics. He famously questioned the …
The term nuclear club is used in various ways. Before 1970, any state that developed nuclear weapons was considered a member of the nuclear club. Since the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) came into effect in 1970, the term has been used to refer to the nuclear states acknowledged …
Nuclear proliferation—the spread of nuclear weapons around the world—represents one of the central challenges to contemporary international peace and security. Definitions Of Nuclear Proliferation The standard definition of nuclear proliferation was set by the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT. The NPT implicitly defines …
Numeraire and dollarization are both terms that refer to a country’s adoption of a foreign currency as a numeraire and/or legal tender instead of a national currency. Numeraire is a unit of account, against which all goods and services are valued and priced. The new foreign currency (typically, …
Michael Joseph Oakeshott (1901–1990) was a British political philosopher interested in the philosophical questions raised by the study of history. His first published work, Experience and Its Modes (1933), examined three modes of experience: history, science, and practice. He argued that each of these modes or perspectives afforded …
Political obligation is one of the oldest and most persistent problems of political philosophy. The Greek tragedian Sophocles raised it in Antigone, first performed around 440 BC, and Plato’s dialogue Crito recounts the philosopher Socrates’s response to the problem, in the face of his own death, some forty …
Occupation and annexation are central concepts in the study of international security. Both are common outcomes when military force is employed, yet both pose difficult practical, legal, and moral questions for states in international politics. Occupation In general, occupation is legally defined as the effective control of a …
Frederick Austin Ogg (1878–1951) was an American political scientist. He was the longest-serving editor of the American Political Science Review (1926–1949) and also edited PS: Political Science and Politics. Ogg developed both as flagship journals of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and as forums for the discussion …
Susan Moller Okin (1946–2004) was a feminist and political theor ist who brought to bear the importance of the family on twentieth-century dialogues of justice. In criticizing contemporary theories of justice as overly focused on gender neutrality, she highlighted a neglected dimension of private life—namely, the domestic role …
Old Europe, which is often used in junction with or in comparison to New Europe, is a term used in 2003 by U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld to refer to those European countries that did not support the American military invasion of Iraq, especially Germany and France. …
Oligarchy is a system of government in which power lies in the hands of a few individuals or a single class. The term oligarkhia comes from the Greek words oligo (few) and arkhos (rule). It entered the political science lexicon through its use in Aristotle’s Politics (1981), in …
Iron law of oligarchy is a theory of organization first developed by German sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 study of the German Social Democratic Party. According to the theory, no matter how democratic at the start, all forms of large-scale organizations—democratic or nondemocratic—eventually and inevitably lead to …
Mancur Olson (1932–1998) was an American economist. After receiving degrees from North Dakota State University, Oxford University, and Harvard University, he started his academic career teaching at the United States Air Force Academy and then took a post at Princeton University. In 1969, Olson joined the economics faculty …
