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.
Political anthropology emerged through intellectual engagements between the disciplines of political science and anthropology. Political scientists working in this area first developed the field through an engagement with Clifford Geertz’s interpretative approach to the study of culture. Drawing on interpretive methods, political anthropologists have developed new understandings of …
Political attitudes are mental positions about political objects, such as political leaders and parties, policies and proposals, or political groups and institutions. They are relative, enduring evaluations containing a cognitive and an affective component. The study of political attitudes engages with themes like political ideology, egalitarianism, support for …
Political change often occurs as major events—such as wars, economic crises, and sudden electoral shifts—lead to punctuated turning points, which are then followed by enduring ideological, institutional, or coalitional transformations. Indeed, across international and domestic contexts, whether one addresses security crises like those that marked the commencement of …
The term political communication is used to refer both to a set of practices and a well-developed interdisciplinary field of research. Although closely tied to political science, the theory and practice of political communication is truly interdisciplinary, drawing from varied traditions in political sociology, political psychology, public opinion …
Early twentieth-century Marxists pioneered the concept of political correctness, or PC, using it literally and positively to denote the single correct stance, or line of action, on a specific political issue under prevailing conditions. A seminal example is Chinese revolutionary Mao Tse-Tung’s 1927 speech “On the Rectification of …
Political culture, in one classic formulation of the concept put forward by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, refers to the deeply held orientations that people have toward their political system. In this conception, which reflects the behavior list approaches of 1960s modernization and political development scholarship, political culture …
Political discourse is a dimension of, and a tool for, political action. Discursive acts are a significant and indispensable part of political practices. A political scientist is therefore often led to analyze political discourses, broadly defined as sets of ideas and processes of policy formulation and communication. These …
Political ecology is a relatively new interdisciplinary field. It initially developed through the merger of cultural ecology with political economy. Origins Of The Field The central concern of cultural ecology in the 1950s and 1960s was to introduce the theoretical constructs of biological ecology into the study of …
Political economy means different things even to informed scholars. Like a Rorschach ink blot, one’s favored definition reveals much about one’s background and interests. For some, it means Marxism, derived from Aristotle’s conceptions of the moral foundations of exchange and production. For others, it means neoclassical economics, with …
Comparative political economy (CPE) studies how political determinants influence socioeconomic outcomes and how economic determinants shape political behavior. The political economy of the welfare state is a particularly interesting area for illustrating CPE, as it both shapes socioeconomic outcomes and is shaped by them. Modernization And The Origin …
Political geography is a field of inquiry concerned with the geographical organization of government, the ways in which geographical imaginations figure in world politics, and the spatial basis to political identities and associated political movements. Geography is often understood as the distribution of such physical features of the …
The term political law refers to a growing branch of the study of the state and of governing that (1) compiles all the legal and other types of instruments dealing with the structure of the state and the processes of governing besides the constitution itself; (2) examines the …
Political networks are defined as all those networks that are politically relevant. Networks are specific types of relations (e.g., communication, support, influence, command and control, self-organization, persuasion, coalition, trade flows) between actors—individual, collective, corporate, private, public—and between actors and objects (e.g. issues, court sentences, committees, candidates, events), and …
The term political obligation generally means a moral requirement to obey the laws of one’s country. Such a requirement must encompass more than self-interested or prudential considerations, especially concern that one will be punished for violations. In addition, political obligations are generally viewed as requirements to obey the …
Citizen participation is essential to democracy. It is difficult to imagine stable, ongoing democracy on a national scale without the citizens’ right to vote for their political leaders and to take part freely in politics in many other ways. Through their political participation, citizens have an opportunity to …
Political parties have been described as the core institutions of democracy and necessary for its flourishing. Such claims echo earlier statements about democracy as unthinkable without parties. Even if the way in which parties function has received severe criticism, there is also a widespread consensus that parties are …
Political party platforms in the United States are drafted before the party convention and presented to convention for approval. Approval is not always pro forma, as debates have occurred on war and social issues. Platforms in the United States are not always read; in fact, presidential candidates and …
Political philosophy is the branch of philosophy devoted to reflecting on the contents, values, and conditions of political life. Specific methods of political philosophy are distinguishable from other disciplines, such as political science and history, with various forms and varieties emerging in contemporary political philosophy. The Objects Of …
Political prisoners are people imprisoned for political beliefs or political actions as a result of a government’s criminalization. The government is one of political differences, and these differences are thought to threaten the established order of government; holding or articulating political views antagonistic to the state is thus …
The evolution and development of the subfield of political psychology began to take shape during the pre–World War II (1939–1945) period. This is when political science incorporated political psychology more directly; informed largely by psychoanalytic theory, this work focused primarily on leadership studies and the nature of attitudes. …
