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 risk assessment or analysis is a method of weighing the various political, economic, social, and cultural factors that must be taken into consideration when deter mining the feasibility of engaging in an endeavor, usually economic, in any country. Political risk assessment is often undertaken by entities, corporations, …
The idea of politics as a subject of science is as old as Aristotle’s Politics, but, as British political theorist Bernard Crick stressed, political science, as a distinct academic discipline and branch of social science, originated as a uniquely American invention. Although there were, in many respects, functionally …
Political scientists began to organize in professional associations in early twentieth century, and the oldest political science association in the world is the American Political Science Association (APSA), which was founded in 1904. At present, APSA includes more than fifteen thousand members in more than eighty countries. APSA’s …
Whenever political scientists read newspapers, they are working—that is, doing their job by gathering facts and declarations related to current public affairs and trying to understand the mechanisms and formations of public opinion. But apart from these easily accessible media that reach a wide audience, there are, as …
Political sociology is politics studied sociologically. More specifically, it is politics as the practice of power, as this has typically been defined sociologically, that is, in terms of social relations. Most famously, Max Weber (1968) defined power as a probabilistic social relation between hypothetical actors A and B, …
The earliest antecedents to speaking of political theology might be found in the distinction, current among the Stoic philosophers and followed by Varro, then disparaged by St. Augustine in his City of God, between mythical, physical, and civil theology. In its most influential meaning, however, political theology refers …
In the lead article of the first issue of The Journal of Politics in 1939, George H. Sabine posed the question, “What is political theory?” This subject has, to this day, remained persistently contentious. The difficulty is, in part, that while political theory is professionally attached to the …
The foundations of the way in which people think about political life can be reconstructed and assessed through three primary models of foundations of political thought. These include the classical antiquity model, the medieval model, and the modern one. Contemporary perspectives continue to question the foundations of political …
There are two main concepts of politics: politics as a sphere and politics as an activity. The history of the concept is present in the contemporary conceptual struggles, and the disputes surrounding the concept form an inherent part of the concept itself. With the principle that the “political …
The field of comparative politics addresses a large number of questions. A small fraction of these include: Why are some countries democracies and others dictatorships? Why do some governments tax and spend more than others? How do electoral institutions shape the outputs of government? Why does ethnic conflict …
Unlike the law and literature movement, which credits The Legal Imagination (1973) by James Boyd White as its epiphanic text, there is no such author or coherent institutionalized approach that speaks to the effect of literature or film on politics. This is likely because until the nineteenth century, …
The genesis of opinion research traces to 1824, when The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian conducted its presidential straw poll, showing Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams. As a “man-on-the-street” poll, such opinion measurement did not employ the scientific rigors used in modern survey research. However, it laid the cornerstone of …
Nelson Polsby (1934–2007) was an American political scientist who studied the presidency and Congress. Born in Norwich, Connecticut, Polsby earned a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1956, a master’s degree in sociology from Brown University in 1957, and a doctoral degree in political science from Yale …
Polyarchy, or rule by many, is a representative democracy in which all social classes and demographic groups regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or gender have roughly equal political access and power within the government. The concept was developed within political science by Robert A. Dahl in a series …
Polybius (ca. 200 BCE–120 BCE) was a Greek historian who was born in Megalopolis. When Rome conquered Greece and Macedon in the Battle of Pydna in 168 BCE, Polybius was one of one thousand Achaean hostages taken to Rome, where he was detained for seventeen years. He managed …
Ithiel de Sola Pool (1917–1984) was an American political scientist. He earned his doctorate in political science in 1952 from the University of Chicago, where mentors such as Harold Lasswell helped influence a fertile intellectual environment. His initial collaborations with Lasswell on propaganda, the role of the press, …
Karl Raimund Popper (1902–1994) is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most influential philosophers of science. Born into an intellectual Viennese family of Jewish descent, he earned a PhD in philosophy at the University of Vienna in 1928.After leaving Europe to evade Nazism, Popper taught at …
Pork barrel is a commonly used metaphor in the United States to refer to the spending of public money for a specific group’s benefit in return for political support. More specifically, pork barrel is a derogatory term used to describe spending attached to federal appropriations’ bills that are …
Position taking refers to a type of electorally motivated behavior in which legislators publically express a stance on an issue of concern to constituents to increase their chances of reelection. This behavior is often regarded as an inexpensive— in terms of time and effort—means of policy intervention in …
Positive discrimination refers to the broad range of deliberate, time-bound (voluntarist) policies intended to facilitate the integration of historically deprived social groups that were hitherto discriminated or disadvantaged either by government policy or social prejudice. The principle of positive discrimination aims to reduce de facto inequality and gives …
