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.
Positive political theory is the study of politics based on the assumption that goal-oriented individuals behave rationally. A rational individual ranks the alternative actions available, taking into account personal preferences and beliefs about the possible outcomes associated with those actions. The rational individual then chooses the action that …
The 9/11 attacks dramatically altered domestic politics in the United States and other states. The strikes led to alterations in national security policy in a number of countries as issues such as immigration, nacro-trafficking, and cybercrime were included in broad definitions of homeland security. Meanwhile, the codification of …
Postcolonial theory denotes a field of political theory that questions the universal character of modernity and takes into account the fact of colonialism to understand the relationship between the global North and the global South. The term denotes a field of theoretical analysis that focuses on the effects …
Postcommunism has at least two meanings; according to Richard Sakwa, the narrower one refers to the situation in countries formerly under socialist or communist rule, while the broader one can be a shorthand term for metanarratives of the world beyond the cold war. In its narrower, more common …
Postcommunist transfor mation broadly encompasses the political transition to implementing democratic concepts and civil liberties, as well as an economic transition to developing a free market trade economy. The postcommunism transition is widely observed from 1989 to 1992—most commonly associated with the end of the cold war—as parts …
Sub-Saharan Africa’s postindependent political experience has been largely a disappointing one. While there are a few exceptions, most African states have experienced broadly based economic stagnation or decline; generalized state weakness, fragmentation, or failure; military interventionism; poor governance and abuse of power by political leaders including personalistic and …
As the importance of industrial manufacturing declines and economic development becomes more centered on the service sector, information technology, and knowledge-based growth, questions arise regarding what social, political, and cultural challenges advanced capitalist economies will encounter in the twenty-first century. These questions, concerned with the nature of postindustrial …
Postmodernism is a philosophic and analytical perspective traversing multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Its roots—while perhaps found in early twentieth century Ger man idealism (Georg Lukács and Karl Mannheim), the Frankfurt school and its critical theory (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer), and to a lesser …
Nicos Poulantzas (1936–1979) was a leading theorist on the capitalist state. Although widely regarded mainly as an exponent of the structuralist Marxism associated with Algerian philosopher Louis Althusser, Poulantzas’s thought evolved through various stages to its culmination in a reexamination of Marxist tenets and an engagement with Eurocommunism. …
The United Nations (UN) estimates that approximately 1.2 billion people in the world currently live in poverty, and one-half of those are children. Before 1950, definitions of poverty were generally based on the bread basket theory, which identified the poor as those who were unable to meet minimum …
Power, a central concept in political science, is the capacity to achieve values in collaboration with and in opposition to others. It includes the ability to act autonomously and to exercise influence or control over others. Power can be an end in itself, but it is primarily instrumental …
Power cycle theory explains the evolution of systems structure and the concerns of statecraft, via the generalized cyclical dynamic of state rise and decline in relative power—the state power cycle. The theory discloses essential nonlinearities, or critical points, in the dynamic that affect government decisions about their foreign …
Since power is perhaps the most important concept in political science, it is natural that political scientists have been looking for correlates of power and, in that effort, found it important to measure it. However, the dispositional nature of the intuitive concept of power makes the measurement difficult. …
Power sharing refers to a set of institutional arrangements that secures every major political force a position in government. Proportional representation, which encourages the coexistence of multiple political parties in the legislature, is a prominent example. Power sharing arrangements, however, are often a combination of mechanisms that ensure …
In international politics, power transition theory is a theory about the causes of major interstate wars. It emphasizes shifts in relative power among the dominant states as a primary catalyst for conflict. First set out by A. F. K. Organski in a 1958 textbook, power transition theory uses …
United States in the later nineteenth century. It has since enjoyed broad, if sometimes sporadic, influence in philosophy, political science, sociology, legal studies, and, more recently, in literary theory, and also the humanities more generally speaking. Main Ideas Pragmatic thought beg ins with the so-called pragmatic maxim, which …
Prebendalism is one form of decentralized patrimonialism. Patrimonialism refers to an organization, usually a state, in which the administration and military force are purely personal instruments of the ruler or leader. Prebendalism is a type of part imonialism in which officials are supported by benefices, including provisions in …
Raúl Prebisch (1901–1986) was an Argentine economist and politician. His seminal contributions to structural economics provided the inspiration for dependency theory and import substitution industrialization (ISI) in Latin America. As president of Argentina’s Central Bank, director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and …
A precedent is a judicial decision regarded as providing a new rule for deciding similar cases that may later arise. Precedents from higher courts are typically binding upon lower courts within the same judicial system. The doctrine of stare decisis, or “stand by things decided,” directs a court …
Predatory government refers to a condition in which corruption, inefficiency, and abuse of power mark political institutions. Predatory governments typically lack transparency or a system of checks and balances to prevent abuses by one or more government branches. Bureaucracies may be weak or ineffective, or they are highly …
