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 representative democracy was coined in France and America in the age of constitutional revolutions; its implementation as a form of government began at the local level—township government in New England and, after 1789, municipal government in Paris. Eighteenth Century Beginning Since the beginning, representative democracy was …
Extant democracies are based on representation: decisions are taken by politicians, elected and regularly controlled by citizens. In this process, political parties play a crucial role. They build up the alternative political projects among which citizens choose in elections. By doing this, parties both aggregate and reflect some …
Reproductive rights are a diverse set of political instruments invoked by individuals, governments, nongovernmental organizations, international organizations, and other parties to address the social, political, and legal constraints on people’s ability to exercise control over their sexual and reproductive lives. Reproductive rights are controversial and rigorously contested worldwide …
Cicero defines res publica as res populi—the thing of the people. Republic signifies the public thing or public good or interest, referring to a political community. A republic is a commonwealth in which the commonweal of the whole people is paramount to that of a section, faction, or …
Republicanism is an ancient tradition of political thought that has enjoyed a robust revival in recent years. At its heart is the conviction that government is a public matter to be directed by self-governing citizens, not the domain of one ruler or small set of rulers. Dictionaries try …
Classical republicanism is a political and philosophical orientation that emphasizes a notion of freedom opposed to that under which slaves operate—namely, that of having a master, of being owned or dominated by another. It is an orientation that draws heavily on the Roman idea of the res publica, …
Resampling methods encompass a wide variety of techniques that use empirical data, as opposed to distributional assumptions, to estimate uncertainty about parameter estimates in a statistical model. Bootstrapping and jackknifing are used when parametric measures are difficult to compute or unreliable, but should be used with caution in …
Research design is the process of creating a scientific plan for answering research questions through sampling, measurement, and analysis. It is the formal and creative process of comparing competing theories and making inferences to yield discoveries about the world. The hallmark of social-scientific research design is a rigorous …
Reserved seats are positions within legislative systems that are allocated to specific groups. Reserved seating arrangements are typically the result of constitutional or other political concessions whereby seats are granted to disadvantaged groups to ensure representation in elected bodies. For instance, in the Croatian House of Representatives, five …
Stemming from the Latin spondeo-respondeo, meaning to promise to answer, the concept of responsibility is strongly related to the condition of moral imputability of an actor in relation to the actor’s deeds or omissions, as described by Mariana Oshana in 2001, with regard to the foundations of moral …
Whole classes of people within their own states have historically been marginalized, treated as second-class citizens, or even enslaved—as in the United States. Rectifying past wrongs inevitably brings accusations of reverse discrimination, a charge in the United States leveled against public and private remedies to undo the remnants …
Revisionism can refer to broad movements within the study of history that seek to reinter pret the past or to one of a series of ideological movements within Marxism. Revisionist historians have challenged accepted narratives of past events in order to overcome subjectivity and to account for newly …
Revolutions are rapid changes in the institutions of government, carried out by noninstitutional means and usually with the support of popular groups mobilized for demonstrations, local revolts, guerilla warfare, civil war, mass strikes, or other revolutionary actions. Until the 1960s, revolutions were viewed as major turning points in …
Rhetoric is the study and art of public speaking and communication. The Greeks developed the main techniques of rhetoric that would be used well into the twentieth-first century. Beginning with the Sophists, rhetoric emphasized the ability to persuade audiences and stressed the importance of style over substance. Rhetoric …
David Ricardo (1772–1823) was an influential British political economist. Born in London to wealthy Jewish immigrants from Holland, his formal schooling ended early in his teenage years. Ricardo began working in his father’s stockbroking firm at age fourteen, which enabled him to start his own business career. In …
The left-right dichotomy is a conceptual tool to describe and classify political parties, actors, ideologies, attitudes, and specific policies along a spectrum. Historically, the terms left and right refer to the seating positions in the National Assembly, during the French Revolution (1789–1799), of pro and anti-Ancien Régime members. …
The right to die tends to be a controversial issue around the world. Proponents of the right to die generally support the right of the terminally ill to end their own lives through assisted suicides and believe that life should not be prolonged when there is no chance …
The right to life is a concept from international human rights law, suggesting that all people are entitled to live and that, under most circumstances, human beings should not end a life. It is included in a number of international human rights treaties and documents, most notably in …
William H. Riker (1920–1993) was an influential twentieth century American political theorist who developed methods for applying mathematical reasoning to the study of politics. After receiving his PhD from Harvard, Riker began his teaching career at Lawrence College in Wisconsin, right in the middle of the mid-century behavioral …
The concept of rogue states first emerged as a key analytical category for Western policy makers and academics in the early 1980s. Although the term itself predates this period, the climax and conclusion of the cold war era witnessed a surge of interest in rogues, particularly within the …
