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.
Self-determination is a legal or philosophical principle that embodies the right of peoples or nations to choose how they live their collective lives and structure their communities based on their own norms, laws, and cultures. It is the fundamental human right to control or affect one’s choices, life, …
Concerning public life, self-government is the capacity for a group of people or administrative unit to govern themselves on matters of their jurisdiction without direct interference from other authorities or sources of power. In contemporary societies, self-rule or home rule mainly refers to the wishes of subnational communities …
Semi-presidential government systems were first defined in contemporary academia by the contributions of Maur ice Duverger (1974, 1978, 1980), which were dedicated to the French Fifth Republic. Duverger identified a “dual authority structure, a diarchy between a president who is head of state, and a prime minister who …
Government response to crime is usually reactive and cyclical. When crime rates increase, responses become more punitive in nature. When crime rates stabilize or decrease, responses become more lenient. Public opinion also influences how government responds. When victimization rates climb, pressure on lawmakers to “do something” prompts swift …
Sexism is discrimination, domination, and oppression based on sex. Both men and women can experience sexism, but sexism against women is more pervasive. The word sexism is commonly associated with assumptions about female physical and psychological inferiority and weakness, and male superiority and strength. Sexism can refer to …
Human trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation, and harboring of human beings by means of coercion and abduction, primarily for the purposes of sexual exploitation or prostitution. Human trafficking appears to have the strongest detrimental effect on those who are already marginalized: Women and children from impoverished countries. Like …
The shadow cabinet is an alternative slate of would-be government ministers from the main opposition parties in certain Westminster parliamentary systems, which are democratic parliamentary systems modeled after the UK Houses of Parliament. Aside from the United Kingdom, other popular examples of shadow cabinets exist in Australia, Canada, …
Sharia, which literally means “path to a watering place,” is the Islamic law based on the principles in the Quran and sunnah that were systematized in 100 to 200 A.H. (700–800 CE) into a legal framework regulating the public and private life of people living under Islamic rule. …
Judith Nisse Shklar (1928–1992), the first female president of the Amer ican Political Science Association (1989) and president of the Amer ican Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (1982), was a leading twentieth-century political theorist and faculty member in the Harvard University Department of Government. Author or editor …
Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900) was a British utilitarian philosopher. His version of utilitarianism, presented in the 1874 The Methods of Ethics, built on and amended the work of fellow Victorian philosopher and political theorist John Stuart Mill. The next generation of British thinkers found the sheer moral sincerity of …
Algernon Sidney (1623–1683) was a prominent English statesman and political author during his country’s civil war period. Sidney was born into a prominent family and benefited from a comprehensive liberal education, which was augmented by his father’s contacts with philosophers like Hugo Grotius. However, Sidney did not immediately …
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836), better known as the Abbé Sieyès, is the writer of the key text of the French Revolution (1789–1799), What Is the Third Estate? (1789). An ungifted orator, Sieyès nonetheless led the fight for radical reform in the name of the French people’s national sovereignty, calling …
Herbert Alexander Simon (1916–2001) was an American psychologist and economist. His research focused on decision making and its implications for social institutions. Simon, the son of German-Jewish immigrants, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He attended public school and entered the University of Chicago in 1933 on a full …
Simulations comprise a methodology that can assist researchers investigating the interplay between multiple agents and a simulated environment. Both individual agents and their synthesized environment are artificial. Simulated agents imitate the natural appearances or behaviors that are important to a researcher. The programmed characteristics of agents include rules, …
Simultaneous equation models (SEMs) are useful for testing hypotheses involving complex causal ordering, which are common to research questions in political science and public policy. SEM examples include instrumental variables, two-stage least squares, and seemingly unrelated regression models. A classic example of complex causal ordering is the impact …
(Joel) David Singer (1925–2009) was one of the foremost scholars of world politics of the twentieth century. His creation of the Correlates of War Project was instrumental in shifting the study of international relations from the reliance on historical analyses toward the use of quantitative or scientific research …
Burrhus Frederic (B. F.) Skinner (1904–1990) received notoriety for his work in behavioral psychology. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), he claimed that human beings are shaped by their environmental conditions. The soul, free will, or “autonomous man,” he insisted, does not exist except in outdated theories of …
The practice of slavery has occurred in many civilizations throughout human history and was caused by social stratification, economic factors, and high population density. Perhaps most noteworthy of places it occurred were ancient Egypt, China, India, Greece, and the Roman Empire. During the Roman Empire alone, it is …
Small-n and case studies are two methods of qualitative research used in political science and other social sciences. Small-n studies (with n referring to the number of subjects or cases in a study) are the opposite of large-N quantitative projects that involve significant amounts of data or observations. …
Known as the father of classical economics, Scottish economist and rhetorician Adam Smith (1723–1790) was one of the two leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment. The other was his close friend, David Hume. Smith is best remembered today for his groundbreaking work, An Inquiry into the Nature and …
