Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#101

Cesar Chavez

#1544

Overall Influence

1927 - 1993 (66 years)

Cesar Chavez was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association , which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers labor union. Ideologically, his worldview combined leftist politics with Catholic social teachings.

#102

Avi Shlaim

#2401

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Avi Shlaim is an Israeli and British historian of Iraqi Jewish descent. He is one of Israel's "New Historians", a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel.

#103

Dennis Ross

#3328

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Dennis B. Ross is an American diplomat and author. He has served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and was a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia to the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

#104

Christophe Jaffrelot

Christophe Jaffrelot

#3026

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Christophe Jaffrelot is a French political scientist and Indologist specialising in South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan. He is a professor of South Asian politics and history the Centre d'études et de recherches internationales at Sciences Po , a professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King's India Institute , and a Research Director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique .

#105

Norberto Bobbio

#1003

Overall Influence

1909 - 2004 (95 years)

Norberto Bobbio was an Italian philosopher of law and political sciences and a historian of political thought. He also wrote regularly for the Turin-based daily La Stampa. Bobbio was a social liberal in the tradition of Piero Gobetti, Carlo Rosselli, , and Aldo Capitini. He was also strongly influenced by Hans Kelsen and Vilfredo Pareto.

#106

Aaron Wildavsky

#4804

Overall Influence

1930 - 1993 (63 years)

Aaron Wildavsky was an American political scientist known for his pioneering work in public policy, government budgeting, and risk management. Early years A native of Brooklyn in New York, Wildavsky was the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. After graduating from Brooklyn College, he served in the U.S. Navy and then won a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Sydney for 1954–55. Wildavsky returned to the U.S. to attend graduate school at Yale University. His PhD dissertation, a study of the politics of the Dixon-Yates atomic energy controversy, was completed in 1958.

#107

Philippe C. Schmitter

Philippe C. Schmitter

#6577

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Philippe C. Schmitter is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is Emeritus Professor of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute.

#108

Cas Mudde

#2456

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Cas Mudde is a Dutch political scientist who focuses on political extremism and populism in Europe and the United States. His research includes the areas of political parties, extremism, democracy, civil society and European politics. Mudde identifies himself as a political leftist.

#109

Maya Angelou

#188

Overall Influence

1928 - 2014 (86 years)

Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

#110

Mark Blyth

#2753

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Mark McGann Blyth is a Scottish-American political economist. He is currently the William R. Rhodes Professor of International Economics and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Brown University. At Brown, Blyth additionally directs the William R. Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

#111

Ibrahim Gambari

#4684

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, , is a Nigerian academic and diplomat who served as Chief of Staff to the President of Nigeria from 2020 to 2023. He previously served as permanent representative of Nigeria to the United Nations from 1990 to 1999, and minister of external affairs from 1984 to 1985.

#112

John F. Kelly

#631

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

John Francis Kelly is an American former political advisor and retired U.S. Marine Corps general who served as White House chief of staff for President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019. He had previously served as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration and was commander of United States Southern Command. He is now a board member at Caliburn International.

#113

Thích Nhất Hạnh

#508

Overall Influence

1926 - 2022 (96 years)

Thích Nhất Hạnh was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet and teacher, who founded the Plum Village Tradition, historically recognized as the main inspiration for engaged Buddhism. Known as the "father of mindfulness", Nhất Hạnh was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism.

#114

Juan José Linz

#3632

Overall Influence

1926 - 2013 (87 years)

Juan José Linz Storch de Gracia was a German-born Spanish sociologist and political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He was Sterling Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at Yale University and an honorary member of the Scientific Council at the Juan March Institute. He is best known for his work on authoritarian political regimes and democratization.

#115

Brian Mulroney

#2424

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Martin Brian Mulroney is a Canadian lawyer, businessman, and politician who served as the 18th prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993. Born in the eastern Quebec city of Baie-Comeau, Mulroney studied political science and law. He then moved to Montreal and gained prominence as a labour lawyer. After placing third in the 1976 Progressive Conservative leadership election, he was appointed president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada in 1977. He held that post until 1983, when he successfully became leader of the Progressive Conservatives. He then led the party to a landslide victory in the ...

#116

Rush Limbaugh

#477

Overall Influence

1951 - 2021 (70 years)

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III was an American conservative political commentator who was the host of The Rush Limbaugh Show, which first aired in 1984 and was nationally syndicated on AM and FM radio stations from 1988 until his death in 2021.

#117

Herrlee G. Creel

#2877

Overall Influence

1905 - 1994 (89 years)

Herrlee Glessner Creel was an American Sinologist and philosopher who specialized in Chinese philosophy and history, and was a professor of Chinese at the University of Chicago for nearly 40 years. On his retirement, Creel was praised by his colleagues as an innovative pioneer on early Chinese civilization and as one who could write both for specialists and for the interested general public with cogency, lucidity, and grace.

#118

Amitai Etzioni

#1995

Overall Influence

1929 - 2023 (94 years)

Amitai Etzioni was a German-born Israeli-American sociologist, best known for his work on socioeconomics and communitarianism. He founded the Communitarian Network, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to supporting the moral, social, and political foundations of society. He established the network to disseminate the movement's ideas. His writings argue for a carefully crafted balance between individual rights and social responsibilities, and between autonomy and order, in social structure. In 2001, he was named among the top 100 American intellectuals, as measured by academic c...

#119

David Held

#3501

Overall Influence

1951 - 2019 (68 years)

David Jonathan Andrew Held was a British political scientist who specialised in political theory and international relations. He held a joint appointment as Professor of Politics and International Relations, and was Master of University College, at Durham University until his death. He was also a visiting Professor of Political Science at Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli. Previously he was the Graham Wallas chair of Political Science and the co-director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics.

#120

William Taubman

William Taubman

#2215

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

William Chase Taubman is an American political scientist. His biography of Nikita Khrushchev won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2004 and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in 2003.

#121

James Carville

#1158

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Chester James Carville Jr. is an American political consultant, author, and occasional actor who has strategized for candidates for public office in the United States and in at least 23 nations abroad. A Democrat, he is an expert pundit in U.S. elections who appears frequently on cable news programs, podcasts, and public speeches.

#122

Strobe Talbott

#3396

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Nelson Strobridge Talbott III is an American foreign policy analyst focused on Russia. He was associated with Time magazine, and a diplomat who served as the deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001. He was president of Brookings Institution from 2002 to 2017.

#123

Mieczysław Maneli

#1764

Overall Influence

1922 - 1994 (72 years)

Mieczysław Maneli was a Polish lawyer, diplomat and academic best remembered for his work with the International Control Commission during the Vietnam War, especially the 1963 "Maneli Affair". During the Holocaust, he survived the Auschwitz death camp, and then became after the war a prominent academic in Poland, serving as the Dean of Law at University of Warsaw. The name "Maneli Affair", a proposal to end the Vietnam War by creating a federation of the two Vietnams that would be neutral in the Cold War is a misnomer as the proposal was actually a diplomatic initiative made by the French Pr...

#124

Maria Zakharova

#2442

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova is the Director of the Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation since 2015. She has a degree of Candidate in Historical Sciences, the Russian equivalent of a PhD.

#125

Ghassan Salamé

#5899

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Ghassan Salamé is a Paris-based Lebanese academic. He served as the Lebanese Minister of Culture from 2000 to 2003. He was the Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs and professor of International Relations at Sciences Po. Salamé served as the head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya from 2017 to 2020.

#126

Robert Paxton

#1940

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Robert Owen Paxton is an American political scientist and historian specializing in Vichy France, fascism, and Europe during the World War II era. He is Mellon Professor Emeritus of Social Science in the Department of History at Columbia University. He is best known for his 1972 book Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, which precipitated intense debate in France, and led to a paradigm shift in how the events of the Vichy regime are interpreted.

#127

Germaine Greer

#252

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Germaine Greer is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literature, she has held academic positions in England at the University of Warwick and Newnham College, Cambridge, and in the United States at the University of Tulsa. Based in the United Kingdom since 1964, she has divided her time since the 1990s between Queensland, Australia, and her home in Essex, England.

#128

Bruce Hoffman

#2265

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Bruce R. Hoffman is an American political analyst. He specializes in the study of terrorism, counter-terrorism, insurgency, and counter-insurgency. Hoffman serves as the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security on the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a professor at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, where he directs its Center for Jewish Civilization. In addition, he is the Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of Terrorism Studies at the University of St Andrews, and is the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S.

#129

Stephen F. Cohen

#4069

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Stephen Frand Cohen was an American scholar of Russian studies. His academic work concentrated on modern Russian history since the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's relationship with the United States.

#130

Walt Rostow

#1820

Overall Influence

1916 - 2003 (87 years)

Walt Whitman Rostow was an American economist, professor and political theorist who served as national security advisor to president of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1969. Rostow worked in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and later was a foreign policy adviser and speechwriter for presidential candidate and then President John F. Kennedy; he is often credited with writing Kennedy's famous "New Frontier" speech. Prominent for his role in shaping US foreign policy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s, he was a staunch anti-communist, noted for a belief in t...

#131

Adam Roberts

#4609

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Sir Adam Roberts is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, a senior research fellow in Oxford University's Department of Politics and International Relations, and an emeritus fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.

#132

Susan Strange

#4702

Overall Influence

1923 - 1998 (75 years)

Susan Strange was a British scholar who was "almost single-handedly responsible for creating international political economy." Notable publications include Sterling and British Policy , Casino Capitalism , States and Markets , The Retreat of the State , and Mad Money .

#133

Guillermo O'Donnell

Guillermo O'Donnell

#4896

Overall Influence

1936 - 2011 (75 years)

Guillermo Alberto O'Donnell Ure was a prominent Argentine political scientist who specialized in comparative politics and Latin American politics. He spent most of his career working in Argentina and the United States, and who made lasting contributions to theorizing on authoritarianism and democratization, democracy and the state, and the politics of Latin America. His brother is Pacho O'Donnell.

#134

Robert W. Cox

#6400

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Robert Warburton Cox was a Canadian scholar of political science and a former United Nations officer. He was cited as one of the intellectual leaders, along with Susan Strange, of the British School of International Political Economy and was still active as a scholar after his formal retirement, writing and giving occasional lectures. He was professor emeritus of political science and social and political thought at York University.

#135

Andrew J. Nathan

Andrew J. Nathan

#7894

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Andrew J. Nathan is a professor of political science at Columbia University. He specializes in Chinese politics, foreign policy, human rights and political culture. Nathan attended Harvard University, where he earned a B.A. in history, an M.A. in East Asian studies, and a Ph.D. in political science. He has taught at Columbia University since 1971, and currently serves as the chair of the steering committee for the Center for the Study of Human Rights. His previous appointments include as the chair of the Department of Political Science , and chair of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute .

#136

John Ruggie

#5200

Overall Influence

1944 - 2021 (77 years)

John Gerard Ruggie was the Berthold Beitz Research Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University and an affiliated professor in international legal studies at Harvard Law School.

#137

Michael Novak

#1774

Overall Influence

1933 - 2017 (84 years)

Michael John Novak Jr. was an American Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat. The author of more than forty books on the philosophy and theology of culture, Novak is most widely known for his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism . In 1993 Novak was honored with an honorary doctorate at Universidad Francisco Marroquín due to his commitment to the idea of liberty. In 1994 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which included a million-dollar purse awarded at Buckingham Palace. He wrote books and articles focused on capitalism, religion, and the polit...

#138

Guenter Lewy

#3067

Overall Influence

1923 - Present (101 years)

Guenter Lewy is a German-born American author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the applicability of the term genocide to various historical events, where Lewy denies both the Romani genocide and the Armenian genocide.

#139

Norman Podhoretz

#1563

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Norman Podhoretz is an American magazine editor, writer, and conservative political commentator, who identifies his views as "paleo-neoconservative", but only "because been one for so long". He is a writer for Commentary magazine, and previously served as the publication's editor-in-chief from 1960 to 1995.

#140

Victoria Nuland

#3755

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Victoria Jane Nuland also known as Toria Nuland is an American diplomat currently serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs since 2021. A former member of the US Foreign Service, she served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from 2013 to 2017 and the 18th U.S. Ambassador to NATO from 2005 to 2008. Since July 2023, Nuland has served as acting Deputy Secretary of State following the retirement of Wendy Sherman.

#141

Anthony Lake

#4205

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

William Anthony Kirsopp Lake is an American diplomat and political advisor who served as the 17th United States National Security Advisor from 1993 to 1997 and as the 6th Executive Director of UNICEF from 2010 to 2017.

#142

Stephen D. Krasner

#6960

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Stephen David Krasner is an American academic and former diplomat. Krasner has been a professor of international relations at Stanford University since 1981, and served as the Director of Policy Planning from 2005 to April 2007 while on leave from Stanford.

#143

William M. LeoGrande

#7066

Overall Influence

William M. LeoGrande is a professor of government and former dean of the American University School of Public Affairs. He is an expert on Latin America. Biography Dean of the American University School of Public Affairs and a specialist in Latin American politics and U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, LeoGrande has been a frequent adviser to government and private sector agencies.

#144

Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice

#3262

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Condoleezza Rice is an American diplomat and political scientist who is the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 66th United States secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 and as the 19th U.S. national security advisor from 2001 to 2005. Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state and the first woman to serve as national security advisor. Until the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, were the highest-ranking African Americans in the history of the federal executive branch .

#145

Stanley Hoffmann

#3248

Overall Influence

1928 - 2015 (87 years)

Stanley Hoffmann was a French political scientist and the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard University, specializing in French politics and society, European politics, U.S. foreign policy, and international relations.

#146

James MacGregor Burns

#1999

Overall Influence

1918 - 2014 (96 years)

James MacGregor Burns was an American historian and political scientist, presidential biographer, and authority on leadership studies. He was the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams College and Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1971 Burns received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in History and Biography for his work on America's 32nd president, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom.

#147

Ekaterina Schulmann

Ekaterina Schulmann

#7549

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Ekaterina Mikhailovna Schulmann is a Russian political scientist specializing in legislative processes. Schulmann is an associate professor of the RANEPA, an associate professor of the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences, and an associate fellow of Chatham House.

#148

Gary Sick

#7848

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Gary G. Sick is an American academic and analyst of Middle East affairs, with special expertise on Iran, who served on the U.S. National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and for a couple weeks under Reagan as well. He has authored three books, and is perhaps best known to the wider public for voicing support for elements of the 1980 October Surprise theory regarding the Iran hostage crisis and that year's presidential election.

#149

Marian Wright Edelman

Marian Wright Edelman

#2302

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Marian Wright Edelman is an American activist for civil rights and children's rights. She is the founder and president emerita of the Children's Defense Fund. She influenced leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.

#150

Daniel Pipes

#2273

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Daniel Pipes is an American commentator on foreign policy and the Middle East. He is the president of the Middle East Forum, and publisher of its Middle East Quarterly journal. His writing focuses on American foreign policy and the Middle East as well as criticism of Islam.

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