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.

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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#1151

Cheng Li

#38718

Overall Influence

Cheng Li is a Chinese-American scholar specializing in Chinese elite politics and contemporary Chinese society; he has served as the director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution from 2014 to 2023, replacing Kenneth Lieberthal in the role. He is currently professor of political science and founding director of the Centre on Contemporary China and the World at the University of Hong Kong. Li is a prominent authority on Chinese politics, specifically leadership dynamics and the changes in leaders over generations.

#1152

Kenneth J. Meier

#41491

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Kenneth J. Meier is a distinguished scholar in residence at American University and holds faculty appointments at the Cardiff School of Business and Leiden University . He is known for his studies on public management and public administration, as well as his extensive and widely referenced journal articles.

#1153

Patrick Weil

#16889

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Patrick Weil is a political scientist. He is a senior research fellow at CNRS, at the Centre for the social history of the 20th century at the University of Paris 1. His research focuses on comparative citizenship, immigration law and constitutional law.

#1154

Adam Habib

#38763

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Adam Mahomed Habib is a South African academic administrator serving as Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London since 1 January 2021. He served as Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa between 1 June 2013, when the term of his predecessor Loyiso Nongxa ended, and 1 January 2021. He is also a former deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Johannesburg.

#1155

Fiona Hill

#22721

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Fiona Hill is a British-American foreign affairs specialist and author. She is a former official at the U.S. National Security Council, specializing in Russian and European affairs. She was a witness in the November 2019 House hearings regarding the impeachment inquiry during the first impeachment of Donald Trump. She earned a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 1998. She currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. She took up office as Chancellor of Durham University in England in June 2023.

#1156

Henryk Szlajfer

#31331

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Henryk Szlajfer – Polish economist and political scientist of Jewish origin, professor at the University of Warsaw, in the years 1993–2008, director of the Department of Strategy and Policy Planning, then of the American Department and archive at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, appointed by then Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek as an ambassador ad personam, former ambassador-head of the Polish Permanent Representation to the OSCE, IAEA and other international organizations in Vienna.

#1157

Geremie Barmé

#23218

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Geremie R. Barmé is an Australian sinologist and film-maker on modern and traditional China. He was formerly Director, Australian Centre on China in the World and Chair Professor of Chinese History at Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific in Canberra.

#1158

Albert Feuerwerker

#41431

Overall Influence

1927 - 2013 (86 years)

Albert Feuerwerker was a historian of modern China specializing in economic history and long time member of the University of Michigan faculty. He was the president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1991.

#1159

Janet Ajzenstat

#30301

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Janet Ajzenstat is professor emeritus of political science at McMaster University. The author of numerous works on Canadian political history, she is best known for The Political Thought of Lord Durham, where she argues that Durham's call for French-Canadian assimilation was consistent with liberal principles.

#1160

Ronen Palan

#30607

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Ronen Palan is an Israeli-born economist and Professor of International Political Economy in the Department of International Politics at the City University London. He has many books and articles on the political economy of the state, globalisation and state strategies, and evolutionary approaches to the study of international relations. Ronen Palan was of the founding editors of the Review of International Political Economy. Palan's major empirical work is the area of offshore financial centres and tax havens. Palan has argued that offshore finance "is certainly not the sole cause for the de...

#1161

J. Brian Atwood

#44230

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

John Brian Atwood is an American diplomat and former Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. From 2002 to 2010, he was dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

#1162

Robert C. Lieberman

Robert C. Lieberman

#35844

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Robert C. Lieberman is an American political scientist and the former provost of the Johns Hopkins University. A scholar of American political development, Lieberman focuses primarily on race and politics and the American welfare state.

#1163

Luis Almagro

#51006

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Luis Leonardo Almagro Lemes is a Uruguayan lawyer, diplomat, and politician who currently serves as the 10th Secretary General of the Organization of American States since 2015. A former member of the Broad Front, Almagro served as Minister of Foreign Relations of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015 under president José Mujica.

#1164

James H. Fowler

James H. Fowler

#14962

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

James H. Fowler is an American social scientist specializing in social networks, cooperation, political participation, and genopolitics . He is currently Professor of Medical Genetics in the School of Medicine and Professor of Political Science in the Division of Social Science at the University of California, San Diego. He was named a 2010 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

#1165

J. Austin Ranney

#67063

Overall Influence

1920 - 2006 (86 years)

J. Austin Ranney was an American political scientist and expert on political parties in the United States. Ranney earned his bachelor's degree at Northwestern University, his master's degree at the University of Oregon, and his Ph.D. at Yale University. He taught for many years at the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, before coming to the University of California, Berkeley in 1986, where he stayed through the remainder of his career.

#1166

Richard Bourke

#40642

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Richard Bourke is a UK-based Irish academic specialising in the history of political ideas. His work spans ancient and modern thought, and is associated with the application of the historical method to political theory. He is Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He was formerly Professor of the History of Political Thought and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary, University of London. In July 2018 Bourke was elected a Fellow of the British Academy .

#1167

Rosalind P. Petchesky

#35900

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group .

#1168

Harris Wofford

#25521

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Harris Llewellyn Wofford Jr. was an American attorney, civil rights activist, and Democratic Party politician who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1991 to 1995. A noted advocate of national service and volunteering, Wofford was also the fifth president of Bryn Mawr College from 1970 to 1978, served as chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in 1986 and also as Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor and Industry in the cabinet of Governor Robert P. Casey from 1987 to 1991, and was a surrogate for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. He introduced Obama in Philadel...

#1169

Steven G. Poskanzer

Steven G. Poskanzer

#38985

Overall Influence

Steven Poskanzer was the 11th president of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Previously he was chief of staff to the president at the University of Chicago for four years, then spent 12 years at the State University of New York at New Paltz where he served as president from 2001 until 2010, when he became Carleton's president.

#1170

Arvid Pardo

#30799

Overall Influence

1914 - 1999 (85 years)

Arvid Pardo was a Maltese and Swedish diplomat of Jewish origin, scholar and university professor. He is known as the Father of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea". Pardo was born in Rome. His father, Guido Pardo, was born in Malta in 1874 to Enrico Pardo of Sephardic Jewish origin from Livorno. Guido Pardo worked for the International Labour Organization and died of typhus while on a relief mission in the Soviet Union in 1922. His Swedish mother died a year later during an appendectomy and his brother was killed in an automobile accident. He became the ward of a friend ...

#1171

Jack Snyder

#43704

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Jack Lewis Snyder is an American political scientist who is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Columbia University, specializing in theories of international relations.

#1172

Augustus Richard Norton

#46715

Overall Influence

1946 - 2019 (73 years)

Augustus Richard Norton was an American professor and army officer. He was a professor of international relations and anthropology at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. He was best known for his writing on Middle East politics, and as an occasional commentator on U.S. policy in the Middle East.

#1173

W. Lance Bennett

#47165

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

W. Lance Bennett is an American political scientist. Bennett earned a doctorate from Yale University in 1974, and subsequently joined the University of Washington faculty, where he serves as Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication and professor of political science.

#1174

David W. Brady

#41014

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

David Brady is the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Political Science and Leadership Values at Stanford University. While at Stanford, he has received the Dinkelspiel Award for service to undergraduates, the Richard Lyman Prize for service to alumni, the Bob Davies award, the Jaedicke silver cup from the Graduate School of Business, and the first Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award given at Stanford. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#1175

Muhyiddin Yassin

#31769

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Tan Sri Dato' Haji Mahiaddin bin Md. Yasin , commonly known as Muhyiddin bin Mohd. Yassin , is a Malaysian politician who served as the eighth Prime Minister of Malaysia from 2020 to 2021. Appointed as prime minister amid a political crisis, Muhyiddin served for 17 months and resigned after losing parliamentary support.

#1176

Tim Soutphommasane

Tim Soutphommasane

#23020

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

Thinethavone "Tim" Soutphommasane is an Australian academic, social commentator and former public servant. He was Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2013 to 2018. He has previously been a political staffer for Bob Carr, a columnist with The Age and The Australian newspapers, a lecturer at Sydney and Monash Universities, and a research fellow with the Per Capita think tank. He is a member of the board of the National Australia Day Council, and an ex officio member of the Council for Multicultural Australia.

#1177

Juan Andrés Ramírez

#39010

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Juan Andrés Ramírez is a Uruguayan lawyer, and a Senator of the National Party. Background Juan Andrés Ramírez was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on 11 October 1947. He studied law at University of the Republic, becoming a well-known civil lawyer, and soon after became a member of the National Party. In the 1989 general elections, he was elected as a Senator of the Herrerismo faction of the National Party.

#1178

Mohammad-Reza Hafeznia

#44110

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Mohammad Reza Hafeznia is a full professor of political geography in Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran. He obtained his Ph.D in political geography from Tarbiat Modares University in 1990. His book entitled: "Political Geography of Iran" has been selected as the Best Iranian Academic Book in 2003. It has been also praised in the 21st Book of the Year Award of Iran in 2003.

#1179

Wang Shaoguang

#34598

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Wang Shaoguang is a Chinese political scientist. He is currently an emeritus professor at the Department of Government and Public Administration of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. A critic of Western representative democracy, his particular research interests include the history of the Cultural Revolution, sortition, the welfare state, and the comparative politics of East Asia.

#1180

Rajeev Bhargava

Rajeev Bhargava

#27161

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

is a noted Indian political theorist, who was professor of political theory at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. His works on political theory, multiculturalism, identity politics and secularism have evoked sharp debates.

#1181

Marty Lederman

#17242

Overall Influence

Martin "Marty" S. Lederman is the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel , appointed by President Obama in January 2009. He previously served as an Attorney Advisor in OLC from 1994 to 2002. He has concentrated on questions involving freedom of speech, the Religion Clauses, congressional power and federalism, equal protection, separation of powers, copyright, and food and drug law. He helped draft the June 2010 memorandum authorizing the assassination of U.S. citizen and Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

#1182

Oskar Krejčí

#55114

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Oskar Krejčí is a Czech political scientist, who is the author of approximately thirty books and more than thousand articles in the area of political science. Krejčí is a director of the Institute of the Global Studies of The Jan Amos Komensky University Prague, Czech Republic.

#1183

Alasdair Roberts

#37917

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Alasdair S. Roberts is a Canadian professor at the School of Public Policy, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and author of articles and books on public policy issues, especially relating to government secrecy and the exercise of government authority.

#1184

Aurel Braun

#52684

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Aurel Braun is a professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto. He is also a senior member of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies and of the Centre for International Studies, and a fellow and senator of Trinity College at the University of Toronto. Braun has been twice appointed as a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Braun received his Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics. He is a Canadian citizen.

#1185

Evelyne Huber

#39563

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Evelyne Huber is an American and Swiss political scientist specializing in comparative politics and a scholar of Latin America, currently the Morehead Alumni Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she was the Department Chair for more than a decade. Her work has focused on democracy and redistribution, particularly in Latin America.

#1186

Asher Arian

#56888

Overall Influence

1938 - 2010 (72 years)

Asher Arian was an American and Israeli political scientist who was an expert on Israeli politics and election studies, and who served as a professor at universities in Israel and the United States.

#1187

Yossi Beilin

#40671

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Yosef "Yossi" Beilin is an Israeli politician who has served in multiple ministerial and leadership positions in the Israeli government. Much of his political career was in the Labour Party. He also served as chairman of the Meretz-Yachad political party. After retiring from political life, Beilin founded 'Beilink', a business consultancy company. He also writes opinion pieces in Israeli papers Haaretz and Israel Hayom.

#1188

Tanja Börzel

#58941

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Tanja A. Börzel is a German political scientist. Her research and teaching focus on the fields of European Integration, Governance, and Diffusion. She is professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of Political Science of Freie Universität Berlin, director of the Center for European Integration, and holder of the Jean Monnet Chair for European Integration from 2006 until 2009. Currently, she is department chair of the Otto-Suhr-Institute of Political Science.

#1189

Burhanettin Duran

#29140

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Burhanettin Duran is a Turkish political life scholar best known as author of academic studies on the transformation of political Islam under the rule of Justice and Development Party in Turkey. He is a former member of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Sehir University. He is currently the general director of the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research , an Ankara-based think tank funded by Turkish government.

#1190

Ellen M. Immergut

#32451

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Ellen Margaretha Immergut is a political scientist known for her work on electoral and political competition on welfare state reforms, policy analysis, health politics in Europe, and the impact of right-wing populism on social policies.

#1191

Lester Salamon

#39089

Overall Influence

1943 - 2021 (78 years)

Lester M. Salamon was a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He was also the director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at The Johns Hopkins Institute for Health and Social Policy Studies. Salamon has written or edited over 20 books in addition to hundreds of articles, monographs and chapters that have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Voluntas, and numerous other publications. He was a pioneer in the empirical study of the nonprofit sector in the United States, and is considered by many experts in his field to have been a leading specialist on alternative tools of government action and on the nonprofit sector in the U.S.

#1192

Sharon Wright Austin

#51781

Overall Influence

Sharon Wright Austin is an American political scientist, currently a professor of political science at the University of Florida, where she was also a longtime Director of the African-American Studies Program. Austin is a prominent scholar of American politics with specialties in African-American studies, political participation, and both urban and rural local politics.

#1193

Ruth Lister, Baroness Lister of Burtersett

#38726

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Margot Ruth Aline Lister, Baroness Lister of Burtersett, , is currently Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University. She has written or contributed to a number of books, pamphlets and articles on poverty, social security and women's citizenship.

#1194

Robert Bates

#33695

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Robert Hinrichs Bates is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government in the Departments of Government and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. From 2000–2012, he served as Professeur associé, School of Economics, University of Toulouse.

#1195

John M. Sides

#20220

Overall Influence

John M. Sides is an American political scientist. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996, and pursued a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. Sides then began his teaching career as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He subsequently joined the George Washington University faculty, then was appointed William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair and Professor at Vanderbilt University.

#1196

John Arquilla

#20940

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

John Arquilla is an American analyst and academic of international relations. Biography Arquilla received a B.A. from Rosary College in 1975. Until 1987, he worked as a surety-bond executive. He then enrolled at Stanford University, where he studied Political Science, receiving the M.A. degree in 1989 and a Ph.D. in 1991.

#1197

Kees Aarts

#57335

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Cornelis Wilhelmus Maria Antonia Aarts is a Dutch political scientist and Professor of Political Science at the Department of Public Administration of the University of Twente, particularly known for his work on comparative electoral behavior.

#1198

Timothy E. Cook

#49231

Overall Influence

1954 - 2006 (52 years)

Timothy E. Cook was an American scholar of mass communications, Professor of Journalism at Louisiana State University. Cook is known for his books on the interaction of politics and the media, and also as an influence on journalism research and education. He was best known for his widely reviewed book Governing with the News.

#1199

Moncef Marzouki

#47944

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Mohamed Moncef Marzouki is a Tunisian politician who served as the fifth president of Tunisia from 2011 to 2014. Through his career he has been a human rights activist, physician and politician. On 12 December 2011, he was elected President of Tunisia by the Constituent Assembly.

#1200

Klaus Segbers

#43791

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Klaus Segbers is a German political scientist and professor for International Relations and East European Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Global Politics at Freie Universität Berlin, which offers four distinct graduate study programs designed for professionals and young leaders. His research interests include theories of international relations, transformations in the former Soviet Union, international political economy, and globalization.

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