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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List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#1251

Sławomir Dębski

Sławomir Dębski

#45627

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Sławomir Jan Dębski is a Polish historian who has served as director of Polish Institute of International Affairs from 2007 until 2010 and again since 2016. He previously headed The Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding , and was a member of the Polish-Russian Group for Difficult Matters. He was assistant professor of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw and Warsaw University .

#1252

Ghassan Khatib

#63089

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Ghassan Khatib is a Palestinian politician. He was born in Nablus, in the West Bank, and is a member of the Palestinian People's Party. Khatib is married and has three children. He was also a member of the Madrid Peace Delegation in 1991 and was involved in the Washington negotiations from 1991 to 1993. He was appointed the Palestinian National Authority Minister of Labor in 2002, then the Planning Minister in 2005–06.

#1253

Sheldon Goldman

#58613

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Sheldon Goldman is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of Picking Federal Judges and The Federal Courts as a Political System, . He also has written other works and numerous articles in professional journals including American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, and Judicature and chapters in books. He is chair of the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association, 2000–2001; and a member of the Editorial Board, Law & Politics Book Review, 1994–1997; American Political Science Review, 1981–1985, and Amer...

#1254

Andrea Smith

#24804

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Andrea Lee Smith is an American academic, feminist, and activist. Smith's work has primarily focused on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women. Formerly an assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she is also a co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Boarding School Healing Project, and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations.

#1255

Paula D. McClain

#48885

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Paula Denice McClain , is a professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American Studies at Duke University and is a widely quoted expert on racism and race relations. Her research focuses primarily on racial minority-group politics and urban politics. She is co-director of Duke's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, and director of the American Political Science Association's Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which is hosted by Duke and funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke.

#1256

Bernard Landry

#31136

Overall Influence

1937 - 2018 (81 years)

Bernard Landry was a Canadian politician who served as the 28th premier of Quebec from 2001 to 2003. A member of the Parti Québécois , he led the party from 2001 to 2005, also serving as the leader of the Opposition from 2003 to 2005.

#1257

Benjamin Valentino

#27974

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Benjamin Andrew Valentino is a political scientist and professor at Dartmouth College. His 2004 book Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century, adapted from his PhD thesis and published by Cornell University Press, has been reviewed in several academic journals.

#1258

Elie Abel

#19294

Overall Influence

1920 - 2004 (84 years)

Elie Abel was a Canadian-American journalist, author and academic. Early life Born in Montreal, Quebec, Abel received a Bachelor of Arts degree from McGill University in 1941 and a Master of Science in journalism degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1942. He worked as a reporter for the Windsor Star in Windsor, Ontario, for a year, then served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II.

#1259

Lucien Bianco

#38173

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Lucien André Bianco is a French historian and sinologist specializing in the history of the Chinese peasantry in the twentieth century. He is the author of a reference book on the origins of the Chinese revolution and has co-edited the book China in the twentieth century. His Peasants without the Party was awarded the Association for Asian Studies Joseph Levenson Book Prize in 2003.

#1260

Edward Beiser

#39294

Overall Influence

1942 - 2009 (67 years)

Edward Beiser was an American political scientist, constitutional scholar, law professor and medical ethicist who taught at Brown University from 1968 to 2003. He also served as associate dean of Brown's medical school.

#1261

Harvey V. Fineberg

Harvey V. Fineberg

#15426

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Harvey Vernon Fineberg is an American physician. A noted researcher in the fields of health policy and medical decision making, his past research has focused on the process of policy development and implementation, assessment of medical technology, evaluation and use of vaccines, and dissemination of medical innovations. Fineberg has held several prominent positions over the course of his career, including Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, Provost of Harvard University, and President of the Institute of Medicine, now the National Academy of Medicine.

#1262

Aaron Rhodes

#53499

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Aaron Anthony Rhodes is an international human rights activist and writer. He is a senior fellow at Common Sense Society and President of the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe, an independent nongovernmental organization. Rhodes served as Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights between 1993 and 2007, during which period the IHF was engaged inter alia in human rights challenges in the Balkans, in Chechnya, and in Central Asia, and the organization expanded significantly. He has been active in civil society campaigns vis a vis the Human Dimension of the O...

#1263

Dean Jaensch

#52881

Overall Influence

1936 - 2022 (86 years)

Dean Harold Jaensch was an Australian political scientist and a Professor of Political and International Studies at The Flinders University of South Australia. Jaensch was awarded a Bachelor of Arts , a Master of Arts and PhD from the University of Adelaide. He wrote many highly regarded books on political parties, electoral politics and voting behaviour in Australian politics, and also focussed on South Australian and Northern Territory politics, federalism within the Anglosphere and empirical methodology.

#1264

Ngai-Ling Sum

#49357

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Ngai-Ling Sum is a British sociologist and political economist and co-director of the Cultural Political Economy Research Centre at Lancaster University. Career Her 2006 book Beyond the Regulation Approach. Putting Capitalist Economies in their Place was awarded the Gunnar Myrdal Prize awarded given by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. Geografiska Annaler called the book a good introduction to the theory of Regulation Approach. Sum's contributions to the book were considered "central in pushing its boundaries to the emerging project of cultural political economy" b...

#1265

Matthew Holden

#60605

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Matthew Holden Jr. is an American political scientist. Biography He attended public school in Mississippi and Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1950 and received a B.A. degree in political science from Roosevelt University in 1954. He received an M.A. from Northwestern University in 1956 and his Ph.D. in 1961. He served in the Korean War from 1955 to 1957.

#1266

Farish A. Noor

#26736

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Farish A. Noor also known as Badrol Hisham Ahmad Noor is a Malaysian academician, historian, and political scientist that is currently serving as a professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya.

#1267

Ayesha Siddiqa

#22723

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Ayesha Siddiqa , is a Pakistani political scientist, and an author who serves as a research associate at the SOAS South Asia Institute. She previously served as the inaugural Pakistan Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center between 2004 and 2005.

#1268

James N. Miller

James N. Miller

#28927

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

James Northey Miller Jr. is the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory's Assistant Director for Policy and Analysis and also serves on the National Security Council staff as U.S. Coordinator for the Australia-United Kingdom-United States security agreement. He previously served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from February 18, 2012 until January 8, 2014 and as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense from April 2009 to February 2012.

#1269

Patrizia Nanz

#18109

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Patrizia Nanz is a political scientist and an expert in public participation and democratic innovations. She has provided expertise to businesses, state agencies, and governments in various European countries.

#1270

Kevin V. Mulcahy

Kevin V. Mulcahy

#41680

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Kevin Vincent Mulcahy was an American political scientist who was the Sheldon Beychok Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Louisiana State University. He was on the faculty from 1980–2020.

#1271

Ilona Kickbusch

#27916

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Ilona Kickbusch is a German political scientist best known for her contribution to health promotion and global health. She is adjunct professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

#1272

Hendrik Spruyt

#26216

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Hendrik Spruyt is a Dutch political scientist. He is the Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations at Northwestern University. He is known for his research on state formation and sovereignty. Spruyt has advanced arguments for the emergence of the modern state that emphasize institutionalist aspects .

#1273

Devlet Bahçeli

#39090

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Devlet Bahçeli is a Turkish politician, economist, former deputy prime minister, and current chairman of the far-right, ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party . An academic in economics from Gazi University, Bahçeli is a founder of the Grey Wolves, and was elected as the chairman of the MHP in the first congress held after the death of Alparslan Türkeş in 1997. He entered parliament for the first time in the 1999 general election as a deputy from Osmaniye, taking part as deputy prime minister in DSP-MHP-ANAP coalition between 1999 and 2002, and ultimately brought the government down. He ...

#1274

Christian Reus-Smit

#17462

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Christian Reus-Smit is Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland, in Brisbane Australia. He is an internationally renowned scholar in the field of IR. Reus-Smit's research focuses on the institutional nature and evolution of international orders, and he has published on widely on issues of international relations theory, international law, multilateralism, human rights, American power, and most recently, cultural diversity and international order. He is long-time editor of the Cambridge Studies in International Relations book series, and was a Founding Editor with Duncan Snidal and Alexander Wendt of the leading journal International Theory.

#1275

Franz Schurmann

#30168

Overall Influence

1926 - 2010 (84 years)

Herbert Franz Schurmann was an American sociologist and historian who was best known for his research and writings about Communist China during the Cold War period. Schurmann taught at the University of California, Berkeley, in the departments of Sociology and History for 38 years. He also served a term as the head of the Center for Chinese Studies. He was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, and was the first American professor to visit Hanoi during the bombing raids there. He co-founded the Pacific News Service in 1970 together with author Orville Schell, serving as editor and commentator...

#1276

Abdalla Hamdok

#42750

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Abdalla Hamdok Al-Kinani is a Sudanese public administrator who served as the 15th Prime Minister of Sudan from 2019 to October 2021, and again from November 2021 to 2 January 2022. Prior to his appointment, Hamdok served in numerous national and international administrative positions. From November 2011 to October 2018, he was Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa . UNECA staff described Hamdok as "[a] diplomat, a humble man and a brilliant and disciplined mind". In 2020, Hamdok was named among Bloomberg's 50 Most Influential figures of the year.

#1277

Robert D. Blackwill

#35696

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Robert Dean Blackwill is a retired American diplomat, author, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, and lobbyist. Blackwill served as the United States Ambassador to India under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003 and as United States National Security Council Deputy for Iraq from 2003 to 2004, where he was a liaison between Paul Bremer and Condoleezza Rice.

#1278

Melissa Harris-Perry

Melissa Harris-Perry

#10339

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Melissa Victoria Harris-Perry , formerly known as Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell, is an American writer, professor, television host, and political commentator with a focus on African-American politics. Harris-Perry hosted the Melissa Harris-Perry weekend news and opinion television show on MSNBC from 2012 to February 27, 2016.

#1279

Stephen Szabo

#44130

Overall Influence

Stephen Francis Szabo is an American political scientist and educator who specializes in foreign policy. He was executive director of the German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Academy and a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and the National Defense University.

#1280

David G. Victor

#37247

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

David G. Victor is a professor of innovation and public policy at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego, where he holds the Center for Global Transformation Endowed Chair in Innovation and Public Policy.

#1281

Gawdat Bahgat

#49873

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Gawdat Bahgat is a professor of political science at the National Defense University. Bahgat was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt and earned degrees at Cairo University and American University in Cairo. He emigrated to the United States and earned his Ph.D at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida in 1991.

#1282

Anthony King

#32144

Overall Influence

1934 - 2017 (83 years)

Anthony Stephen King was a Canadian-British professor of government, psephologist and commentator. He taught at the Department of Government at the University of Essex for many years. Early life King was born in Canada on 17 November 1934, the son of Marjorie and Harold King. He gained a B.A. in History and Economics at Queen's University, Ontario. In the 1950s, he moved to UK as a Rhodes Scholar to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford, after which he gained a D.Phil. with thesis titled "Some aspects of the history of the Liberal Party in Britain, 1906–1914".

#1283

Stephen Holmes

#42760

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Stephen Holmes is the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law at New York University. He received a B.A. in 1969 from Denison University and a Ph.D. in 1976 from Yale University, where he won the John Addison Porter Prize for that year. After joining faculty at the University of Chicago as an Associate Professor of Political Science in 1985, Holmes became a tenured Professor of Political Science and Law at the university's law school in 1989. He joined the faculty at Princeton University from 1997-2000 as a Professor of Politics before his present post.

#1284

Martin H. Greenberg

#4236

Overall Influence

1941 - 2011 (70 years)

Martin Harry Greenberg was an American academic and anthologist in many genres, including mysteries and horror, but especially in speculative fiction. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. He was also a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel. Greenberg was also an expert in terrorism and the Middle East. He was a longtime friend, colleague and business partner of Isaac Asimov.

#1285

Dennis F. Thompson

#27906

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Dennis Frank Thompson is a political scientist and professor at Harvard University, where he founded the university-wide Center for Ethics and the Professions . Thompson is known for his pioneering work in the fields of both political ethics and democratic theory. According to a recent appraisal, he has become “influential within the world of political theory" by offering “greater concrete political thought than Rawls” and by showing “an atypical grasp, for a political theorist, of the real political world.”

#1286

Nobuo Tanaka

#19505

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Nobuo Tanaka is the Japanese official and the former Executive Director of the International Energy Agency. He was born on 3 March 1950 in Japan. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in the field of economics in 1972, and has an MBA from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio . In 1973 he began his career with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan . In 1989 he joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as the Deputy-Director for Science, Technology and Industry, and served in 1991–1995 as the Director for Science, Technology and Industry.

#1287

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad

#25924

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad is a Palestinian American scholar and the president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, a libertarian 501 tax-exempt think-tank. He also is president of the Islamic-American Zakat Foundation, a 501 tax-exempt religious and charitable organization that primarily serves poor and needy Muslims in the United States.

#1288

Kenneth P. Ruscio

#49227

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Kenneth Patrick Ruscio is an American university professor of politics, public policy, and leadership and was elected President of Washington and Lee University on March 7, 2006, serving through the end of 2016. He was previously Dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond , and, at Washington and Lee, served as Associate Dean of the Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics and as Dean of Freshmen. He has taught courses in leadership, environmental and public policy, American national government, and environmental studies. Ruscio studied at Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft, New Jersey, until 1972, when he entered Washington and Lee.

#1289

Avraham Diskin

#38751

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Abraham Diskin is an Israeli political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. Diskin was the Chair of the Political Science Department of the Hebrew University and the Chair of the Israel Political Science Association. He also served as a visiting professor at several universities in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. Diskin has published over twenty books and monographs, mostly about Israeli politics.

#1290

Robert W. Tucker

#38242

Overall Influence

1924 - Present (100 years)

Robert Warren Tucker , an American realist, is a writer and teacher who is Professor Emeritus of American Foreign Policy at the Johns Hopkins University, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Tucker was a Marshall Scholar.

#1291

Milorad M. Drachkovitch

#66299

Overall Influence

1921 - 1996 (75 years)

Milorad M. Drachkovitch was a political scientist of Serbian origin. He was born in Belgrade as the posthumous son of Milorad Drašković, Minister of the Interior in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, who had been assassinated. A liberal Serbian nationalist, during World War II Drachkovitch initially joined Chetnik resistance to the Nazi occupation, and later fled the country to escape Communist rule.

#1292

C. Peter Magrath

#11174

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Claude Peter Magrath is a higher education administrator who has served as provost or president at multiple American universities. Magrath was born on April 23, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York and received political science degrees as an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire and as a Ph.D. at Cornell University. He began his teaching and administrative career at Brown University during 1961–68 and later served as interim president at the University of Nebraska .

#1293

Morris Fiorina

#63692

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Morris P. Fiorina is an American political scientist and co-author of the book Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America with Jeremy C. Pope . Biography Fiorina received his B.A. from Allegheny College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.Stanford University He currently serves as the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science, Stanford University and is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He was formerly the Thompson Professor of Government at Harvard University and has taught at the California Institute of Technology. He resides in Portola Va...

#1294

Fred R. Harris

#26086

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Fred Roy Harris is an American former politician who served as a U.S. senator from Oklahoma from 1964 to 1973. Born in Walters, Oklahoma, Harris was elected to the Oklahoma Senate after graduating from the University of Oklahoma College of Law. He ousted the appointed U.S. Senate incumbent J. Howard Edmondson and won a 1964 special election to succeed Robert S. Kerr, narrowly defeating football coach Bud Wilkinson. Harris strongly supported the Great Society programs but criticized President Lyndon B. Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War. He was reelected in 1966 and declined to seek another...

#1295

Ann Louise Bardach

Ann Louise Bardach

#32695

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Ann Louise Bardach [A.L. Bardach] is an American journalist and non-fiction author. Bardach is best known for her work on Cuba and Miami and was called "the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami," by the Columbia Journalism Review, having interviewed dozens of key players including Fidel Castro, sister Juanita Castro, anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, CIA and Watergate plumber E. Howard Hunt, anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch and CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was present for the assassination of Che Guevara.

#1296

Mirjana Marković

#31172

Overall Influence

1942 - 2019 (77 years)

Mirjana "Mira" Marković was a Serbian politician, academic and the wife of Yugoslav and Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. She was the leader of the far-left Yugoslav United Left which governed in coalition with Milošević's Socialist Party of Serbia in the aftermath of the Bosnian War. She was reported to have huge influence over her husband and was increasingly seen as the power behind the throne. Among her opponents, she was known as The Red Witch and the Lady Macbeth of Belgrade.

#1297

Stuart Rees

#56664

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees AM is an Australian academic, human rights activist and author who is the founder of the Sydney Peace Foundation and Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia.

#1298

Lee Epstein

#32896

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

#1299

Amitabh Mattoo

#33545

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Amitabh Mattoo is one of India's leading thinkers and writers on Modern and Contemporary History, Political science, International relations. He was awarded Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2009. He is a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and honorary professor of international relations at the University of Melbourne. Until 19 June 2018, he served as Advisor to the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, with the status of a Cabinet Minister. Mattoo is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies and was recently elected unanimously as its Deputy Chair.

#1300

Geoffrey Garrett

#16239

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Geoffrey Garrett is an Australian political scientist, academic administrator, and the current dean of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. He has served as a professor of political science at the University of Oxford, Stanford University, Yale University, the University of California, Los Angeles , the University of Southern California and the University of Sydney. He was also the dean of the University of Sydney Business School and the University of New South Wales Business School . He was the dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from Ju...

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