The Most Influential People Across History

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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List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#1401

Michael Mousseau

#43807
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Michael James Mousseau is a political scientist whose research and teaching is focused on international relations and comparative politics, in particular the link between economic conditions, institutions, and conflict. He is the creator of economic norms theory, which identifies how sustained and equal opportunity in a market can create popular interests in liberal democracy, and peace within and between nations. He advocates that wealthy countries make aggressive efforts towards bringing widespread economic opportunity to lesser developed countries, which he argues would result in a just an...
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#1402

Hugh White

#26735
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Hugh White is an Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, long-time defence and intelligence analyst, and author who has published works on military strategy and international relations. He was Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Australian Department of Defence from 1995 until 2000 and was the inaugural Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute . His 2019 book How to Defend Australia attracted national attention after raising the proposition of re-examining ...
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#1403

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
#29821
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg was the 15th President of the George Washington University, serving from 1988 to 2007. On August 1, 2007, he retired from the presidency and became GW's President Emeritus and University Professor of Public Service at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.
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#1404

Louise Chappell

#41609
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Louise A. Chappell is an Australian political scientist. She is a Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, where she is also the director of the Australian Human Rights Institute. She studies gender and politics, the politics of the International Criminal Court, and the politics of Australia in comparative perspective.
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#1405

John Loughlin

#69049
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
John Loughlin, FAcSS, FLSW is a British-based academic and educator from Northern Ireland, and a noted specialist in European territorial politics. Career Loughlin attended St Finian's Primary School followed by St. Malachy's College, Belfast. He then spent several years as a Cistercian monk at Portglenone Abbey where he carried out the usual studies for the priesthood in philosophy, theology and biblical studies.
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#1406

Ernie Eves

#43490
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Ernest Larry Eves is a Canadian lawyer and former politician who served as the 23rd premier of Ontario from 2002 to 2003. A Progressive Conservative, he took over the premiership upon Mike Harris's resignation as party leader, but the party was defeated in the 2003 election by the Liberals, under Dalton McGuinty.
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#1407

Martin Bútora

#60931
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Martin Bútora is a Slovak sociologist, writer, university professor and diplomat. Political career In November 1989 he was a founding member of the political movement Public Against Violence, the leading movement of the democratic revolution in Slovakia. He was the human rights advisor to the former president of Czechoslovakia Václav Havel from 1990 to 1992.
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#1408

Alan Keyes

#27458
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Alan Lee Keyes is an American politician and perennial candidate who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987. A member of the Republican Party, Keyes sought the nomination for President of the United States in 1996, 2000, and 2008.
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#1409

Maggie Williams

#17052
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Margaret Ann Williams is a former director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University and is a partner in Griffin Williams, a management-consulting firm. She was the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Following Clinton's win in the New Hampshire primary in January 2008, Williams was brought onto the Clinton campaign staff as a senior adviser. On February 10, 2008, she replaced Patti Solis Doyle as the campaign's manager.
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#1410

Ben Ansell

#60860
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Ben W. Ansell is Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and, with David Samuels, editor of Comparative Political Studies. Education Ansell graduated with a first-class degree in history from the University of Manchester in 1998, followed by an MA in Cultural Studies at the same institution in 1999. He left the UK for the University of California, Berkeley, receiving an MA in political science. He finished his PhD in government at Harvard University in 2006.
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#1411

Daniel S. Papp

Daniel S. Papp
#27157
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Daniel S. Papp is an American scholar of international affairs and policy. Papp served in a variety of professorial and administrative roles in the University System of Georgia . From 2006 to 2016, Papp served as President of Kennesaw State University , the third-largest university in the State of Georgia. During Papp's tenure, the University's enrollment increased by approximately seventy-five percent, growing from 19,854 to 33,252 undergraduate and graduate students. Under Papp, the University also significantly increased its research and graduate profile, adding a number of new academic programs and becoming classified as a Doctoral University with Moderate Research Activity.
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#1412

Nadia Urbinati

Nadia Urbinati
#56458
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Nadia Urbinati is an Italian political theorist, the Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University. Personal life In 1989, she received her Ph.D. at European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She is also a naturalized US citizen.
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#1413

Benjamin Ginsberg

Benjamin Ginsberg
#40503
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Benjamin Ginsberg is a libertarian political scientist and professor at Johns Hopkins University who is notable for his criticism of American politics, in which he says that citizens have become "marginalized as political actors" and political parties weakened while state power has grown. His assessment of the futility of voting, along with his notion that the public has an illusion of control over government, has caused controversy. He is a co-author, along with Matthew Crenson, of Downsizing Democracy, 2004, which received critical attention in mainstream newspapers.
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#1414

Ronald Rogowski

#75550
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Ronald Rogowski is a political scientist who focuses on comparative politics and international political economy. He is a professor in UCLA's department of Political Science where he has taught since 1981. He has also taught at Duke University and Princeton University, and teaches in a visiting capacity at New York University Abu Dhabi. He obtained his PhD in Political Science in 1970 from Princeton.
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#1415

Roberta Wohlstetter

#16954
Overall Influence
1912 - 2007 (95 years)
Roberta Morgan Wohlstetter was an American historian of U.S. military intelligence. In 1962 she authored Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. The book was based on a several-year study of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and is still considered the foundational study of military surprises. Winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to her in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan.
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#1416

I. William Zartman

#34462
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Ira William Zartman is Professor Emeritus at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. He earlier directed the school's Conflict Management and African Studies programs. He holds the Jacob Blaustein Chair in International Organizations and Conflict Resolution. He is a founder and current Board Chairman of the International Peace and Security Institute .
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#1417

Joni Lovenduski

#49893
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Joni Lovenduski, is Professor Emerita of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London. She was previously Anniversary Professor of Politics at Birkbeck , Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton and Professor of Comparative Politics at Loughborough University . She was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 2007. In the same year she received the Special Recognition Award from the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom. She was presented with the Gender and Politics Award by the European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Gender and Politics in 200...
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#1418

Martha Derthick

#39152
Overall Influence
1933 - 2015 (82 years)
Martha Ann Derthick was an American public administration scholar and academic. She is most known for her work on social security programs, deregulation and federalism. Biography Born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, on June 20, 1933, she graduated from Hiram College in Ohio in 1954. In 1962, she earned a doctorate in political science from Radcliffe College.
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#1419

Emmette Redford

#65242
Overall Influence
1904 - 1998 (94 years)
Emmette Redford was an American political scientist. He attended Midland College, Midland, Texas and Southwest Texas State Teachers College , finally graduating from The University of Texas at Austin. He received a Ph.D. in government from Harvard in 1933. He was born in San Antonio, Texas. He grew up in Johnson City, Texas at the same time as Lyndon B. Johnson, and Redford and Johnson knew each other when they were children.
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#1420

Stein Ringen

#35272
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Stein Ringen is a Norwegian sociologist and political scientist. He is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford .
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#1421

Damien Kingsbury

Damien Kingsbury
#58292
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Damien Kingsbury , is an Australian academic specializing in political and security issues. Education Kingsbury studied Journalism and Politics at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In 1983, he was awarded the Australian News Correspondents Memorial Award as the Tony Joyce Scholar for his journalism from El Salvador, to undertake an MS in Journalism at Columbia University, New York. In 1989, Kingsbury completed an MA in Development Studies at Monash University in 1991. In 1997 he graduated with a PhD at Monash University, Cultural and Political Issues in Australian Reporting of Indo...
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#1422

William Sweet

William Sweet
#14526
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
William Sweet is a Canadian philosopher, and a past president of the Canadian Philosophical Association and of the Canadian Theological Society. Biography Sweet was born in St. Albert near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and studied political science, theology, and philosophy in Canada, South Africa, France, and Germany. He completed a DEA in political science at the Sorbonne at the Université de Paris , a PhD in philosophy at the University of Ottawa, a DTh in systematic theology at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, and a D.Ph. at the Université Saint-Paul. He also studied at Carleton University, the University of Manitoba, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Centre Sèvres .
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#1423

Richard Felix Staar

#34664
Overall Influence
1923 - 2018 (95 years)
Richard Felix Staar was an American political scientist and historian. He held a position of senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His areas of specialization included Russia and East-Central Europe , military strategy, national security, arms control, and public diplomacy. He was an author of numerous books and articles.
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#1424

Stephen White

#37498
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Stephen Leonard White is British political scientist and historian, emeritus professor at University of Glasgow, an author of many articles and books about politics of Soviet Union and Russia. Stephen White graduated from Trinity College, Dublin with degrees in history and political science, and then completed a PhD in Soviet studies at University of Glasgow and a DPhil in politics at Wolfson College, Oxford. White was awarded the Marshall Scholarship.
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#1425

Gaylord Nelson

#21552
Overall Influence
1916 - 2005 (89 years)
Gaylord Anton Nelson was an American politician from Wisconsin who served as a United States senator and governor. He was a member of the Democratic Party and the founder of Earth Day, which launched a new wave of environmental activism.
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#1426

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
#35826
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
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#1427

Bogomil Ferfila

#82264
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Bogomil Ferfila is a Slovenian political scientist, economist, and journalist. Ferfila is founder and head of the American, German and Global Studies graduate program, chair of the "Policy Analysis and Public Administration" and a member of the Centre for Political Science Research at the Faculty of Social Sciences of University of Ljubljana.
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#1428

John M. Hobson

#26521
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
John Montagu Hobson, FBA is a political scientist, international relations scholar and academic. Since 2005, he has been Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield.
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#1429

Uri Davis

#23157
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Uriel "Uri" Davis is an academic and civil rights activist. Davis has served as Vice-Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and as lecturer in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. Davis describes himself as "a Palestinian Hebrew national of Jewish origin, anti-Zionist, registered as Muslim and a citizen of an apartheid state - the State of Israel." A member of Fatah since 1984, he was elected to the Revolutionary Council for the Palestinian party in 2009.
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#1430

Patrick T. Riley

Patrick T. Riley
#43962
Overall Influence
1941 - 2015 (74 years)
Patrick Thomas Riley was Michael Oakeshott Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is notable for his translations of the political writings of Gottfried Leibniz and his research on social contract theory, the general will, and the history of universal jurisprudence.
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#1431

Noura Erakat

Noura Erakat
#26717
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Noura Saleh Erakat is an American activist, university professor, legal scholar, and human rights attorney. She is currently an associate professor at Rutgers University, specializing in international studies. With her primary focus being the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, she is a vocal critic of the State of Israel.
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#1432

Walter Mattli

#47447
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Walter Mattli is a supernumerary fellow at St. John's College of the University of Oxford, England. He served as fellow in politics at St. John's College and professor of international political economy in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford. Mattli was a senior member of the Oxford International Relations Society.
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#1433

Roy Romanow

#49794
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Roy John Romanow is a Canadian politician who served as the 12th premier of Saskatchewan from 1991 to 2001. Early life Romanow was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Tekla and Michael Romanow, who were Ukrainian immigrants from Ordiv, currently Chervonohrad Raion, Ukraine. His first language as a child was Ukrainian.
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#1434

Leonardo Morlino

Leonardo Morlino
#57943
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Leonardo Morlino is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at LUISS "Guido Carli" University specializing in comparative politics. He has been the first Italian President of the International Political Science Association from 2009 until 2012.
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#1435

Richard E. Flathman

#40811
Overall Influence
1934 - 2015 (81 years)
Richard E. Flathman was the George Armstrong Kelly Professor of Political Science, emeritus, at Johns Hopkins University. He is known for having pioneered, with Brian Barry, David Braybrooke, Felix Oppenheim, and Abraham Kaplan, the application of analytic philosophy to political science. He was a leading advocate of liberalism and a champion of individuality. He defended a conception of social freedom according to which it is "negative, situated, and elemental."
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#1436

Peter Andreas

#20829
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Peter Andreas is an American political scientist. Since 2014, he has been the John Hay Professor of International Studies at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Common themes of across his work include war, borders, and shadow economies in Europe and the Americas.
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#1437

Sudipta Kaviraj

#39705
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Sudipta Kaviraj is a scholar of South Asian Politics and Intellectual History, often associated with Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies. He is currently teaching at Columbia University in the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies.
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#1438

Kris Deschouwer

#32913
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Kris Deschouwer is a Belgian political scientist and emiritus professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He was a member of the Coudenberg group, a Belgian federalist think tank. His research is on the consequences of the institutional complexity of Belgium for political actors and for political parties in particular.
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#1439

Bonnie Honig

#29383
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Bonnie Honig , is a political, feminist, and legal theorist specializing in democratic theory. In 2013-14, she became Nancy Duke Lewis Professor-Elect of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science at Brown University, succeeding Anne Fausto-Sterling in the Chair in 2014–15. Honig was formerly Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation.
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#1440

Howard Rosenthal

#42358
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
Howard Lewis Rosenthal was an American political scientist who was professor of politics at New York University. He also taught at Carnegie-Mellon University and Princeton University, where he was the Roger Williams Straus professor of social sciences.
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#1441

Sam Potolicchio

Sam Potolicchio
#39734
Overall Influence
Sam Potolicchio is a professor specializing in government, leadership and political communications. He serves as Director of Global and Custom Education at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy Executive Education program and Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of Political Communications at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration . Potolicchio is founder and President of the Preparing Global Leaders Forum , an international leadership training program with campuses in Russia, Croatia and Jordan.
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#1442

Gertruda Uścińska

Gertruda Uścińska
#22675
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Gertruda Uścińska is a Polish lawyer and political scientist. She is a Professor of Social Sciences at The University of Warsaw and the Polish Institute of Labor and Social Affairs in Warsaw . Since 2016, Uścińska has been the President of Poland's Social Insurance Institution, which is the Polish state organization responsible for social insurance. She has also been an elected Chairwoman at the International Social Security Association.
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#1443

David M. Kennedy

#27852
Overall Influence
1905 - 1996 (91 years)
David Matthew Kennedy was an American politician and businessman. He served as the 60th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and later as the 8th U.S. Ambassador to NATO, both under U.S. President Richard Nixon. He was Chief Executive and Chairman of the Board of Continental Illinois during the 1950s and 1960s.
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#1444

Christopher Manfredi

#44426
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Christopher P. Manfredi is a professor of political science, acting Principal and Provost and Vice-Principal Academic at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. From 2006 to 2015 he served as McGill's Dean of Arts. He studied at the University of Calgary and received his PhD from Claremont Graduate School. His research focuses on judicial politics in Canada. In his publications, he has often warned against the dangers of judicial activism by the Supreme Court of Canada.
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#1445

Julia Azari

Julia Azari
#59694
Overall Influence
Julia R. Azari is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at Marquette University, where she is also the assistant chair of the Department of Political Science. Azari studies the American presidency and political parties in the United States, with particular attention to partisanship in the United States and how these systems have changed since the early 20th century. Azari also engages in public communication about political science, including as a frequent contributor to the politics coverage of the data journalism website FiveThirtyEight, a writer of the blo...
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#1446

Elizabeth Anne Reid

#43310
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Elizabeth Anne Reid AO, FASSA, is an Australian development practitioner, feminist and academic with a distinguished career in and significant contribution to national and international public service. She founded, established and worked with a number of pioneering and specialised United Nations institutions, government agencies and non-governmental organisations. Reid was appointed the world's first advisor on women's affairs to a head of government by the Australian Labor Government of Gough Whitlam in 1973.
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#1447

Fred L. Smith

#17721
Overall Influence
Fred L. Smith Jr. is founder and former president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit libertarian think tank. He has written on topics such as antitrust law, environmental regulation, and the economic impacts of global warming.
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#1448

Kanchan Chandra

Kanchan Chandra
#43775
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Kanchan Chandra is a political scientist who is currently Professor of Politics at New York University. She has made significant research contributions on a range of subjects in political science including comparative ethnic politics, constructivism, democratic theory, intrastate conflict, patronage and clientelism, and South Asian politics.
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#1449

Antoni Macierewicz

#43439
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Antoni Macierewicz is a Polish politician and the former Minister of National Defence. He previously served as the Minister of Internal Affairs, Head of the Military Counterintelligence Service, and Minister of State in the Ministry of National Defence.
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#1450

Bruce E. Cain

#58545
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Bruce E. Cain is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. Professor Cain's fields of interest include American politics, political regulation, democratic theory, and state and local government. He has written extensively on elections, legislative representation, California politics, redistricting, and political regulation. In addition to his academic work, Cain frequently is quoted in national and international media, and regularly appears as a political expert for KGO-TV in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a member o...
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