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.

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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#1451

Jim Messina

#27006

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Jim Messina is an American political adviser who was the White House deputy chief of staff for operations under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011 and served as the campaign manager for Obama's successful 2012 re-election campaign. His "innovative fusion of technology and politics led Google chairman Eric Schmidt to call the 2012 race 'the best-run campaign ever'". He is the CEO of the Messina Group.

#1452

Marilyn Waring

#30644

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Dame Marilyn Joy Waring is a New Zealand public policy scholar, international development consultant, former politician, environmentalist, feminist and a principal founder of feminist economics. In 1975, aged 23, she became New Zealand's youngest member of parliament for the liberal-conservative New Zealand National Party. As a member of parliament she chaired the Public Expenditure Committee. Her support of the opposition Labour Party's proposed nuclear-free New Zealand policy was instrumental in precipitating the 1984 New Zealand general election, and she left parliament in 1984.

#1453

Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu

#40800

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu is a Turkish diplomat and politician who is currently a member of the Grand National Assembly. He also served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey from August 2014 to August 2015, and again from 24 November 2015 to 6 June 2023.

#1454

Charles King

#25834

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Charles King is the Professor of International Affairs and Government at Georgetown University, where he previously served as the chairman of the faculty of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

#1455

Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj

#43792

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Elbegdorj Tsakhia is a Mongolian politician and journalist who served as President of Mongolia from 2009 to 2017. He previously served as Prime Minister in 1998 and again from 2004 to 2006. Elbegdorj was one of the key leaders of the 1990 Mongolian democratic revolution that ended 70 years of communist rule in Mongolia, and co-drafted the country's 1992 constitution that guaranteed democracy and a free market economy. Elbegdorj has been labeled by his supporters as a "freedom fighter" and the "Golden Sparrow of Democracy," alluding to a bird that comes with spring sunshine after a long, harsh...

#1456

Philip B. Coulter

#38159

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Philip Brooks Coulter is a US political scientist and is Professor Emeritus of Political Science as well as former Dean at the University of New Orleans . Education In 1961, he received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and English at Centre College. From 1961 to 1962, he passed 24 graduate hours at the Department of Political Science of the University of Kentucky. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science from the State University of New York at Albany, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy .

#1457

Hans van de Ven

#46137

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Johan 'Hans' van de Ven is an authority on the history of 19th and 20th century China. He holds several positions at the University of Cambridge, where he is Professor of Modern Chinese History, Director in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at St Catharine's College and previously served as Chair of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. He studied sinology at Leiden University. Then, after studying with Susan Naquin at the University of Pennsylvania for a period of time, he moved to Harvard University, where he studied modern Chinese history under Philip Kuhn and received his PhD.

#1458

Hassan Nafaa

#81151

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Hassan Nafaa is an Egyptian writer and professor of political science at Cairo University. He was a coordinator of the National Association for Change, a loose political alliance in Egypt prior to the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

#1459

Susan Eaton

#61834

Overall Influence

1957 - 2003 (46 years)

Susan Catharine Eaton was an American political scientist and workers' rights activist. Eaton was an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, who became a nursing home researcher at Harvard and workers' activist. She wrote about health care management, women's role in union leadership and work-family issues and gender equity in the workplace.

#1460

Christopher C. Hood

#83655

Overall Influence

#1461

Sarah Binder

#64387

Overall Influence

Sarah A. Binder is an American political scientist, author, senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, and professor of political science at George Washington University's Columbian College of Arts and Science.

#1462

Léon Vandermeersch

#47331

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Léon Vandermeersch was a French sinologist. He studied the culture of China as well as that of Japan and Korea. Biography Vandermeersch studied Chinese and Vietnamese at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. He graduated from the Faculté des lettres de Paris in 1951 with a law degree. He began his career in Vietnam as a secondary school teacher and was subsequently curator of the Musée Louis Finot from 1951 to 1958. He then moved to Japan and Hong Kong, where he continued his research on ancient China.

#1463

Lawrence Harrison

Lawrence Harrison

#46549

Overall Influence

1932 - 2015 (83 years)

Lawrence E. Harrison was an American scholar known for his work on international development and being former USAID mission director to various Latin American countries. He is the past director of the Cultural Change Institute at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, where he also served as an adjunct lecturer. He is the author of various books and articles, most notably his work with Samuel P. Huntington, Culture Matters.

#1464

Yan Xuetong

#37020

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Yan Xuetong is a Chinese political scientist and serves as a distinguished professor and dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University. Yan is one of the major Chinese figures in the study of international relations . He is the founder of 'moral realism', a neoclassical realist theoretical paradigm in IR theory. His moral realist theory is based on political determinism.

#1465

Hafeez Malik

#35879

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Hafeez Malik was a Pakistan-American political scientist and the professor of political science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Early life and education Hafeez Malik was born in 1930 in Lahore, Punjab, British India. After a high school education at Mission High School, Lahore, he graduated from Government College, Lahore with a BA degree in 1949. After a year in law college, he came to the US as a student at Syracuse University, where he completed a double master's degree in journalism and international relations, and then a PhD in political science in 1960.

#1466

Robert Picht

#27441

Overall Influence

1937 - 2008 (71 years)

Robert Picht was a German academic. Biography Son of Professor Georg Picht and his wife Edith Axenfeld, Robert Picht studied sociology and Romance studies at the universities of Munich, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Paris, Madrid and Freiburg. In 1964 he obtained a Magister Artium degree in French literature in Hamburg. at the Sorbonne in 1972, he passed the exam to earn a Dr. phil. In 1990 he was appointed professor of sociology at the University of Hagen.

#1467

Ross M. Lence

#30044

Overall Influence

1943 - 2006 (63 years)

Ross Marlo Anthony Lence, was a professor of political science at the University of Houston from 1971 to 2006, where he was John and Rebecca Moores Scholar and held the Ross M. Lence Distinguished Teaching Chair. He taught political philosophy, American political thought, and American government as a member of the political science and honors college faculties. His edited volume of the works of John C. Calhoun, Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, is one of the foremost references on Calhoun.

#1468

David Nelken

#8453

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

David Nelken is a Distinguished Professor of Legal Institutions and Social Change Faculty of Political Science, University of Macerata and the Distinguished Visiting Research Professor, Faculty of Law, Cardiff University. His work focuses primarily on comparative criminal justice and comparative sociology of law. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023.

#1469

Bell hooks

#63124

Overall Influence

1952 - 2021 (69 years)

Gloria Jean Watkins , better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She is best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class. The focus of hooks' writing was to explore the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published around 40 books, including works that ranged from essays, poetry, and children's books. She published numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures.

#1470

V. Spike Peterson

#44148

Overall Influence

V. Spike Peterson is a professor of international relations in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, and affiliated faculty in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, the Institute for LGBT Studies, International Studies, Human Rights Practice Program, and the Center for Latin American Studies. Her cross-disciplinary research and teaching are focused on international relations theory, gender and politics, global political economy, and contemporary social theory. Her recent publications examine the sex/gender and racial dynamics of global inequalities an...

#1471

Shinichi Kitaoka

Shinichi Kitaoka

#21129

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Shinichi Kitaoka is a Japanese political scientist. He has held many roles such as the president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency , president of the International University of Japan, professor at Japan's GRIPS-Tokyo School of Security and International Studies, and Japanese ambassador to the United Nations. His area of expertise is the history of Japanese politics and diplomacy, as a political scientist and a historian.

#1472

Paisley Currah

#38023

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Paisley Currah is political scientist and author, known for his work on the transgender rights movement. His book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity examines the politics of sex classification in the United States. He is a professor of political science and women's and gender studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was born in Ontario, Canada, received a B.A. from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario and an M.A and Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. He lives in Brooklyn.

#1473

Kenneth P. Miller

#35285

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Kenneth P. Miller is a professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, specializing in state politics, policy, and law. Miller is the Director of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government, a research institute known for its expertise in redistricting, elections, demographic research, polling, and public policy analysis. He has written extensively on state politics and policy, direct democracy, constitutional law, courts, and political polarization.

#1474

Steven Reed

#35845

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Steven Robert Reed is a political scientist and Professor of Modern Government in the Faculty of Policy Studies at Chuo University in Tokyo. He has held positions at the University of Alabama and Harvard University, and he has served as a Visiting Professor at Stanford University, University of Washington, and Chiba University.

#1475

Saeed Hajjarian

#48677

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Saeed Hajjarian is an Iranian reformist political strategist, journalist, pro-democracy activist and former intelligence officer. He was a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to the president Mohammad Khatami. On 12 March 2000, he was shot in the face by an assailant and severely disabled, an act many Iranians believe was in retaliation for his help in uncovering the chain murders of Iran and his significant help to the Iranian reform movement in general, according to the BBC.

#1476

Ester Fuchs

#47144

Overall Influence

Ester Rachel Fuchs is an American academic. She is Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Fuchs studied at Queens College, CUNY, Brown University, and the University of Chicago.

#1477

Samuel Freeman

#33143

Overall Influence

Samuel Freeman is an American philosopher, Avalon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a leading authority on the philosophy of John Rawls and also writes in political and legal philosophy, from a Rawlsian perspective.

#1478

Léon Dion

#41945

Overall Influence

1922 - 1997 (75 years)

Léon Dion was a Canadian political scientist. Dion was born in Saint-Arsène, Rivière-du-Loup Regional County Municipality. He founded the department of political science at Université Laval with Gérard Bergeron and Maurice Tremblay in 1954.

#1479

Norma M. Riccucci

#59441

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Norma Margherita Riccucci is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University in Newark. She is a scholar in the field of Public Administration. An authority on issues related to social equity, affirmative action and public management, Dr. Riccucci is widely known for her work in the area of diversity management in government employment.

#1480

Jeffrey Kaplan

#20231

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Jeffrey Kaplan is an American academic who has written and edited a number of books on racism, religious violence, terrorism and the far-right. He is an associate professor of religion at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh and a member of the board of academic advisors of the university's Institute for the Study of Religion, Violence and Memory.

#1481

Glenn Hook

#27225

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Glenn Dawson Hook is a British academic, author and Professor of Japanese Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield. Early life Hook earned a 1997 Ph.D. in Political Science at Chuo University in Tokyo.

#1482

Tomislav Sunić

#23928

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Tomislav Sunić , sometimes known as Tom Sunic, is a Croatian-American translator, far-right activist and a former professor. His views are often cited as part of the European New Right. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Sunić as a white nationalist.

#1483

David McLellan

#20907

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

David McLellan is an English scholar of Marxism. He has written extensively on the thought of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Simone Weil. Life David McLellan was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St. John's College, Oxford University.

#1484

Robert van Voren

Robert van Voren

#27969

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Robert van Voren is a Dutch human rights activist, sovietologist and historian. He is a professor of Soviet and post-Soviet studies in the Ilia State University in Tbilisi and in the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas as well as a visiting professor at University of Silezia, Katowice, Poland. He is also Chief Executive of the international foundation Human Rights in Mental Health-Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry and Executive Director of the Andrei Sakharov Research Center for Democratic Development at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania.

#1485

George C. Lodge

#47789

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (97 years)

George Cabot Lodge II is an American professor and former politician. In 1962, he was the Republican nominee for a special election to succeed John F. Kennedy in the United States Senate, but was defeated by Ted Kennedy. He was the son of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who lost reelection to the Senate in 1952 to John F. Kennedy. His father was also the vice presidential nominee for the Republican party in 1960, an election won yet again by Kennedy.

#1486

Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

#39515

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou is a political historian and public intellectual. A Harvard University academic, Mohamedou is Professor of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. of which he is deputy director. His work focuses on political violence, state-building, racism, and the history of international relations. He is a member of the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, and is regarded as a leading international expert on the new forms of transnational terrorism.

#1487

Roger A. Pielke

Roger A. Pielke

#20076

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Roger A. Pielke Sr. is an American meteorologist with interests in climate variability and climate change, environmental vulnerability, numerical modeling, atmospheric dynamics, land/ocean – atmosphere interactions, and large eddy/turbulent boundary layer modeling. He particularly focuses on mesoscale weather and climate processes but also investigates on the global, regional, and microscale. Pielke is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher.

#1488

Alan F. Westin

#34603

Overall Influence

1929 - 2013 (84 years)

Alan Furman Westin was a Professor of Public Law & Government Emeritus, Columbia University, former publisher of Privacy & American Business, and former President of the Center for Social & Legal Research.

#1489

W. J. M. Mackenzie

#58679

Overall Influence

1909 - 1996 (87 years)

William James Millar Mackenzie CBE FBA , also known as Bill Mackenzie, was professor of government at the University of Manchester and professor of politics at the University of Glasgow. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963 and a fellow of the British Academy in 1968.

#1490

Élie Barnavi

#29360

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Élie Barnavi is an Israeli historian and diplomat, who was the Israeli ambassador to France between 2000 and 2002. Born in Bucharest he moved as a child to Tel Aviv, Israel. He authored some fifteen books on France and Europe in the turmoil of the Religious Wars and on the contemporary history of Israel and of the Jewish people. He published numerous studies in professional journals in Europe, the US and Canada, as well as political articles in the Israeli and European press.

#1491

Andrew D. Martin

#17519

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Andrew D. Martin is chancellor and professor of political science and law at Washington University in St. Louis. As an academic, Martin has contributed widely to the areas of judicial politics, quantitative political methodology, and applied statistics, with attention paid specifically to the U.S. Supreme Court.

#1492

David S. Mason

#83034

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

David Stewart Mason is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Butler University in Indianapolis. His most recent book, The End of the American Century explores the interrelated dimensions of America's domestic and international decline. That book has been translated and published in China, by the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House.

#1493

Hannes Adomeit

#47833

Overall Influence

1942 - 2022 (80 years)

Hannes Adomeit was a German political scientist who worked as a political analyst with emphasis on foreign policy, security and defense, transatlantic perspectives in Europe. He worked with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University as well as Bosch Public Policy Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, D.C., and "Non-Resident Fellow" at the Institute for Security Politics at the University of Kiel . He studied at the Freie Universität Berlin and received his PhD from Columbia University in 1972. He served as an expert for Soviet studies in various British, German, Canadian, and American institutes like the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica.

#1494

Elmira Bayrasli

Elmira Bayrasli

#62217

Overall Influence

Elmira Bayrasli is the author of the book From The Other Side of The World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places , which looks at the rise of entrepreneurship on a global level, and the co-founder, of Foreign Policy Interrupted. From The Other Side of The World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places, profiles seven entrepreneurs from seven countries overcoming seven obstacles. Those entrepreneurs and countries include: Turkey: Bulent Celebi, Airties; Nigeria: Tayo Oviosu, Paga; Pakistan: Monis Rahman, Rozee.pk; Mexico: Enrique Junco Gomez, Optima Energia; India: Shaffi Mather, 1...

#1495

Henrik Urdal

#44478

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Henrik Urdal is a Norwegian political scientist and the current director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo . Before his appointment as director in 2017 he was a research professor and research director at the institute. He was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Peace Research, the premier journal in the field, from 2010 to 2017.

#1496

Mark Kleiman

#30919

Overall Influence

1951 - 2019 (68 years)

Mark Albert Robert Kleiman was an American professor, author, and blogger who dealt with issues of drug and criminal justice policy. A professor of public policy for many years at UCLA, Kleiman in 2015 became the director of the Crime and Justice Program at New York University's Marron Institute of Urban Management. Kleiman was an expert in the field of crime and drug policy and authored several books in the field.

#1497

Wade MacLauchlan

#30956

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

H. Wade MacLauchlan , is a Canadian legal academic, university administrator, politician and community leader. He served as the fifth president of the University of Prince Edward Island from 1999 to 2011, becoming president emeritus in 2012. He served as the 32nd premier of Prince Edward Island from 2015 to 2019. His government was defeated in the April 23, 2019 general election. MacLauchlan announced his intention to step down as Liberal leader on 26 April 2019, and completed his term as Premier on 9 May 2019.

#1498

Michael Leifer

#69187

Overall Influence

1933 - 2001 (68 years)

Michael Leifer CMG was a British international relations scholar specialising in the politics and international relations of Southeast Asia. He was a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and also served as its pro-director from 1991-1995.

#1499

Laura Langbein

#61044

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Laura Irwin Langbein is a quantitative methodologist and professor of public administration and policy at American University in Washington, D.C. She teaches quantitative methods, program evaluation, policy analysis, and public choice. Her articles have appeared in journals on politics, economics, policy analysis and public administration.

#1500

Yaprak Baltacioğlu

#49330

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Yaprak Baltacioğlu is a retired Canadian public servant, lawyer, and professor. She has held senior leadership positions in the Canadian public service, serving as Secretary of the Treasury Board from 2012 to 2018. Baltacioğlu retired from the public service in 2018, and was appointed as the twelfth Chancellor of Carleton University in 2018. She is also on the faculty at the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto where she teaches graduate courses.

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