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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School

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Subdiscipline

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List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#1901

Baruch Hirson

#41332

Overall Influence

1921 - 1999 (78 years)

Baruch Hirson was a South African political activist, academic, author, and historian, who was jailed for nine years in apartheid-era South Africa before moving to England in 1973. He was co-founder of the critical journal Searchlight South Africa, and in 1991, a critic of what he referred to as Stalinist methods used by the African National Congress .

#1902

Elizabeth G. Ferris

#94985

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Elizabeth G. Ferris is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and serves as the co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement. In addition to her positions within the Brookings Institution, Ferris is an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She is also a commissioner of the Women's Refugee Commission, a distinguished author and a lifelong humanitarian.

#1903

Leonard Seabrooke

#60432

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Leonard Seabrooke is an Australian academic and a professor in International Political Economy and Economic sociology at the Copenhagen Business School, and Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

#1904

William Tapley Bennett Jr.

William Tapley Bennett Jr.

#52578

Overall Influence

1917 - 1994 (77 years)

William Tapley Bennett Jr. was an American diplomat who served as Ambassador to the Dominican Republic during the 1965 civil war and who recommended that President Johnson intervene with United States troops.

#1905

Leopold Kohr

#43482

Overall Influence

1909 - 1994 (85 years)

Leopold Kohr was an economist, jurist and political scientist known both for his opposition to the "cult of bigness" in social organization and as one of those who inspired the Small Is Beautiful movement. For almost twenty years, he was Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the University of Puerto Rico. He described himself as a "philosophical anarchist." His most influential work was The Breakdown of Nations. In 1983, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "his early inspiration of the movement for a human scale."

#1906

Ilir Meta

#64940

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Ilir Rexhep Meta is an Albanian politician. He served as the president of Albania from 24 July 2017 to 24 July 2022. Previously Meta served as Prime Minister from 1999 to 2002 and he was Speaker of the Parliament of Albania from 2013 to 2017. He also held positions as Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs and Minister of Economy, Trade, and Energy. Prior to that, he held the Chairmanship of the Parliamentary Commission of European Integration. He founded the Socialist Movement for Integration in 2004.

#1907

Olivier Fillieule

#70785

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Olivier Fillieule is a political scientist and sociologist. Fillieule serves as Senior Researcher at CNRS , full-time Professor at the University of Lausanne, and Director of the Institute for Political and International Studies .

#1908

Vladimir Gelman

#77846

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Vladimir Yakovlevich Gelman is a Russian political scientist and writer. Candidate of political science, professor at the European University at Saint Petersburg. He was an activist of the Russian democratic movement in Leningrad , a member of the Central Election Commission with an advisory vote from the Yabloko movement .

#1909

Scott Althaus

#91232

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Scott Althaus is a professor of political science and of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the director of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University.

#1910

Sylvia Bashevkin

#78076

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Sylvia Beth Bashevkin, is Canadian academic and writer known for her research in the field of women and politics. Career Bashevkin is a professor in the Department of Political Science in the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science. From 2005 to 2011, she was Principal of University College, Toronto. She is a senior fellow of Massey College, Toronto.

#1911

Frances E. Lee

#71089

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Frances E. Lee, an American political scientist, is currently a professor of politics and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She previously taught at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Maryland, College Park. Lee specializes in American politics focusing on the U.S. Congress. From 2014 to 2019, Lee was co-editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly and is the first editor of Cambridge University Press's American Politics Elements Series. Her 2009 book Beyond Ideology has been cited over 600 times in the political science literature.

#1912

Karl von Habsburg

#44476

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Karl von Habsburg is an Austrian politician and the head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, therefore being a claimant to the defunct Austro-Hungarian thrones. As a citizen of the Republic of Austria, his legal name is Karl Habsburg-Lothringen.

#1913

Laurie S. Fulton

Laurie S. Fulton

#27185

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Laurie Susan Fulton is an American attorney, diplomat and the former United States Ambassador to Denmark. She was sworn in on July 15, 2009, and presented her credentials to the Queen of Denmark on August 3, 2009. She resigned effective February 15, 2013. In March 2013, she returned to Williams & Connolly LLP until July 2014.

#1914

Bingu wa Mutharika

#49570

Overall Influence

1934 - 2012 (78 years)

Bingu wa Mutharika was a Malawian politician and economist who was President of Malawi from May 2004 until his death in April 2012. He was also President of the Democratic Progressive Party, which he founded in February 2005; it obtained a majority in Malawi's parliament in the 2009 general election.

#1915

Richard J. Stillman II

#95631

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Richard J. Stillman II is a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado at Denver. Stillman was born on June 17, 1943, in San Antonio, Texas, to Richard J. Stillman I. After completing a bachelor of arts degree at Harvard University in 1966, Stillman received his Ph.D. from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. He taught at California State University, Bakersfield and George Mason University before joining the faculty of the University of Colorado at Denver in 1992.

#1916

Ted Sorensen

#37919

Overall Influence

1928 - 2010 (82 years)

Theodore Chaikin Sorensen was an American lawyer, writer, and presidential adviser. He was a speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, as well as one of his closest advisers. President Kennedy once called him his "intellectual blood bank". Notably, though it was a collaborative effort with Kennedy, Sorensen was generally regarded as the author of the majority of the final text of Profiles in Courage, and stated in his memoir that he helped write the book. Profiles in Courage won Kennedy the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Sorensen helped draft Kennedy's inaugural address and was also the...

#1917

Ian C. Kelly

#72174

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Ian Crawford Kelly is an American retired Foreign Service Officer and Ambassador currently serving as the Ambassador in Residence at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is an American former statesman and senior foreign service officer who last served as the United States Ambassador to Georgia, from 2015 to 2018. He previously served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from 2010 to 2013. Prior to his ambassadorship, Kelly held a variety of high-level roles at the U.S. State Department, including serving as the department spokesman ...

#1918

Janine A. Davidson

Janine A. Davidson

#55595

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Janine Anne Davidson is an American public servant, known for expertise on topics such as military operations, U.S. foreign policy and national security policy as well as higher education leadership.

#1919

Gerry Stoker

#100844

Overall Influence

#1920

Marc Gopin

#45961

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Marc Gopin is the director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution , and James H. Laue Professor at the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.

#1921

Raymond F. Hopkins

#74978

Overall Influence

1939 - 2023 (84 years)

Raymond F. Hopkins is an American political science professor and expert on food politics and food policy. Hopkins taught at Swarthmore College from 1967 until his retirement in 2007, where he was the Richter Professor of Political Science.

#1922

William David McCain

William David McCain

#34037

Overall Influence

1907 - 1993 (86 years)

William David McCain was an educator, archivist and college president. He was a recognized leader of the Mississippi political establishment and a leader in its struggle in the 1950s and 1960s to maintain racial segregationism and what he considered the "southern way of life." He served as Mississippi state archivist, a Major General in the Mississippi National Guard, a longtime leader and promoter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and as the fifth president and a major architect of Mississippi Southern College .

#1923

Anatoly Torkunov

#17935

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Anatoly Vasilyevich Torkunov is a Russian diplomat and international relations scholar. The rector of Moscow's State Institute of International Relations, Torkunov is a member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Collegium of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. He is the President of MGIMO Endowment Fund. He serves as chairman of the United Nations Association of Russia. He was a co-president of the Trianon Dialogue, Russian-French civil societies forum .

#1924

Johannes Bronkhorst

#3551

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Johannes Bronkhorst is a Dutch Orientalist and Indologist, specializing in Buddhist studies and early Buddhism. He is emeritus professor at the University of Lausanne. Life After studying Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam , he moved to India, where he turned to Sanskrit and Pāli, first at the University of Rajasthan , then the University of Pune . In Pune he read with traditional Sanskrit scholars, specializing in Sanskrit grammar and Indian philosophy. Back in the Netherlands, he did a second doctorate at the University of Leiden. Having worked for r...

#1925

James Druckman

#101255

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

James N. Druckman is an American political scientist who was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. Druckman earned a bachelor's degree at Northwestern University in 1993, followed by a doctorate from the University of California, San Diego in 1999. He was an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, and returned to Northwestern in 2005 as a faculty member, where he was appointed Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science in 2009. He is also an Honorary Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. Starting Spring 2024, he is a faculty me...

#1926

Peter Burnham

#79418

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Peter Burnham is a Marxist Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. He was previously based at the University of Warwick, where he was Head of Department in the Department of Politics and International Studies from 2004 to 2008 and where he remains an Associate Fellow. His interests lie in the areas of British politics , radical international political economy, state theory, and political science research methods . He earned his BA and a PhD at the University of Warwick. He has an avid interest in Smith and Riccardo, as well as the Labour Theory...

#1927

Charles S. Bullock III

#52140

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Dr. Charles S. Bullock III is the Richard B. Russell Professor of political science, as well as the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. He has taught at the University of Georgia since 1968. He is specifically an expert in Southern Politics, Legislative Politics, Elections and Electoral Systems. Since 1977, he has been the director of the Georgia Legislative Internship Program. He is often quoted in the media as an expert on politics, especially in the Southern United States.

#1928

Colin Leys

#55757

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Colin Temple Leys is a British political economist who is emeritus professor of political studies at Queen's University, Canada, and an honorary research professor at Goldsmiths, University of London. From 1956 to 1960 he taught at Balliol College, Oxford and then became the first Principal of Kivukoni College in Dar es Salaam, before holding chairs at Makerere University, Uganda, and the universities of Sussex, Nairobi, Sheffield, and Queen's. Until his retirement from Queen's in 1996 his research focussed mainly on African development. He has since worked mainly on the political economy of Britain, but from 1997 to 2010 he was co-editor with Leo Panitch of the Socialist Register.

#1929

Gerald Gamm

#80826

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Gerald H. Gamm is a professor of political science and history at the University of Rochester. He served for 12 years as chair of the political science department. Currently, his research focuses on Congress, state legislatures, and urban politics. Gamm is the author of two books: The Making of New Deal Democrats , and Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed .

#1930

Jürgen Trittin

#66737

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Jürgen Trittin is a German Green politician. He was Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005 in Germany.

#1931

Emmanuel Bombande

#42658

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Emmanuel Bombande is a conflict resolution, peacebuilding, and development professional from Accra, Ghana, and is the Chair of the Board of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.

#1932

Lucian Leape

#48186

Overall Influence

Lucian Leape is a physician and professor at Harvard School of Public Health, who has been active in trying to improve the medical system to reduce medical error. In 1994 he had an article, "Error in Medicine," published in JAMA, which called for the application of systems theory to prevent medical errors. In 1997, he testified before a subcommittee of the US Senate with his recommendations for improving medical safety.

#1933

Donna Lee Bowen

#71823

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Donna Lee Bowen is an American political scientist who specializes in studies of family policy in the Middle East. She is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University where she is also an affiliated faculty member of the Women's Studies Program.

#1934

Samina Yasmeen

#49979

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Samina Yasmeen is an Australian–Pakistani author and intellectual who is known for her work in political and strategic development in South Asia and the role of Islam in world politics. She has published articles on the position of Pakistani and Middle Eastern women, the role of Muslims in Australia, and India–Pakistan relations.

#1935

Shi Yinhong

#34968

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Shi Yinhong is a Chinese political scientist and international relations scholar. He is a cistinguished professor of international relations, chairman of the Academic Committee of the School of International Studies, and director of the Centre on American Studies at the Renmin University of China. He has served as a counsellor at the Counsellors' Office of the State Council of China since February 2011.

#1936

Stephen Barber

#83411

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Stephen Barber is a British political scientist, political economist and author. He is Professor of Global Affairs at Regent's University London. He is also a senior fellow at the Global Policy Institute. He has also worked in the European Research Forum and is a former director of MBA. He is a specialist in British public policy and party politics, political economy and having worked in the City of London, the globalisation of financial markets. He holds a BA in government, an MA in contemporary history and a PhD in political science, awarded by several London universities. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Member of the Securities & Investment Institute.

#1937

Sergey Baburin

#61766

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Sergey Nikolayevich Baburin is a Russian nationalist politician, member of the State Duma of the first, second and fourth convocations where he served in the Committee on Civil, Criminal, Arbitral and Procedural Law, leader of the Russian All-People's Union and an ex-leader of the Rodina political party. He also served as a rector of the Russian State University of Trade and Economics from 2002 to 2012.

#1938

André Blais

#100552

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

André Blais is a Canadian political scientist who is a professor in the department of political science at the University of Montreal. At this university, he holds the University Research Chair in Electoral Studies, and formerly held two Tier I Canada Research Chairs in Electoral Studies there. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a former president of the Canadian Political Science Association, and a former chair of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems.

#1939

Deborah Birx

#30642

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Deborah Leah Birx is an American physician and diplomat who served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump from 2020 to 2021. Birx specializes in HIV/AIDS immunology, vaccine research, and global health. Starting in 2014, she oversaw the implementation of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program to support HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs in 65 countries. From 2014-2020, Birx was the United States global AIDS coordinator for presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump and served as the United States special representative for global health diplomacy between 2015 and 2021.

#1940

Michael R. Reich

#60891

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Michael R. Reich is an American political scientist and the Taro Takemi Research Professor of International Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. a specialist in the political analysis of health reform, pharmaceutical policy and access to medicines, and health policy in Japan and Mexico.

#1941

Lisa Hill

#55421

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Lisa Hill is Professor of Politics at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She has previously held positions at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University. Hill's research interests include electoral law, Australian politics, history of political thought, social, political and economic thought of the Scottish Enlightenment, the development and pre-history of liberalism, classical political economy, political corruption, and classical Stoicism. She is particularly known for her work in support of compulsory voting. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sc...

#1942

Barbara Kellerman

#39135

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Barbara Kellerman is an American professor of public leadership, currently at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Previously, she was a professor at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, and Uppsala universities and Dartmouth College. She was one of the founders of the International Leadership Association.

#1943

Jacques Gernet

#15924

Overall Influence

1921 - 2018 (97 years)

Jacques Gernet was an eminent French sinologist of the second half of the 20th century. His best-known work is The Chinese Civilization, a 900-page summary of Chinese history and civilization which has been translated into many languages.

#1944

Sven Steinmo

#88991

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Sven Holger Steinmo is a professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He obtained his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his MA, MPH, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His primary teaching and research interests are in the realm of institutional theory, comparative public policy, and comparative historical analysis. Steinmo has also researched how political and economic institutions grew and currently operate within various developed democracies, such as Sweden and Japan, while utilizing the perspectives found in evolutionary theory.

#1945

Bina D'Costa

#73663

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Bina D'Costa is an Australian-Bangladeshi academic who specializes in conflict and gender studies in South Asia. Career D'Costa was at the Global Justice Center in New York City in 2008. D'Costa was a professor of International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs of the Australian National University. She was a visiting scholar at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva from 2012 to 2014. She was a visiting scholar at the Refugee Studies Centre under Department of International Development of University of Oxford from 2011 to 2012. She served as the Asia Rapporteur of Asia-Europe Meeting in 2017.

#1946

Frits Bolkestein

#43835

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Frederik "Frits" Bolkestein is a Dutch retired politician and businessman who served as Leader of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy from 1990 to 1998 and European Commissioner for Internal Market from 1999 until 2004 under Romano Prodi. Bolkestein studied Mathematics at the Oregon State University getting a Bachelor of Mathematics degree and continued his study at the University of Amsterdam obtaining a Master of Mathematics degree followed by a postgraduate education in Philosophy and Greek literature at his alma mater obtaining Masters of Philosophy and Arts degrees, followed by...

#1947

Leah Stokes

#65266

Overall Influence

Leah Cardamore Stokes is a Canadian-American political scientist specializing in environmental policy. She is the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition, Stokes is a senior policy consultant at Evergreen Action and Rewiring America. She also hosts the climate change podcast A Matter of Degrees. Her research focuses on political behavior, public opinion, and the politics of energy and environmental policy in the United States.

#1948

James Gustave Speth

James Gustave Speth

#23929

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

James Gustave Speth is an American environmental lawyer and advocate who co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. Early life and education He was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1942. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1964, attended Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and graduated from Yale Law School, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall and the Yale Law Journal, in 1969.

#1949

Karen Mossberger

Karen Mossberger

#69260

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Karen Mossberger is an American political scientist and scholar of public policy and public administration. She is the Frank and June Sackton Professor of Urban Policy at Arizona State University, where she is also Director of the School of Public Affairs and a Distinguished Sustainability Scholar at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. She is an expert on the diffusion and implementation of policy ideas, with a particular focus on the politics of internet access in the United States.

#1950

Eunice Reddick

#58491

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Eunice Sharon Reddick is an American diplomat and is a former ambassador to Niger. She previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe. Biography Reddick graduated from Hunter College High School in New York City in 1969 and received a BA in history and literature from New York University and a master's degree in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs . After completing her graduate studies, Reddick worked for several years at the Africa-America Institute in New York and Washington.

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