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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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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#1951

Cyril Svoboda

#76028

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Cyril Svoboda is a Czech politician, who was leader of the Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party in 2001–2003 and 2009–2010, and a member of the Chamber of Deputies in 1998–2010. During his political career he held several ministerial positions, including Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs . He founded the Diplomatic Academy in Prague in 2011 and is currently lecturing at several universities in Prague.

#1952

Hizkias Assefa

#62897

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Hizkias Assefa is a conflict mediator known widely in Africa for his non-aligned work as a consultant who has mediated in most major conflict situations in sub-Saharan Africa in the past 20 years, as well as in a dozen countries elsewhere. He is also a professor of conflict studies. Of Ethiopian origin, he is based in Nairobi, Kenya. He was one of the founding faculty members in 1994 of the Conflict Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University.

#1953

Simon Sheikh

#45573

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (38 years)

Simon Sheikh is an Australian activist who is currently CEO of superannuation fund Future Super. He was the National Director of GetUp! from 2008 to 2012. He was a delegate to the economics stream of the Australia 2020 Summit and was named the New South Wales Young Professional of the Year in 2007.

#1954

Joan Tronto

#8134

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Joan Claire Tronto , is professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, and was previously professor of women's studies and political science at Hunter College and the Graduate School, City University of New York.

#1955

Charles Stewart III

#33669

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Charles Stewart III is an American political scientist, currently the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#1956

Alfredo Co

#35081

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Alfredo Pimentel Co is a Filipino Sinologist and philosopher. He is the only contemporary Asian scholar to deliver a plenary lecture at the COMIUCAP conference, in 2008. Early years and education In 1967, Co was named "Outstanding Chinese Youth in the Philippines" by the Republic of China during his sophomore year in high school in Naga City. Co graduated with a philosophy degree at the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas in 1972 and earned a master's degree in 1974. He also earned a doctorate degree in 1976 at the same university.

#1957

Curtis Gans

#56193

Overall Influence

1937 - 2015 (78 years)

Curtis Bernard Gans was an American activist, writer, and expert on American voting patterns. With Allard K. Lowenstein, Gans in 1967 started and headed the Dump Johnson movement. Based on opposition to the Vietnam War, the movement, which was considered quixotic at first, grew strong and was instrumental in setting in motion events which eventually persuaded president Lyndon Johnson that continuing his campaign to be re-nominated for the presidency by his party would be difficult and divisive and uncertain of success. Johnson withdrew his candidacy, an unusual event in American politics for ...

#1958

Paul Dibb

#30087

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Paul Dibb AM is an English-born Australian strategist, academic and former defence intelligence official. He is currently emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre that is part of the Australian National University.

#1959

William Schaffner

#84679

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

William Schaffner is an American physician and researcher who specializes in infectious diseases. He is the Professor of Preventive Medicine in the Department of Health Policy as well as the Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is the current medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, of which he previously served as president.

#1960

Peter Aucoin

#81116

Overall Influence

1943 - 2011 (68 years)

Peter Charles Aucoin, was a professor emeritus of political science and public administration at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. He is recognized as one of the leading theorists on the practice and reform of public administration and governance. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Canada. He also served as an advisor to the Government of Canada as well as provincial and municipal governments.

#1961

Jan Knippers Black

Jan Knippers Black

#71226

Overall Influence

1940 - 2021 (81 years)

Jan Knippers Black was an American professor of Human Rights, International and Comparative Politics of the Western Hemisphere, Women's Rights, and Globalization at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

#1962

Sara Hobolt

#71233

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Sara Binzer Hobolt, FBA is a Danish political scientist, who specialises in European politics and electoral behaviour. She holds the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

#1963

Jonathan Caulkins

#57273

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Jonathan Paul Caulkins is an American drug policy researcher and the H. Guyford Stever Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University. Education Caulkins received his B.S. and M.S. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1987, and his S.M. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989 and 1990, respectively.

#1964

Jonathan Fox

#45049

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Jonathan Fox is the Yehuda Avner Professor of Religion and Politics in the Department of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. He has authored, co-authored, or edited 13 books and over 120 journal articles and book chapters on domestic and international ethnic and religious conflict and the role of religion in politics. He is also the director of the Religion and State project.

#1965

David A. Welch

#79135

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

David Andrew Welch is a Canadian political scientist. He is a university research chair and professor of political science at the Balsillie School of International Affairs of the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

#1966

Walter Kickert

#55640

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Walter Julius Michael Kickert is a Dutch academic, and Professor of Public Management at the department of Public Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam, known for his work on "Public policy and administration sciences in the Netherlands."

#1967

Martha Ackelsberg

#54733

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Martha A. Ackelsberg is an American political scientist and women's studies scholar. Her work focuses on the nature of power and its relationship with communities. Cases used in her research include feminist activism in the United States and the Mujeres Libres, an anti-fascist women's organization during the Spanish Revolution of 1936.

#1968

Nick Srnicek

#15977

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

Nick Srnicek is a Canadian writer and academic. He is currently a lecturer in Digital Economy in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. Srnicek is associated with the political theory of accelerationism and a post-scarcity economy.

#1969

Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

#59821

Overall Influence

1923 - Present (101 years)

Henry Alfred Kissinger was an American diplomat, political scientist, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as United States secretary of state and national security advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

#1970

Steven Fish

#62427

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Michael Steven Fish is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include democracy, authoritarianism, postcommunist countries, legislatures and constitutional systems, economic reform, and religion and politics.

#1971

Frances McCall Rosenbluth

#90249

Overall Influence

1958 - 2021 (63 years)

Frances McCall Rosenbluth was an American political scientist. She was the Damon Wells Professor of Political Science at Yale University. She was a comparative political economist, specializing in the political economy of Japan, the role of gender in political economy, inequality, and party politics. She had previously served as the deputy provost of Yale University, while being an executive board member at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. She was also the Vice-President of International Affairs at Waseda's School of Political Science and Economics.

#1972

Timothy Groseclose

Timothy Groseclose

#61464

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Timothy Jay Groseclose is an American academic. He is Professor of Economics at George Mason University, where he holds the Adam Smith Chair at the Mercatus Center. Early life Timothy Groseclose was born on September 22, 1964, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

#1973

Terry Calvani

#45372

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Terry Calvani is a lawyer, former government official and university professor. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan, he served one term as Commissioner of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. He was also a Member of the governing board of the Competition Authority of Ireland , where he held the criminal investigations portfolio. He has taught antitrust law at Vanderbilt University School of Law, Duke University School of Law, the Harvard Law School, Trinity College Dublin, Cornell Law School, Columbia Law School and University of California, Hastings College of Law. He retired from the practice of antitrust law with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in April 2019.

#1974

Wickrema Weerasooria

#47021

Overall Influence

Wickrema Weerasooria was a Sri Lankan lawyer, civil servant, diplomat and an academic. He was the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Plan Implementation, former Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia and New Zealand. He served as Sri Lanka's first Insurance Ombudsman.

#1975

Ralph Lerner

#33928

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Ralph Lerner is an American political philosopher. Lerner was born in Chicago, and attended the University of Chicago for his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in political science. His Ph.D. was advised by Leo Strauss. Lerner later joined the Chicago faculty, where he was named the Benjamin Franklin Professorship until 2003, when he was granted emeritus status.

#1976

Alexander Rondeli

#73534

Overall Influence

1942 - 2015 (73 years)

Alexander "Alex" Rondeli was a Georgian political scientist and one of the country's leading specialists in international affairs who founded and led the think-tank Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies from 1998 until his death in 2015.

#1977

Henning Melber

#67605

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Henning Melber is a German political scientist and sociologist. He is a German-Namibian and Swedish Africanist and political activist. Biography Melber grew up in Esslingen am Neckar and Leutkirch in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He moved to Namibia in 1967 as a teenager and the son of German immigrants, and graduated from the German Higher Private School Windhoek in 1970. In 1974, he joined the SWAPO liberation movement. From 1975 to 1989 he was banned from entering Namibia and until 1993 also to South Africa. After Namibia's independence he returned to Namibia. In 2000 he moved to Sweden.

#1978

Hans Bruyninckx

Hans Bruyninckx

#66267

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Hans Emiel Aloysius Bruyninckx is a Belgian political scientist and international relations scholar specialized in international environmental governance and European environmental politics. He has headed the European Environment Agency since 2013. While in this position, he is on leave from his posts as Professor of International Relations and Global Environmental Governance, Institute for International and European Policy; and Director, Research Institute for Work and Society, both at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven .

#1979

Andrew F. Cooper

Andrew F. Cooper

#84529

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Andrew Fenton Cooper is a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, in Canada. He also teaches at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, also in Waterloo, and was a fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation on the same campus.

#1980

Ines Mergel

#45247

Overall Influence

Ines Mergel is a full professor of public administration in the department of politics and public administration at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She was previously on the public administration faculty at The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, where she earned tenure as an associate professor of public administration and international affairs. Mergel is an expert in social media and teaches courses in agile government, digital government, and social media in the public sector.

#1981

Hans-Joachim Veen

#80876

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Hans-Joachim Veen is a German political scientist. He is the former Director of Research at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, head of the scientific advisory committee to the Stasi Records Agency, and an honorary professor at the University of Trier.

#1982

Tibor P. Nagy

#82149

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Tibor Peter Nagy Jr. is a former United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and a former American foreign service officer who served as the American ambassador to Guinea and to Ethiopia.

#1983

Raphael Cohen-Almagor

#94723

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Raphael Cohen-Almagor is an Israeli/British academic. Cohen-Almagor received his D.Phil. in political theory from Oxford University in 1991, and his B.A. and M.A. from Tel Aviv University . In 1992–1995 he lectured at the Hebrew University Law Faculty. In 1995–2007 he taught at the University of Haifa Law School, Department of Communication, and Library and Information Studies University of Haifa. In 2019, he was distinguished visiting professor to the Faculty of Laws, University College London . In 2023, he is the Olof Palme Visiting Professor at Lund University, Sweden.

#1984

Golam Wahed Choudhury

#83610

Overall Influence

1926 - 1997 (71 years)

Golam Wahed Choudhury , also known as G. W. Choudhury, was a political scientist and diplomat from East Pakistan, which later became Bangladesh. He worked as the Director General of the Research Division of the Pakistani foreign ministry and later as Pakistan's Minister of Communications. After the separation of Bangladesh, he returned to academic work. He authored several books on Pakistan's international relations, and taught at the University of Dhaka, Royal Institute of International Affairs , Columbia University and other institutions.

#1985

Hanan Ashrawi

#52910

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Hanan Daoud Mikhael Ashrawi is a Palestinian politician, activist, and scholar. Ashrawi began her career at Birzeit University. Beginning in the 1990s, Ashrawi was a member of the PLO's Leadership Committee, serving as the official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation during the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991. In 1996, Ashrawi was appointed as the Palestinian Authority Minister of Higher Education and Research. Ashrawi was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council representing Jerusalem in 1996 and was re-elected in 2006. She was elected as member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 2009 and 2018, becoming the body's first female member.

#1986

Christopher Wolfe

#44840

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Christopher Wolfe is an American political scientist and Distinguished Research Scholar and former Affiliate Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas. He is also Emeritus Professor at Marquette University. Wolfe is known for his works on American judicial review and natural law public philosophy.

#1987

Katharine Moon

#73955

Overall Influence

Katharine H. S. Moon is an American academic. Moon is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Wellesley College. She is also the inaugural holder of the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for East Asia Policy Studies.

#1988

Paul Rogers

#62102

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Paul Rogers is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and Global Security Consultant with Oxford Research Group . He has worked in the field of international security, arms control and political violence for over 30 years. He lectures at universities and defence colleges in several countries and has written or edited 26 books, including Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Power and the Illusion of Control and Why We're Losing the War on Terror . Since October 2001 he has written monthly Briefing Papers on international security and the "war on terror" for ORG.

#1989

David Farrell

#52752

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

David M. Farrell is a political scientist. He was appointed to the Chair of Politics at University College Dublin in 2009, having returned to Ireland after two decades working at the University of Manchester, where from 2006-09 he was Head of the School of Social Sciences. A specialist in the study of electoral systems, elections and parties, he has published 15 books and over 90 articles and book chapters. His most recent books include: Political Parties and Democratic Linkage , which was awarded the GESIS Klingemann Prize for the Best Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Scholarship, and Electoral Systems .

#1990

Michael Clarke

#73354

Overall Influence

Michael Clarke is a British academic who specialises in defence studies. He was Director of the Royal United Services Institute from 2007 to 2015. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he serves as Sky News' security and defence analyst.

#1991

Žarko Puhovski

#8911

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Žarko Puhovski is a Croatian professor, political analyst, philosopher and intellectual, former president of the Croatian Helsinki Committee. Biography Puhovski was born in Zagreb on 15 December 1946. He was born to a Jewish mother although he has never been an active Jew. Puhovski became well-known public figure at a very early age, for almost a trivial reason: When he became the president of his gymnasium committee of the Alliance of Socialist Youth a directive arrived to revitalise the political work with more vivacious subjects. Having discovered an article on contraception in the magazin...

#1992

John Schaar

#41773

Overall Influence

1928 - 2011 (83 years)

John Homer Schaar , also known as Jack Schaar, was an American political theorist. He was a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Schaar was born in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, and raised on a farm in a Lutheran family.

#1993

Aurel S. Croissant

#78935

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Aurel Croissant is professor of political science at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. Education Croissant received his Dr. Phil. In political science from the University of Mainz and his M.A. in political science, sociology and public law from that university, which he graduated with summa cum laude.

#1994

Peter Gries

#77356

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Peter Hays Gries is the Lee Kai Hung Chair and founding Director of the Manchester China Institute at the University of Manchester, where he is also Professor of Chinese politics. He studies the political psychology of international affairs, with a focus on China and the United States.

#1995

Mark Philp

#56672

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Mark Philp is a British political philosopher and historian of political thought who specialises in British political thought in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He has published books on Thomas Paine and on responses to the French Revolution in Britain.

#1996

Jan Pronk

#56666

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Johannes Pieter "Jan" Pronk Jr. is a retired Dutch politician and diplomat of the Labour Party and activist. Pronk studied Economics at the Rotterdam School of Economics obtaining a Master of Economics degree and worked as a researcher at his alma mater and the Economics Institute from July 1960 until May 1971 and was also active as a political activist in the New Left movement. After the election of 1971 Pronk was elected as a Member of the House of Representatives on 11 May 1971 and served as a frontbencher and spokesperson for Development Cooperation. Pronk was also selected as a Member of the European Parliament on 13 March 1973 and dual served in both positions.

#1997

Janine Brodie

#78979

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Marion Janine Brodie is a Canadian political scientist. She is a Distinguished University Professor and a Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Social Governance at the University of Alberta. Brodie was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002 and honoured with the Order of Canada in 2017.

#1998

Liu Yu

#32442

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Liu Yu is a Chinese writer and political scientist. She is an associate professor of political science at Tsinghua University in Beijing. A prominent spokeswoman for Chinese liberalism, Liu's book , an introduction of the workings of American democracy to a Chinese audience, was acclaimed as a creative and well-written cornerstone of the ideological movement.

#1999

James Anderson

#37157

Overall Influence

James H. Anderson is an American government official and academic who served as acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Donald Trump administration. Early life and education Anderson earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Amherst College. He then earned a Master of Arts in law and a PhD in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His 1993 doctoral thesis was entitled National decisionmaking and quick-strike intervention during the 1980s: a comparative analysis of operations Urgent Fury, El Dorado Canyon, and Just Cause and his thesis advisor was Richard H.

#2000

Louay M. Safi

#44131

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Louay M. Safi is a Syrian-American, a scholar of Islam and the Middle East, and an advocate of Arab and Muslim American rights. He published on such issues as social and political development, modernization, democracy, human rights, and Islam and Modernity. He is the author of 11 books and numerous papers, and speaker on questions of leadership, democracy, Islam, and the Middle East. He is also a spokesperson for the Syrian National Coalition, a league of Syrian opposition groups fighting Syrian President Assad, which was formed in November 2012 in Doha, Qatar.

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