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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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#401

Filip Reyntjens

#15705

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Filip Reyntjens is professor emeritus at University of Antwerp. His academic training is in constitutional law, but he later pivoted towards the study of politics especially of the Great Lakes region of Africa.

#402

William F. Schulz

#14053

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

William F. Schulz is a Unitarian Universalist minister who is most known for his role as the executive director of Amnesty International USA, the U.S. division of Amnesty International, from March 1994 to 2006. He is a prominent spokesperson, activist, and author focusing primarily on the issue of Human Rights and United States' Government role in promoting or disregarding them. In addition to his many public appearances, he has been affiliated with numerous non-profit organizations and universities.

#403

Fouad Ajami

#6180

Overall Influence

1945 - 2014 (69 years)

Fouad A. Ajami was a Lebanese-born American university professor and writer on Middle Eastern issues. He was a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Ajami was an outspoken supporter of the Bush Doctrine and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which he believed to have been a "noble war" and a "gift" to the people of Iraq.

#404

Rashid Khalidi

#5195

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Rashid Ismail Khalidi is a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East and the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He served as editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies from 2002 until 2020, when he became co-editor with Sherene Seikaly.

#405

Linda Arrigo

#16547

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Linda Gail Arrigo is an American political activist, human rights activist, and academic researcher in Taiwan. She formerly served as the international affairs officer of Green Party Taiwan. Early life and education Born in the United States to Joseph and Nellie Arrigo, she went to Taiwan as a teenager in 1963 with her father, formerly a United States Army logistics officer who was assigned to the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Taiwan. Arrigo attended Taipei American School and after graduating as valedictorian in 1966, eloped with her Taiwanese-American husband, George Chen, to the U.S.

#406

Gary King

#10547

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Gary King is an American political scientist and quantitative methodologist. He is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor and Director for the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. King and his research group develop and apply empirical methods in many areas of social science research, focusing on innovations that span the range from statistical theory to practical application.

#407

AK Abdul Momen

#6613

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Abul Kalam Abdul Momen , known as AK Abdul Momen, is a Bangladeshi economist, diplomat, and politician who is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh since January 2019. He served as Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations from August 2009 until October 2015. He was elected a member of Jatiya Sangsad from the Sylhet-1 constituency at the 2018 general elections. Following his election, he was appointed the minister of foreign affairs by the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

#408

Andreas Papandreou

#12007

Overall Influence

1919 - 1996 (77 years)

Andreas Georgiou Papandreou was a Greek economist, politician, and a dominant figure in Greek politics, known for founding the political party PASOK, which he led from 1974 to 1996. He served three terms as the 3rd and 8th prime minister of Greece.

#409

Benjamin Ladner

#9596

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Benjamin Mance Ladner is an academic expert in the fields of philosophy and religion. He was president of American University from 1994 to 2005, when he was ousted. His areas of professional interest and research are international relations and the role of higher education; education administration; religion and contemporary culture; and NCAA collegiate athletics.

#410

Richard Fenno

#10753

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Richard Francis Fenno Jr. was an American political scientist known for his pioneering work on the U.S. Congress and its members. He was a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester. He published numerous books and scholarly articles focused on how members of Congress interacted with each other, with committees, and with constituents. Political scientists considered the research groundbreaking and startlingly original and gave him numerous awards. Many followed his research design on how to follow members from Washington back to their home districts. Fenno was ...

#411

Alejandro Toledo

#12479

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Alejandro Celestino Toledo Manrique is a Peruvian former politician who served as President of Peru, from 2001 to 2006. He gained international prominence after leading the opposition against president Alberto Fujimori, who held the presidency from 1990 to 2000.

#412

Peter Mair

#18797

Overall Influence

1951 - 2011 (60 years)

Peter Mair was an Irish political scientist. He was a professor of comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence. Career Peter Mair was born in Rosses Point, County Sligo, Ireland, and studied history and politics at University College Dublin. He continued to work as assistant professor at the University of Limerick, Strathclyde, Manchester and the European University Institute in Florence during the 1980s. In 1987 at Leiden University he gained a doctorate, which as The changing Irish party system became a standard work on the Irish party system. In 1990, he co-authored the book Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability with Stefano Bartolini.

#413

Richard K. Betts

#15686

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Richard Kevin Betts is an American political scientist and international relations scholar who centers on U.S. foreign policy. He is currently the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, former director of the International Security Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and former director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies.

#414

Nonna Mayer

#16070

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Nonna Mayer is an academic French political scientist and researcher in political science. She is a research director at the CNRS, and a specialist of electoral sociology and of far right movements in France. She was president of the Association Française de Science Politique from 2005 to 2016.

#415

Yehoshafat Harkabi

Yehoshafat Harkabi

#17863

Overall Influence

1921 - 1994 (73 years)

Yehoshafat Harkabi was chief of Israeli military intelligence from 1955 until 1959 and afterwards a professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

#416

Emir Sader

#9452

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Emir Simão Sader is a Brazilian sociologist and political scientist of Lebanese origin. Biography Sader received all his higher education credentials from the University of São Paulo. He did his bachelor's degree in philosophy, his master's degree in political philosophy and his doctoral degree in political science. He also worked at the University of São Paulo as a professor of philosophy and later of political science. He also worked as a professor of political science at University of Campinas in Brazil and as a researcher at the Center for Socioeconomic Studies at the University of Chile....

#417

James Steinberg

#11725

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

James Braidy Steinberg is an American academic and political advisor, and former United States deputy secretary of state. He has served as the dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University since November 1, 2021. Prior to his deanship, he was a professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University

#418

Tarek Mitri

#21068

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Tarek Mitri is a Lebanese university professor, independent politician and former government minister. Early life and education Mitri was born on 16 September 1950. He has a PhD. in political science from the University of Paris X.

#419

Barbara Harff

#14223

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Barbara Harff is professor of political science emerita at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In 2003 and again in 2005 she was a distinguished visiting professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Her research focuses on the causes, risks, and prevention of genocidal violence.

#420

Andrew Gamble

#12133

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Andrew Michael Gamble is a British scholar of politics. He was Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Queens' College from 2007 to 2014. He was a member of the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield , for many years as a professor and rejoined the department in 2014.

#421

George Lenczowski

#16205

Overall Influence

1915 - 2000 (85 years)

George Lenczowski was a lawyer, diplomat, scholar, and Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at the University of California, Berkeley. Lenczowski was a pioneer in his field as the founder and first chair of the Committee of Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley. He was among America's first major scholars of the modern Middle East.

#422

János Kis

#9948

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

János Kis is a Hungarian philosopher and political scientist, who served as the inaugural leader of the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats from 1990 to 1991. He is considered to be the first Leader Hungarian parliamentary opposition.

#423

Andrey Piontkovsky

Andrey Piontkovsky

#9699

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Andrey Andreyevich Piontkovsky is a Russian scientist and political writer and analyst, a member of International PEN Club. He is a former member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council. Biography He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Moscow State University and has published more than a hundred scientific papers on applied mathematics.

#424

Helen Wallace

#15934

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Dame Helen Sarah Wallace, Lady Wallace of Saltaire, DBE, CMG, FBA, MAE, FAcSS , née Rushworth, is a British expert in European studies and, by marriage to William Wallace, Baron Wallace of Saltaire, a peeress. She was Foreign Secretary of the British Academy from 2011 to 2015.

#425

Ernst B. Haas

#17719

Overall Influence

1924 - 2003 (79 years)

Ernst Bernard Haas was an American political scientist who made numerous contributions to theoretical discussions in the field of international relations. He was a leading authority on international relations theory, and was the founder of neofunctionalism.

#426

Gianfranco Pasquino

#17946

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Gianfranco Pasquino is an Italian political scientist. Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Bologna and Senior Adjunct Professor at SAIS-Europe . He studied at the University of Turin under Norberto Bobbio and specialized under Giovanni Sartori at the University of Florence. In his professional life, he has been associated with the University of Florence, Harvard University, University of California, Los Angeles and the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC and Fellow of Christchurch and St Antony's at Oxford and Life Fellow of Claire Hall, Cambri...

#427

Stephen Van Evera

#18160

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Stephen William Van Evera is a professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in international relations. His research includes U.S. foreign and national security policy as well as causes and prevention of war. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

#428

Stephen Biddle

#18427

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Stephen D. Biddle is an American author, historian, policy analyst and columnist whose work concentrates on U.S. foreign policy. Currently, he is the Professor of International and Public Affairs at School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. He received recognition for his 2004 book Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, published through Princeton University Press. He also has worked in groups under Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus forming U.S. counter-insurgency policy.

#429

Deborah Bräutigam

#11178

Overall Influence

Deborah Bräutigam is an American political scientist, currently the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University and the Director of the China Africa Research Initiative at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Bräutigam studies international development policies and foreign aid, focusing on Chinese projects in Africa.

#430

J. Ann Tickner

#9281

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Judith Ann Tickner is an Anglo-American feminist international relations theorist. Tickner is a distinguished scholar in residence at the School of International Services, American University, Washington DC.

#431

Fred Halliday

#5860

Overall Influence

1946 - 2010 (64 years)

Simon Frederick Peter Halliday was an Irish writer and academic specialising in International Relations and the Middle East, with particular reference to the Cold War, Iran, and the Arabian peninsula.

#432

Vladimir Tismăneanu

#6724

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Vladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. A specialist in political systems and comparative politics, he is director of the University of Maryland's Center for the Study of Post-Communist Societies, having served as chairman of the editorial committee and editor of the East European Politics and Societies academic review. Over the years, Tismăneanu has been a contributor to several periodicals, including Studia Politica, Journal of Democracy, Sfera Politicii, Revista 22, Evenimentul Zilei, Idei în Dialog and Cotidianul.

#433

Radhika Coomaraswamy

#16160

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Deshamanya Radhika Coomaraswamy is a Sri Lankan lawyer, diplomat and human rights advocate who served as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict until 13 July 2012. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her to the position in April 2006. She was nominated to the Constitutional Council as a civil representative on 10 September 2015. In 2017, after atrocities against the Rohingya people, she was appointed a Member of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar.

#434

Fritz W. Scharpf

#27841

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Fritz W. Scharpf is a German professor and Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. His areas of interest include; the organisational problems and decision processes in governments at all levels; the political economy of inflation and unemployment; comparative political economy of the welfare state.

#435

John Dryzek

#12261

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

John S. Dryzek is a Centenary Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra's Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis. Education Dryzek has a B.A. in Economics and Politics from the University of Lancaster , an M.Sc. in Politics from the University of Strathclyde and a Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland .

#436

Langdon Winner

#1606

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Langdon Winner is Thomas Phelan Chair of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. Langdon Winner was born in San Luis Obispo, California on August 7, 1944. He received his B.A. in 1966, M.A. in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1973, all in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. His primary focus was political theory.

#437

Peter D. Hart

#19343

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Peter D. Hart is the chairman of Peter D. Hart Research Associates since 1971, and is a senior counselor to TMG Strategies. Together with Robert Teeter or Bill McInturff, Hart and his company have provided NBC News and The Wall Street Journal with polls since 1989. More than 40 U.S. senators and 30 governors, among them Hubert Humphrey, Lloyd Bentsen, Jay Rockefeller and Bob Graham, have been represented by Hart Research.

#438

David J. Kramer

David J. Kramer

#21544

Overall Influence

David J. Kramer was United States Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2008 to 2009. He was President of Freedom House from October 2010 to November 2014, and later worked at the McCain Institute. Following a professorship at the Florida International University, he became executive director of the George W. Bush Institute.

#439

Jacob Hacker

#15451

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Jacob Stewart Hacker is an American professor and political scientist. He is the director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and a professor of political science at Yale University. Hacker has written works on social policy, health care reform, and economic insecurity in the United States.

#440

Wen Jiabao

#9692

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Wen Jiabao is a Chinese retired politician who served as the premier of China from 2003 to 2013. In his capacity as head of government, Wen was regarded as the leading figure behind China's economic policy. From 2002 to 2012, he held membership in the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the country's de facto top power organ, where he was ranked third out of nine members and after general secretary Hu Jintao and Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

#441

Michael N. Barnett

#13759

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Michael Nathan Barnett is a professor of international relations at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Known for his Constructivist approach, his scholarship and research has been in the areas of international organizations, international relations theory, and Middle Eastern politics.

#442

George W. Breslauer

#17351

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

George W. Breslauer is an academic in the field of social sciences and the former executive vice chancellor and provost of UC Berkeley. Introduction Breslauer is a specialist on Soviet and Russian politics and foreign relations, within the field of political science. He is the author or editor of twelve books on these topics. He joined the faculty of the department of political science at The University of California, Berkeley in 1971, rising to full professor and retiring to the honorific position of professor of the graduate school in 2014.

#443

John Mueller

#11423

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

John E. Mueller is an American political scientist in the field of international relations as well as a scholar of the history of dance. He is recognized for his ideas concerning "the banality of 'ethnic war'" and the theory that major world conflicts are quickly becoming obsolete.

#444

Judith N. Shklar

#13785

Overall Influence

1928 - 1992 (64 years)

Judith Nisse Shklar was a philosopher and political theorist who studied the history of political thought, notably that of the Enlightenment period. She was appointed the John Cowles Professor of Government at Harvard University in 1980.

#445

Shlomo Ben-Ami

#6332

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Shlomo Ben-Ami is a former Israeli diplomat, politician, and historian. Biography Shlomo Benabou was born in Tangiers, Morocco. He immigrated to Israel in 1955. He was educated at Tel Aviv University and St Antony's College, Oxford from which he received a D.Phil. in history. Ben-Ami speaks fluent Hebrew, Spanish, French, and English.

#446

Gilbert Achcar

#9305

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese socialist academic and writer. He is a Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London.

#447

Brendan O'Leary

Brendan O'Leary

#19474

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Brendan O'Leary is an Irish political scientist, who is Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly a professor at the London School of Economics. In 2009–10 he was the second Senior Advisor on Power-Sharing in the Standby Team of the Mediation Support Unit of the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations.

#448

Noah Feldman

#5820

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

#449

Alan Schechter

#11653

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Alan Schechter is a political scientist. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. He was educated at Amherst College, where he received his AB, and at Columbia University, where he earned his PhD.

#450

Attahiru Jega

#25069

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Attahiru Muhammadu Jega is a Nigerian academic and former vice-chancellor of Bayero University, Kano. On 8 June 2010, he was nominated by then President Goodluck Jonathan as the new Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission , subject to Senate confirmation, as a replacement for professor Maurice Iwu, who vacated the post on 28 April 2010. Jega retired on 30 June 2015, handing over his position to Amina Zakari according to a directive by President Muhammadu Buhari.

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