Political Science

Political science is best defined in comparison to political philosophy: one attempts to understand politics from first principles, reasoned outward, in a coherent and consistent theory; the other attempts to understand politics from observations and theories of what explains the variance therein. This page addresses the latter.

Comparative Politics

Pretty much everything where states are the unit of analysis.

• City Politics

• Democratization

• International Development

Political Parties and Movements

Comparative politics methods applied to non-states. There is some overlap with public choice theory (esp. institutional design).

• Critical Elections Theory

• Issues Evolution Model

• Party Polarization

Public Choice and Social Choice Theory

Public choice and social choice are highly interconnected. In general, public choice seeks to be strictly positive, while social choice leans into philosophy and normative study. Like, 'given a voting system, which agent has most control' vs. 'what is the most fair voting system'. But the theorists fundamentally speak the same language, and it's more coherent to group them together by field of study.

• Institutional Design

• Median Voter Theorem

• Pivotal Politics Model

• Rational choice voting

Political Economy

• CAGE Distance Framework

• Outbidding

• Wilson-Lowi Matrix

International Relations

• Bargaining Model of War

• Conflict theory

• Constructivism

• Institutionalism

• Rally around the flag effect

• Rationalism

• Realism

Miscellany

• Affective Polarization

• Gini coefficient

• Southern exceptionalism

• Some resources on this wiki:

  • listings of states and city-states

  • listings of empires (including de facto empires)

Reading Notes

Note: reading notes for the above topics are listed on the respective pages, not here.

• England in the Age of the American Revolution, Lewis Namier, 1931

• Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Albert O. Hirschman, 1970

• Hard and Soft Law in International Governance, Kenneth Abbott and Duncan Snidal, 2000

• Measuring Internal Political Efficacy in the 1988 National Election Study; Richard G. Niemi, Stephen C. Craig, and Franco Mattei; 2014

• Racial Conflict in Global Society, John Stone and Polly Rizova, 2014

• Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool, Michael Klein and Daniel W. Drezner, 2024

• Politicians’ Theories of Voting Behavior; Jack Lucas, Lior Sheffer, Peter John Loewen, Stefaan Walgrave, Karolin Soontjens, Eran Amsalem, Stefanie Bailer, Nathalie Brack, Christian Breunig, Pirmin Bundi, Linda Coufal, Patrick Dumont, Sarah Lachance, Miguel M. Pereira, Mikael Persson, Jean-benoit Pilet, Anne Rasmussen, Maj-britt Sterba, and Frédéric Varone; 2024

• Unconditional Loyalty: The Survival of Minority Autocracies, Salam Alsaadi, 2025

• The Politics of Small Business Owners; Neil Malhotra, Yotam Margalit, and Saikun Shi; 2025

Data Notes

• Relevant government agencies, which link to many data notes:

  • BJS

  • BLS

  • Census Bureau

• ALICE Project

• ANES

• CIA World Factbook

• CSES

• EES

• ESS

• Freedom House's Freedom in the World

• GSS

• ISSP

• MIPD

• Polity

• V-Dem

• WGI

• WVS

CategoryRicottone