Editing List of political theorists

{{Short description|None}}
{{Hatnote|This is a list of notable political theorists. See the [[list of political scientists]] for those who study [[politics]] using the [[scientific method]].}}
{{unreferenced|date=June 2015}}
A '''political theorist''' is someone who engages in constructing or evaluating political theory, including [[political philosophy]]. Theorists may be [[Academia|academics]] or [[independent scholar]]s.
{{Dynamic list}}

== Ancient ==
* [[Aristotle]]
* [[Chanakya]]
* [[Cicero]]
* [[Confucius]]
* [[Mencius]]
* [[Plato]]

== Medieval ==
{{empty section|date=May 2025}}

== Renaissance and early modern ==

* [[Jeremy Bentham]]
* [[Edmund Burke]]
* [[Benjamin Franklin]]
* [[Hugo Grotius]]
* [[Johann Gottfried von Herder]]
* [[Thomas Hobbes]]
* [[Immanuel Kant]]
* [[John Locke]]
* [[Niccolò Machiavelli]]
* [[James Madison]]
* [[John Milton]]
* [[Thomas More]]
* [[Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu|Montesquieu]]
* [[Samuel von Pufendorf]]
* [[Adam Smith]]
* [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]

== Late modern ==

* [[Muhammad Asad]]
* [[Hayk Asatryan]]
* [[Mikhail Bakunin]]
* [[Frédéric Bastiat]]
* [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]]
* [[Juan Donoso Cortés]]
* [[Friedrich Engels]]
* [[Julius Evola]]
* [[René Guénon]]
* [[William Godwin]]
* [[Emma Goldman]]
* [[Friedrich Hayek]]
* [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]]
* [[Theodor Herzl]]
* [[Peter Kropotkin]]
* [[Muhammad Iqbal]]
* [[Rose Wilder Lane]]
* [[Gustave Le Bon]]
* [[Vladimir Lenin]]
* [[György Lukács]]
* [[Rosa Luxemburg]]
* [[Joseph de Maistre]]
* [[Herbert Marcuse]]
* [[Charles Maurras]]
* [[Karl Marx]]
* [[John Stuart Mill]]
* [[Adam Müller]]
* [[Thomas Paine]]
* [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]]
* [[Vinayak Damodar Savarkar]]
* [[Joseph Schumpeter]]
* [[Oswald Spengler]]
* [[Lysander Spooner]]
* [[Max Stirner]]
* [[Leo Strauss]]
* [[Leon Trotsky]]
* [[Alexis de Tocqueville]]
* [[Mary Wollstonecraft]]

== Born in 20th century ==

* [[Theodor Adorno]]
* [[Tariq Ali]]
* [[Louis Althusser]]
* [[Gabriel Almond]]
* [[Hannah Arendt]]
* [[Raymond Aron]]
* [[Kenneth Arrow]]
* [[Isaiah Berlin]]
* [[Murray Bookchin]]
* [[Wendy Brown (political scientist)|Wendy Brown]]
* [[James Burnham]]
* [[Cornelius Castoriadis]]
* [[Noam Chomsky]]
* [[Dobrica Ćosić]]
* [[Robert Dahl]]
* [[Raya Dunayevskaya]]
* [[Ronald Dworkin]]
* [[David Easton]]
* [[Frantz Fanon]]
* [[Nancy Fraser]]
* [[Michael Freeden]]
* [[Betty Friedan]]
* [[David D. Friedman]]
* [[Erich Fromm]]
* [[Francis Fukuyama]]
* [[Muammar Gaddafi]]
* [[Antonio Gramsci]]
* [[Ernesto Guevara|Che Guevara]]
* [[Amy Gutmann]]
* [[Jürgen Habermas]]
* [[Ho Chi Minh]]
* [[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]]
* [[C.L.R. James]]
* [[Russell Kirk]]
* [[Leszek Kołakowski]]
* [[Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn]]
* [[Will Kymlicka]]
* [[Ernesto Laclau]]
* [[Ali Latifiyan]]
* [[Alasdair MacIntyre]]
* [[Harvey Mansfield]]
* [[Chantal Mouffe]]
* [[Antonio Negri]]
* [[Robert Nozick]]
* [[Martha Nussbaum]]
* [[Michael Oakeshott]]
* [[Karl Popper]]
* [[Robert D. Putnam]]
* [[Ayn Rand]]
* [[John Rawls]]
* [[Michael Walzer]]
* [[Murray Rothbard]]
* [[Wilhelm Röpke]]
* [[Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar]]
* [[James C. Scott]]
* [[Carl Schmitt]]
* [[Roger Scruton]]
* [[Charles Taylor (philosopher)|Charles Taylor]]
* [[Eric Voegelin]]
* [[Simone Weil]]
* [[John Zerzan]]
* [[Howard Zinn]]

== See also ==

* [[Political science]]
* [[Political scientist]]
* [[Politics]]
* [[List of political philosophers]]

[[Category:Lists of people by occupation|Political theorists]]
[[Category:Lists of philosophers|Political theorist]]
[[Category:Political philosophers| ]]