political for essay

Debate Topics

Need to write an argumentative essay? Preparing for an upcoming debate? ProCon.org has over 100 topics complete with pro and con arguments, quotes and statistics from experts, historical information, and other pertinent research.

Abortion – Should abortion be legal?

Alternative Energy – Can alternative energy effectively replace fossil fuels?

American Socialism – Should the U.S. become socialist?

Animal Dissection – Should K-12 students dissect animals in science classrooms?

Animal Testing – Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing?

Artificial Intelligence – Is artificial intelligence good for society?

Banned Books – Should parents or other adults be able to ban books from schools and libraries?

Binge-Watching – Is binge-watching good for you?

Cancel Culture – Is cancel culture (or callout culture) good for society?

CBD for Pets – Is CBD good for pets?

Cell Phone Radiation – Is cell phone radiation safe?

Cheerleading – Is cheerleading a sport?

Churches & Taxes – Should churches (including mosques, synagogues, etc.) remain tax-exempt?

College Education – Is a college education worth it?

Congressional Term Limits  – Should term limits be imposed on U.S. Senators and Representatives?

Constitutional Carry of Handguns – Should permitless, “constitutional carry” of guns be legal?

Corporal Punishment – Should corporal punishment be used in K-12 schools?

Corporate Tax Rate – Should the federal corporate income tax rate be raised?

Cuba Embargo – Should the United States maintain its embargo against Cuba?

DACA & Dreamers – Are DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and the DREAM Act good for America?

Daylight Saving Time – Should the United States keep daylight saving time?

DC AND Puerto Rico Statehood – Should Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico be granted U.S. statehood?

Death Penalty – Should the death penalty be legal?

Defund the Police – Should police departments be defunded, if not abolished?

Dress Codes – Should dress codes be implemented and enforced?

Drinking Age – Should the drinking age be lowered from 21 to a younger age?

Drone Strikes – Should the United States continue its use of drone strikes abroad?

Drug Use in Sports – Should performance-enhancing drugs be accepted in sports?

Election Day National Holiday – Should the election day be made a national holiday?

Electoral College – Should the United States use the electoral college in presidential elections?

Employer Vaccine Mandates – Should employers be able to mandate vaccinations?

Felon Voting – Should people who have completed felony sentences be allowed to vote?

Fighting in Hockey – Should fighting be allowed in hockey?

Filibuster – Should the U.S. Senate keep the filibuster?

Fracking – Should the United States continue fracking

Free College – Should public college be tuition-free?

Fur Clothing Bans – Should fur clothing be banned?

GMOS – Should genetically modified organisms (GMOs) be grown?

Gold Standard – Should the United States return to a gold standard?

Golf – Is golf a sport and are golfers athletes?

Gun Control – Should more gun control laws be enacted?

Historic Statue Removal – Should historic statues be taken down?

Homework – Is homework beneficial?

Illegal Immigration – Should the U.S. government provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants?

Internet – Is the internet “making us stupid?”

Kneeling during the National Anthem – Is kneeling during the national anthem an appropriate form of protest?

Mandatory National Service – Should the United States have mandatory national service?

Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) – Should medical aid in dying be legal?

Medical Marijuana – Should medical marijuana be legal?

Milk – Should humans consume dairy milk?

Minimum Wage – Should the federal minimum wage be increased?

Net Neutrality – Should the U.S. have net neutrality laws?

Obesity – Is obesity a disease?

Olympics – Are the Olympic games an overall benefit for their host countries and cities?

OTC Birth Control Pills – Should birth control pills be available over-the-counter (OTC)?

Penny – Should the penny stay in circulation?

Pit Bull Bans – Should breed-specific legislation (“pit bull bans”) be enacted?

Pokémon – Is Pokémon Go good for our society?

Police Body Cameras – Should police officers wear body cameras?

Prescription Drug Costs – Should the U.S. federal government regulate prescription drug prices?

Presidential Election, 2024 – 2024 Presidential Election Site

Private Prisons – Should prisons be privatized?

Recreational Marijuana – Should recreational marijuana be legal?

Reparations for Slavery – Should the federal government pay reparations to the descendants of slaves?

Right to Healthcare – Should all Americans have the right (be entitled) to health care?

Sanctuary Cities – Should sanctuary cities receive federal funding?

Santa Claus – Is there really a Santa Claus?

Saturday Halloween – Should Halloween be moved permanently to Saturday?

School Uniforms – Should students have to wear school uniforms?

Single-use Plastics Ban – Should single-use plastics be banned?

Social Media & Digital Addiction – Does social media spur digital addiction and other social ills?

Social Security Privatization – Should social security be privatized?

Space Colonization – Should humans colonize space?

Standardized Tests – Do standardized tests improve education in America?

Student Loan Debt – Should student loan debt be eliminated via forgiveness or bankruptcy?

TikTok Bans – Should TikTok be banned?

Uber & Lyft – Are ride-sharing companies a benefit to society?

Universal Basic Income (UBI) – Should the United States implement a universal basic income?

U.S. Supreme Court Packing – Should packing the U.S. Supreme Court ever be considered?

Vaccines for Kids – Should states be allowed to mandate vaccines for school attendance??

Vaping E-Cigarettes – Is vaping e-cigarettes safe?

Vegetarianism – Should people become vegetarian?

Video Games & Violence – Do violent video games contribute to youth violence?

Voting Age – Should the voting age be lowered to 16?

Voting Machines – Are electronic voting machines the best method for voting?

Zoos – Should zoos exist?

Archived Topics

Please note that ProCon no longer updates these debates.

ACLU – Is the ACLU good for America?

Big Three Bailout – Should the big three car manufacturers be bailed out by the U.S. government?

Born Gay – Is sexual orientation determined at birth?

Climate Change – Is human activity primarily responsible for global climate change?

College Football Playoffs – Should college football replace the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) with a playoff system?

Dakota Access Pipeline – Should the Dakota Access Pipeline be completed?

D.A.R.E. – Is the D.A.R.E. program good for America’s kids (K-12)?

Gay Marriage – Should gay marriage be legal?

Congressional Insider Trading – Should insider trading by Congress be allowed?

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – What are the solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Obamacare – Is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) good for America?

Paying College Athletes – Should colleges and universities pay college athletes?

President Bill Clinton – Was Bill Clinton a good president?

President Ronald Reagan – Was Ronald Reagan a good president?

Presidential Election, 2008 – Which candidate would make the best U.S. president?

Presidential Election, 2012 – Which candidate should be U.S. president in 2012?

Presidential Election, 2016 – The candidates and where they stand on the issues

Presidential Election, 2020 – 2020 Presidential Election Site

Prostitution – Should prostitution be legal?

School Vouchers – Should states have school voucher programs?

Tablets v. Textbooks -Should tablets replace textbooks in K-12 schools?

Teacher Tenure – Should teachers get tenure?

Under God in the Pledge – Should the words “under god” be in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance?

U.S. Drone Shot down by Iran – Was the U.S. drone shot down by Iran over international waters?

U.S.-Iraq War – Should the U.S. have attacked Iraq?

WTC Muslim Center – Is it appropriate to build a muslim community center (aka the ”ground zero mosque”) near the World Trade Center site?

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Natalie Leppard Managing Editor [email protected]

© 2023 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved

• Social Media
• Death Penalty
• School Uniforms
• Video Games
• Animal Testing
• Gun Control
• Banned Books
• Teachers’ Corner

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TOP 65 Greatest Political Essay Topics

Table of Contents

Being a student requires writing a lot of research papers, projects, essays, and assignments, right? If you’ve been asked to write a political essay and you don’t know where to start, here is the right place to seek for top-notch creative ideas.

So, a political essay itself is an ordinary essay on any kind of topic concerning political context. It means that you can write not only about politics strictly , but also choose a topic related to it.

How about covering issues, like international relations, different kinds of political influence on various population groups, a wide range of social and political connections or your own unique topic concerning politics, its effects, or consequences?

The choice is huge!

However, you should keep in mind that writing about any political issue demands accuracy and a lot of research work. A successful political essay requires complete awareness of what you are writing about.

What is more, you may need to search for political essay examples to examine specific features of this paper.

Another crucial thing is the topic. Here you may find some helpful political essay topics to choose from or to help you come up with an exceptional idea.

Political essay topics

Here are some basic topics for your political essay. Loads of students go for writing a political ideology essay.

Broader topics, on the other hand, cover connections between politics and other institutions like the church, religion, history, philosophy, etc.

• When and how did the politics originate?
• The connection between politics and religion.
• Comparison of electoral systems in the world.
• The most influential political figure of the XX century.
• The political decision that has changed your country at most.
• What is better for the world, globalization or nationalism?
• Democracy: pros and cons.
• Correlation between morality and power.
• Terrorism as a political instrument.
• Totalitarianism: pros and cons.
• The environmental question in the politics of your country.
• The impact of international relations on your country in the last ten years.
• Change in politics at wartime.
• The philosophy of politics.
• Pros and cons of the political system in your country.

Political socialization essay

Usually, socialization topics cover various aspects of society and life. These topics can be connected with peoples or particular groups of people regarding the political context.

You may try writing a political cartoon essay, too. If you’re a fan.

• Psychology of politics.
• Are civil wars a failure of national politicians?
• Which ways of reducing corruption in your country do you know?
• What makes lots of people around the whole world think politics is immoral?
• Does gender discrimination affect politics in your country?
• How do you see the ideal political system?
• How do cultural norms influence politics in different countries?
• Should social movements have an impact on politics?
• Connections between politics and the media.
• Political scandals: pros and cons.
• Are strikes and protests an efficient method of influencing the work of government?
• How should government regulate privacy and internet safety?
• Your position towards the death penalty.
• Do people in your country have enough civil rights?
• Advantages and disadvantages of legalizing drugs.

Political science essay topics

As those topics below are scientific, they most surely would demand reading a decent amount of literature about political history and its development.

Here students usually go for political systems thematic essays, yet we’ll try to offer something more interesting.

It can be a daunting assignment, but if you enjoy studying history and being super accurate that’s exactly what you’re looking for!

• Description of democratization processes.
• Development of politics in your country.
• Analysis of civil wars phenomenon.
• Nature of political conflicts.
• The system of political parties in your country.
• History of international relations.
• Influence of non-state actors on the international arena.
• Analysis of modern international relations.
• The concept of power balance.
• Modern conflict science.
• Collisions in international law.
• Ancient / Asian / Islamic / Christian political thought.
• State and local government in your country.
• The founding of the political system in your country.
• The foreign policy of your country.

Political argumentative essay topics

Argumentative topics are fascinating, right? If you pick one, you’ll inevitably begin a fierce discussion about it.

Usually, there are two options available: for or against, yes or no, one side or the other.

If you have strong beliefs about any political topic, you should give it a try. That’s for sure. A political corruption essay would be a good start, but there is no reason to avoid searching for other options…

• Do you think a war is always a political decision?
• Should a politician be cruel or merciful?
• Is your country headed in the right direction?
• What do you regard as a more important thing: people’s privacy or national security?
• Presidential republics or parliamentary republics?
• What is more effective nowadays, war or diplomacy?
• Can we completely overcome corruption?
• Do revolutions cause more good or harm?
• Are nuclear weapons a crucial need for countries in the XXI century?
• Should America build the wall?

Political persuasive essay topics

Do you consider yourself to be a creative person? Do you enjoy dreaming and breaking the existing frames society lives in? If yes, then the persuasive topic is what you need.

There can be no right or wrong point of view in such questions. Diverse opinions, that’s what it would be called more likely. The most popular type among students is a political party essay.

Have your own special vision on it? Cool! Write it down.

Want something else? Try these out!

• Do you believe in your country’s democracy?
• If you had the opportunity, which law would you add to your country’s legislation?
• Tell about the most controversial political figure of your state and your attitude towards him/her.
• Suggest ways of coping with corruption.
• How do you see the future of politics?
• Which political party in your country do you support and why?
• Which political change or situation stroke you most during the last year?
• Imagine creating your political party. What will it be like?
• What is the most winning international rapport your country maintains?
• Tell me how would you build your own state.

On balance…

I hope you’re full of fresh thoughts even if you didn’t choose any of the topics above.

Actually, politics is so multifaceted and diverse that you will definitely find something acceptable.

Finally, yet importantly, if you would consider the issue attractive, try writing an essay on political correctness. Why not?..

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Essay on Politics: Topics, Tips, and Examples for Students

Defining What is Politics Essay

The process of decision-making that applies to members of a group or society is called politics. Arguably, political activities are the backbone of human society, and everything in our daily life is a form of it.

Understanding the essence of politics, reflecting on its internal elements, and critically analyzing them make society more politically aware and let them make more educated decisions. Constantly thinking and analyzing politics is critical for societal evolution.

Political thinkers often write academic papers that explore different political concepts, policies, and events. The essay about politics may examine a wide range of topics such as government systems, political ideologies, social justice, public policies, international relations, etc.

After selecting a specific research topic, a writer should conduct extensive research, gather relevant information, and prepare a logical and well-supported argument. The paper should be clear and organized, complying with academic language and standards. A writer should demonstrate a deep understanding of the subject, an ability to evaluate and remain non-biased to different viewpoints, and a capacity to draw conclusions.

Now that we are on the same page about the question 'what is politics essay' and understand its importance, let's take a deeper dive into how to build a compelling political essay, explore the most relevant political argumentative essay topics, and finally, examine the political essay examples written by the best essay writing service team.

Politics Essay Example for Students

If you are still unsure how to structure your essay or how to present your statement, don't worry. Our team of experts has prepared an excellent essay example for you. Feel free to explore and examine it. Use it to guide you through the writing process and help you understand what a successful essay looks like.

How to Write a Political Essay: Tips + Guide

A well-written essay is easy to read and digest. You probably remember reading papers full of big words and complex ideas that no one bothered to explain. We all agree that such essays are easily forgotten and not influential, even though they might contain a very important message.

If you are writing an essay on politics, acknowledge that you are on a critical mission to easily convey complicated concepts. Hence, what you are trying to say should be your main goal. Our guide on how to write a political essay will help you succeed.

Conduct Research for Your Politics Essay

After choosing a topic for the essay, take enough time for preparation. Even if you are familiar with the matter, conducting thorough research is wiser. Political issues are complex and multifaceted; comprehensive research will help you understand the topic better and offer a more nuanced analysis.

Research can help you identify different viewpoints and arguments around the topic, which can be beneficial for building more impartial and persuasive essays on politics. Sometimes in the hit of the moment, opposing sides are not able to see the common ground; your goal is to remain rational, speak to diverse audiences, and help them see the core of the problem and the ways to solve it.

In political papers, accuracy and credibility are vital. Researching the topic deeply will help you avoid factual errors or misrepresentations from any standpoint. It will allow you to gather reliable sources of information and create a trustworthy foundation for the entire paper.

If you want to stand out from the other students, get inspired by the list of hottest essay ideas and check out our political essay examples.

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Brainstorm Political Essay Topics

The next step to writing a compelling politics essay is to polish your thoughts and find the right angle to the chosen topic.

Before you start writing, generate fresh ideas and organize your thoughts. There are different techniques to systematize the mess going on in your head, such as freewriting, mind mapping, or even as simple as listing ideas. This will open the doors to new angles and approaches to the topic.

When writing an essay about politics, ensure the topic is not too general. It's always better to narrow it down. It will simplify your job and help the audience better understand the core of the problem. Brainstorming can help you identify key points and arguments, which you can use to find a specific angle on the topic.

Brainstorming can also help you detect informational gaps that must be covered before the writing process. Ultimately, the brainstorming phase can bring a lot more clarity and structure to your essay.

We know how exhausting it is to come up with comparative politics essay topics. Let our research paper writing service team do all the hard work for you.

Create Your Politics Essay Thesis Statement

Thesis statements, in general, serve as a starting point of the roadmap for the reader. A political essay thesis statement outlines the main ideas and arguments presented in the body paragraphs and creates a general sense of the content of the paper.

Creating a thesis statement for essays about politics in the initial stages of writing can help you stay focused and on track throughout the working process. You can use it as an aim and constantly check your arguments and evidence against it. The question is whether they are relevant and supportive of the statement.

Get creative when creating a statement. This is the first sentence readers will see, and it should be compelling and clear.

The following is a great example of a clear and persuasive thesis statement:

 'The lack of transparency and accountability has made the World Trade Organization one of the most controversial economic entities. Despite the influence, its effectiveness in promoting free trade and economic growth in developing countries has decreased.'

Provide Facts in Your Essay about Politic

It's a no-brainer that everything you will write in your essay should be supported by strong evidence. The credibility of your argument will be questioned every step of the way, especially when you are writing about sensitive subjects such as essays on government influence on economic troubles. 

Provide facts and use them as supporting evidence in your politics essay. They will help you establish credibility and accuracy and take your paper out of the realm of speculation and mere opinions.

Facts will make your essay on political parties more persuasive, unbiased, and targeted to larger audiences. Remember, the goal is to bring the light to the core of the issue and find a solution, not to bring people even farther apart.

Speaking of facts, many students claim that when they say ' write my essay for me ' out loud, our writing team is the fastest to respond and deliver high-quality essays meeting their trickiest requirements.

Structure Your Political Essay

Your main goal is to communicate your ideas to many people. To succeed, you need to write an essay that is easy to read and understand. Creating a structure will help you present your ideas logically and lead the readers in the right direction.

Sometimes when writing about political essay topics, we get carried away. These issues can be very emotional and sensitive, and writers are not protected from becoming victims of their own writings. Having a structure will keep you on track, only focusing on providing supported arguments and relevant information.

Start with introducing the thesis statement and provide background information. Followed by the body paragraphs and discuss all the relevant facts and standpoints. Finish it up with a comprehensive conclusion, and state the main points of your essay once again.

The structure will also save you time. In the beginning, creating an outline for essays on politics will give you a general idea of what should be written, and you can track your progress against it.

Revise and Proofread Your Final Politics Essay

Once every opinion is on the paper and every argument is well-constructed, one final step should be taken. Revision!

We know nothing is better than finishing the homework and quickly submitting it, but we aim for an A+. Our political essay must be reviewed. You need to check if there is any error such as grammatical, spelling, or contextual.

Take some time off, relax, and start proofreading after a few minutes or hours. Having a fresh mind will help you review not only grammar but also the arguments. Check if something is missing from your essays about politics, and if you find gaps, provide additional information.

You had to spend a lot of time on them, don't give up now. Make sure they are in perfect condition.

Effective Political Essay Topics

We would be happy if our guide on how to write political essays helped you, but we are not stopping there. Below you will find a list of advanced and relevant political essay topics. Whether you are interested in global political topics or political science essay topics, we got you covered.

Once you select a topic, don't forget to check out our politics essay example! It will bring even more clarity, and you will be all ready to start writing your own paper.

Political Argumentative Essay Topics

Now that we know how to write a political analysis essay let's explore political argumentative essay topics:

• Should a political party take a stance on food politics and support policies promoting sustainable food systems?
• Should we label Winston Churchill as the most influential political figure of World War II?
• Does the focus on GDP growth in the political economy hinder the human development index?
• Is foreign influence a threat to national security?
• Is foreign aid the best practice for political campaigning?
• Does the electoral college work for an ideal political system?
• Are social movements making a real difference, or are they politically active for temporary change?
• Can global politics effectively address political conflicts in the modern world?
• Are opposing political parties playing positive roles in US international relations?
• To what extent should political influence be allowed in addressing economic concerns?
• Can representative democracy prevent civil wars in ethnically diverse countries?
• Should nuclear weapons be abolished for the sake of global relations?
• Is economic development more important than ethical issues for Caribbean politics?
• What role should neighboring nations play in preventing human rights abuse in totalitarian regimes?
• Should political decisions guide the resolution of conflicts in the South China Sea?

Political Socialization Essay Topics

Knowing how to write a political issue essay is one thing, but have you explored our list of political socialization essay topics?

• To what extent does a political party or an influential political figure shape the beliefs of young people?
• Does political influence shape attitudes toward environmental politics?
• How can individuals use their own learning process to navigate political conflicts in a polarized society?
• How do political strategies shape cultural globalization?
• Is gender bias used as a political instrument in political socialization?
• How can paying attention to rural communities improve political engagement?
• What is the role of Amnesty International in preventing the death penalty?
• What is the role of politically involved citizens in shaping minimum wage policies?
• How does a political party shape attitudes toward global warming?
• How does the federal system influence urban planning and attitudes toward urban development?
• What is the role of public opinion in shaping foreign policy, and how does it affect political decision making
• Did other countries' experiences affect policies on restricting immigration in the US?
• How can note-taking skills and practice tests improve political engagement? 
• How do the cultural values of an independent country shape the attitudes toward national security?
• Does public opinion influence international intervention in helping countries reconcile after conflicts?

Political Science Essay Topics

If you are searching for political science essay topics, check our list below and write the most compelling essay about politic:

• Is environmental education a powerful political instrument? 
• Can anarchist societies provide a viable alternative to traditional forms of governance?
• Pros and cons of deterrence theory in contemporary international relations
• Comparing the impact of the French Revolution and World War II on the political landscape of Europe
• The role of the ruling political party in shaping national policies on nuclear weapons
• Exploring the roots of where politics originate
• The impact of civil wars on the processes of democratization of the third-world countries
• The role of international organizations in promoting global health
• Does using the death penalty in the justice system affect international relations?
• Assessing the role of the World Trade Organization in shaping global trade policies
• The political and environmental implications of conventional agriculture
• The impact of the international court on political decision making
• Is philosophical anarchism relevant to contemporary political discourse?
• The emergence of global citizenship and its relationship with social movements
• The impact of other countries on international relations between the US and China

Final Words

See? Writing an essay about politic seems like a super challenging job, but in reality, all it takes is excellent guidance, a well-structured outline, and an eye for credible information.

If you are stressed out from juggling a hundred different course assignments and have no time to focus on your thesis, our dissertation writing services could relieve you! Our team of experts is ready to take over even the trickiest tasks on the tightest schedule. You just have to wish - ' write my essay ' out loud, and we will be on it!

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Annie Lambert

specializes in creating authoritative content on marketing, business, and finance, with a versatile ability to handle any essay type and dissertations. With a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a passion for social issues, her writing not only educates but also inspires action. On EssayPro blog, Annie delivers detailed guides and thought-provoking discussions on pressing economic and social topics. When not writing, she’s a guest speaker at various business seminars.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

The Study Blog :

100+ interesting essay topics and ideas on politics.

By Evans Jan 07 2021

When writing a political essay, students find themselves between a hard place and a rock. If the facilitator provides the essay topic , you might feel unsatisfied and find the topic boring or complicated. On the other hand, when given the freedom to choose your topic , you could get more frustrated. Politics is a diverse and vast subject with numerous essay topics on politics to choose from, making it challenging to select the right topic to tackle.

Are tight deadlines, clashing assignments, and unclear tasks giving you sleepless nights?

Do not panic, hire a professional essay writer today.

Politics is the science of governing an administration or nation, and it includes activities that the government engages in. In politics, individuals exercise control over internal and external affairs affecting the country. Moreover, politics refers to the manipulative manner of handling people and how politicians persuade citizens on issues affecting them. Politics have intrigued and been the centre of most philosophers.

If you've been assigned an essay in politics, look no further—this article will help you ace your paper. Here, you will find a list of unique essay topics on politics to write about.

100+ Greatest essay topics on politics

To write an interesting political essay, you should have good knowledge about  political science, history, military strategy, economics, psychology, and public relations. You also need to understand how society operates.

Although you are limited by the number of pages and time, you should bite what you can chew. Choose a given occurrence and research about it thoroughly. When studying how to write a political essay, it is essential to understand that while facts remain the same, their interpretation changes with the society's development and time. Finally, don't trust your attitude because there is a possibility of replaced or reconsidered by political essay topics.

You can use the list below to write your political essay or inspire you to develop your ideas.

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1.       Shouldthe government increase firearm control restrictions?

2.       How media affects politics

3.       The relationship between religion and politics

4.       What are the benefits and disadvantages of democracy?

5.       Is terrorism a political instrument?

6.       Pros and cons of totalitarianism

7.       The most influential political figure of 21st century

8.       Philosophy of politics

9.       Is civil war a failure of politicians?

10.   Ways to combat corruption in your country

11.   How gender inequality affects your county's politics

12.   Should abortion be legalized

13.   How should government regulate internet safety and privacy?

14.   Which political party in your county do you support and why?

15.   Is criminal pardon acceptable?

16.   American and European federal crime comparison

17.   Understanding how armed conflicts differ from political conflicts

18.   Is religion a social power?

19.   Implementing changes in the legislation process

20.   The interdependence of modern leaders

21.   Federalism traces in the unitary governance models

22.   Post-war social movements

23.   What are the causes of rebellion in the Central African Republic?

24.   Protest movements and social networks

25.   Civil war causes and its consequences

26.   Mexico and immigrants crisis

27.   Civil war negotiation methods

28.   Civil law court Vs. mediation policies

29.   Causes of global poverty

30.   Human rights

31.   Analysis of global security networks

32.   Apartheid phenomenon

33.   Soviet Union Ideology

34.   Political parties comparison

35.   Vietnam wat interests aggregation

36.   Should the government regulate or ban indecency on TV?

37.   Should citizens be required to prove identification before voting?

38.   Should race be a determinant in university admissions?

39.   Should government limit the amount of money spent on political campaigns?

40.   Should the government finance political campaigns?

41.   Should the government raise the minimum wage per hour?

42.   Should the U.S. grant asylum to refugees?

43.   Should the government ban or allow the death penalty?

44.   Should the voting age be lowered?

45.   Benefits and side effects of legalizing drugs

46.   History of international relations

47.   What are the traits of a leader?

48.   Does a revolution cause harm or good?

49.   Should nations build fortified border walls?

50.   Imagine establishing your political party. What would it be like?

51.   The role of social media in promoting politics

52.   How has the 9/11 occurrence impacted modern-day politics?

53.   Should prisons be allowed to vote?

54.   Should the government be held responsible for increasing the national debt?

55.   The effects of globalization on the economy

56.   Should the poor pay a lower percentage of taxes?

57.   Should a county interfere with the military conflicts of other countries?

58.   The role of media in national security

59.   Laws that prohibit hate speech

60.   Should your country change the healthcare policy?

61.   Should marijuana be legalized?

62.   Should TV commercials for alcohol be banned?

63.   The government should regulate the cost of pharmaceutical products

64.   Should your government regulate school fees

65.   Should fracking be made illegal?

66.   Effects of war on drugs

67.   Why you should join a political party

68.   Should the United States seek tighter bonds with China?

69.   Communism Vs. capitalism

70.   Different arms of the government and their roles

71.   What caused healthcare to be expensive?

72.   What causes people to lose trust in their government?

73.   What is the role of the United Nations?

74.   Three waves of democratization

75.   Discuss how NGOs are influential

76.   Why does your nation suffer from terrorism more than the neighboring nations?

77.   How do countries reconcile after a war?

78.   The importance and purpose of global health

79.   The influence of feminism on global relations

80.   Discuss how the International Monetary Fund works

81.   Causes of interdependence between countries

82.   Structural consequences of uneven distribution of resources

83.   Gender bias in politics

84.   Should the European Union be dissolved?

85.   Achievements of the Pan-African movement

86.   What is tyranny?

87.   Pros and cons of the concept of nationhood

88.   Is fear a practical instrument of control?

89.   How does poverty drive the popularity of Boko Haram in Nigeria?

90.   The role of women in government

91.   Discuss the ideological relationship between feminism and liberalism

92.   Ethical issues about globalization

93.   Is there a basis where war is morally acceptable?

94.   Discuss how democracy is the rule of the people

95.   What motivates a person to be politically active?

96.   Define the term "politics."

97.   The politics of millennials Vs. baby boomers

98.   Characteristics of totalitarian regimes

99.   Current trends in democratization

100.                       Discuss how representative democracy differs from participatory democracy?

101.                       Economic effects of taxation

102.                       What are the functions of the World Trade Organization?

103.                       The importance of competition in politics

104.                       What is political about our diet

105.                       Political strategies on environmental conservation

106.                       Election ethics

107.                       Governmental effects coordination

108.                       Post-conflict justice inequality

109.                       War crime legacy

110.                       Iran oil conflict

111.                       Volunteering and social movements

112.                       Elections agenda analysis

113.                       What the pros and cos of two-party system

114.                       Why U.S. immigration caps are essential

115.                       Is communism the best system for your country?

116.                       What is Wilsonianism?

117.                       Explore the constitutional rights of inmates

118.                       Can a monarchy be democratic?

A political essay aims at answering questions about a given political event or process. It can also predict future developments or analyze previous occurrences.  Choosing the right topic requires excellent analytical skills and extensive knowledge in international relations and world history. It would help if you began from an understanding that politics goes beyond interaction and human action. It also involves beliefs, principles, and rational planning. Thus, research is a fundamental element.

If you don't want to take the stress of writing a political essay, you can seek help from our pool of skilled pro essay writers . We help with assignments from native-speaking writers experienced in relevant disciplines such as political science. Providing assignments with topic selection and finding sources, we take pride in delivering plagiarism-free content at a reasonable cost.

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• 150 Political Essay Topics

Whether it’s for a political science class, government class, or history class, you will eventually have to write a political essay. A political essay explores the various explanations for particular events that have transpired in the past and the different effects of those events on society and politics.

Political essays can be pretty challenging for students because the depth and scope of the subject matter can be quite vast. Additionally, a lack of knowledge about the workings of government and the political process can make writing a political essay quite difficult.

Fortunately, we’ve created a handy guide detailing essential components of political essay writing. Additionally, we’ve included 150 political essay topics students can use to get started.

The Basic Components of a Political Essay

Regardless of the topic’s complexity, political essays all have the same essential components – an introduction, a thesis, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Students can create an assertive and well-crafted political essay by understanding how these components work together.

The Introduction

The introduction of a political essay should grab the reader’s attention and give them an overview of the main points covered in the essay. An excellent way to do this is by starting with a provocative statement or posing a thought-provoking question. A great example of a political essay introduction could sound something like:

“In a world where the powerful seem to always get their way, is there any hope for democracy?”

The Thesis Statement

The thesis statement is the most critical component of a political essay. It is the main argument or points that the essay will be making. Everything else in the essay should support the thesis statement. A thesis statement is probably the most challenging part of writing a political essay for many students because it can be challenging to distill the essay’s main argument into one or two sentences.

Some tips for writing a strong thesis statement include:

• Make sure that the thesis statement is arguable. In other words, it should be something that someone could reasonably disagree with.
• Be as specific as possible. A thesis statement that is too vague will make it difficult to write a strong essay.
• Keep it short and to the point. A thesis statement should be no more than one or two sentences.

Great examples of a political essay thesis statement include:

“The current state of democracy is in danger due to the rise of populist leaders who exploit the fears of the people.”

“The government should do more to combat the rising inequality in society by implementing policies that help the working class.”

The Body Paragraphs

The body paragraphs of a political essay are where the essay’s main argument will be fleshed out in detail. Each body paragraph should focus on one specific point that supports the thesis statement. When writing body paragraphs, it is essential to:

• Start with a topic sentence that introduces the main point
• Support the topic sentence with evidence from credible sources.
• Connect the evidence back to the thesis statement.
• Repeat for each body paragraph.

The Conclusion

The conclusion of a political essay should sum up the main points of the essay and leave the reader with a solid and clear understanding of the argument being made. A great conclusion should:

• Restate the thesis statement in different words.
• Summarize the main points of the essay.
• Leave the reader with something to think about.

Some examples of final thoughts to end a political essay could be:

“It is clear that democracy is under threat from populist leaders. However, there is still hope as long as people remain engaged and fight for their rights.”

“The current state of democracy may be troubling, but it is nothing new. Throughout history, there have always been those who seek to undermine it. The key is to remain vigilant and to stand up for what we believe in.”

The Do’s and Don’ts of Political Essay Writing

While the tips above will help you write a solid political essay, there are also some things to avoid if you want your essay to be successful. Here are some dos and don’ts of writing a political essay:

Do research your topic inside and out.

A well-informed essay is always more persuasive than one that simply regurgitates the opinions of others. When researching, always use reliable sources and take good notes so you can easily refer back to them later.

Don’t forget to proofread and edit your work.

No matter how well-written and informative an essay is, if it is full of typos and grammatical errors, it will likely not make a good impression on the reader. Before submitting, proofread your work and fix any errors you may have missed.

Do be sure to stay objective.

A political essay is not the place for you to share your personal opinions. Instead, it should be a well-reasoned and unbiased exploration of the topic at hand.

Don’t forget to cite your sources.

If you use any information from outside sources in your essay, be sure to properly cite them according to the required citation style. Not only is failing to do so plagiarism, but it also makes your argument look weaker if you cannot back up your claims with evidence.

Do try to be concise.

A political essay is not the place to ramble on and on. Instead, get to the point and make your argument in as few words as possible. This will keep the reader engaged and prevent them from getting lost in your essay.

With the advice above, you should be well on your way to writing a successful political essay. However, if you need some additional inspiration, here are 150 more essay topics to get you started.

Political Essay Topics About History

• Compare and contrast the policies of two different presidents.
• How did the Cold War shape American foreign policy?
• What was the most significant event of the 20th century?
• How did the American Revolution change the political landscape?
• What were the causes of World War I?
• How did Napoleon Bonaparte rise to power?
• What were the significant effects of the French Revolution?
• Compare and contrast the American and French Revolutions.
• What caused the fall of the Roman Empire?
• How did Ancient Greece contribute to modern democracy?
• What were the major political parties of the 19th century?
• How did the Industrial Revolution change the political landscape?
• What were the major triggers of World War II?
• What was the Holocaust, and how did it impact politics?
• How did the Cold War end?
• What are the legacies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher?
• How has the European Union changed over time?
• What are the major political parties in power today?
• Compare and contrast the administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
• How has social media changed the way we engage in politics?

Political Essay Topics About Ideologies

• What is the difference between socialism and communism?
• What is capitalism, and how has it changed over time?
• What is Marxism, and what are its significant tenets?
• What is fascism, and how did it come to power?
• How do different political parties view taxation?
• What is the role of the government in a capitalist society?
• How does socialism differ from fascism?
• What is the difference between conservatism and liberalism?
• What is the difference between nationalism and patriotism?
• How do different political parties view welfare?
• What is the role of the government in a socialist society?
• How does communism differ from socialism?
• What is the difference between democracy and dictatorship?
• What is the role of the government in a communist society?
• How do different political parties view education?
• What is the difference between environmentalism and climate change activism?
• What is the role of the government in protecting the environment?
• How do different political parties view gun control?
• What is the role of the government in ensuring public safety?
• How do different political parties view healthcare?

Political Essay Topics About International Relations

• Compare and contrast the foreign policies of two different countries.
• How has globalization changed the international political landscape?
• What are the major causes of war?
• How does terrorism impact international relations?
• What is the role of the United Nations in international politics?
• What are the significant issues facing the European Union today?
• What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and what is its role in international politics?
• What are the major issues facing NATO today?
• What is the difference between developed and developing countries?
• How do developed and developing countries view each other?
• What is the role of the International Monetary Fund in international politics?
• What are the significant issues facing the International Monetary Fund today?
• What is the World Trade Organization, and what is its role in international politics?
• What are the major issues facing the World Trade Organization today?

Political Essay Topics About Social Issues

• How has the abortion debate changed over time?
• Discuss the political influences that make someone pro-choice or pro-life?
• How has the gay rights movement changed over time?
• Has the government been effective in stymieing the rise of racism?
• What is the difference between sexism and misogyny, and is one political party more prone to it than another?
• How has the Me Too movement changed the conversation about sexual assault and harassment?
• What is the relationship between poverty and crime, and does politics have anything to do with it?
• What is the relationship between education and income inequality?
• Has the government been effective in tackling income inequality?
• How do different political parties view reproductive rights?
• How does religion influence politics?
• What is the relationship between immigration and crime?

Political Essay Topics About Economic Issues

• Should political affiliation have any bearing on economic policy?
• What is the difference between a free market and a command economy?
• How has globalization changed the world economy?
• What are the major issues facing today’s world economy, and are politics to blame?
• Should voters or Congress be responsible for economic policy?
• What is the role of the government in an economy?
• What is the difference between Keynesian economics and supply-side economics?
• What is the difference between laissez-faire capitalism and crony capitalism?
• How have politics funded the rise of inequality in the United States?
• Should the rising cost of healthcare be considered a political issue or a social issue?
• How do different political parties view deregulation?

Political Essay Topics About Politicians

• Compare and contrast the political careers of two different politicians.
• Analyze the effectiveness of a politician’s political campaigns.
• Discuss the role that charisma plays in politics.
• How much does a politician’s personal life influence their political career?
• What is the difference between a successful and unsuccessful politician?
• How do special interest groups influence politics?
• What is the difference between a lobbyist and a politician?
• What is the difference between a career politician and a term politician?
• Compare and contrast the political ideologies of two different politicians.
• Are career politicians more effective than term politicians?
• How do campaign finance laws influence politicians’ decision-making processes?

Political Essay Topics About Elections

• Should the Electoral College be reformed or abolished?
• What is the difference between primary and general elections?
• Discuss the role that voter turnout plays in elections.
• How does gerrymandering influence elections?
• How do campaign finance laws influence elections?
• What is the difference between open and closed elections?
• Should there be term limits for politicians?
• Should people be allowed to vote by mail or early voting?
• How did democratic elections come to be?
• Should voting be mandatory?
• How can we make sure that every vote is counted?
• What is the difference between a hung parliament and a coalition government?
• Should countries have more than two political parties?
• What is the difference between a first-past-the-post system and a proportional representation system?
• What is the difference between a parliamentary system and a presidential system?

Political Essay Topics About Laws and Regulations

• How does a bill become a law?
• What is the difference between a law and a regulation?
• How do regulatory agencies influence politics?
• Discuss the pros and cons of gun control laws.
• Should there be stricter penalties for hate crimes?
• Should the death penalty be abolished?
• Should there be term limits for Supreme Court justices?
• What is the difference between civil law and criminal law?
• How do interest groups influence the passage of laws?
• Should there be limits on campaign spending?
• Should corporations be allowed to donate to political campaigns?
• What is the difference between a veto and a filibuster?
• How does the process of impeachment work?
• What is the difference between judicial review and judicial activism?
• Should members of Congress be allowed to vote for pay raises?

Political Essay Topics About Foreign Policy

• Should the United States have a policy of isolationism?
• How does foreign aid influence politics?
• Should the United States intervene in other countries’ affairs?
• How does the United Nations influence politics?
• What is the difference between diplomacy and foreign policy?
• How do trade agreements influence politics?
• What is the difference between an alliance and a treaty?
• How do sanctions influence politics?
• What is the difference between a colony and an empire?
• How does decolonization influence politics?
• How do border disputes influence politics?
• What is the difference between a refugee and an immigrant?
• How does immigration policy influence politics?
• What is the difference between a country and a nation?
• How does nationalism influence politics?

Political Essay Topics About Civil Rights and Liberties

• What is the difference between civil rights and civil liberties?
• How do the Bill of Rights and the Constitution influence politics?
• Should there be limits on free speech?
• How do hate speech laws influence politics?
• Should there be limits on the right to bear arms?
• How do gun control laws influence politics?
• What is the difference between a search warrant and a warrantless search?
• How do search and seizure laws influence politics?
• How do Miranda rights influence police interrogation?
• What is the difference between probable cause and reasonable suspicion?
• How do stop and frisk laws influence politics?
• Should there be limits on police use of deadly force?
• How do racial profiling laws influence politics?
• What is the difference between affirmative action and reverse discrimination?
• Should there be limits on affirmative action?

No matter the type of essay you need to write, these 150 political essay topics should give you plenty of material to work with. Remember that you can always narrow your focus to a specific country, a specific type of government, or specific law or regulation. And if you need help writing your essay, re-read the helpful tips above to ensure you get a good grade.

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How to Write the Political and Global Issues College Essay

Essays are one of the best parts of the college application process. With your grades in, your test scores decided, and your extracurriculars developed over your years in high school, your essays are the last piece of your college application that you have immediate control over. With them, you get to add a voice to your other stats, a “face” to the name, so to speak. They’re an opportunity to reveal what’s important to you and what sets you apart from other applicants and tell the admissions committee why you’d be an excellent addition to their incoming student class.

Throughout your college applications process, there are many different types of essays you’ll be asked to write. Some of the most popular essay questions you’ll see might include writing about an extracurricular, why you want to matriculate at a school, and what you want to study.

Increasingly, you might also see a supplemental college essay asking you to discuss a political or global issue that you’re passionate about. Asking this type of question helps colleges understand what you care about outside of your personal life and how you will be an active global citizen.

Some examples from the 2019-2020 cycle include:

Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service : Briefly discuss a current global issue, indicating why you consider it important and what you suggest should be done to deal with it.

Yeshiva University Honors Programs : What is one issue about which you are passionate?

Pitzer College : Pitzer College is known for our students’ intellectual and creative activism. If you could work on a cause that is meaningful to you through a project, artistic, academic, or otherwise, what would you do?

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Our chancing engine factors in extracurricular activities, demographic, and other holistic details. We’ll let you know what your chances are at your dream schools — and how to improve your chances!

Tips for Writing the Political and Global Issues College Essay

Pick an issue close to your life.

When you first see a political and global issues prompt, your gut reaction might be to go with a big-picture topic that’s all over the news, like poverty or racism. The problem with these topics is that you usually have a page or less to talk about the issue and why it matters to you. Students also might not have a direct personal connection to such a broad topic. The goal of this essay is to reveal your critical thinking skills, but the higher-level goal of every college essay is to learn more about who you are.

Rather than go with a broad issue that you’re not personally connected to, see if there’s just one facet of it that you  can  contend with. This is especially important if the prompt simply asks for “an issue,” and not necessarily a “global issue.” While some essay prompts will specifically ask that you address a  global  issue (like Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service), there are still ways to approach it from a more focused perspective.

For example, if you were to talk about world hunger, you could start with the hunger you see in your community, which is a food desert. For your solution, you can discuss your plan to build a community garden, so the town is able to access fresh produce. Food deserts, of course, aren’t the only reason world hunger exists; so, you should also explore some other reasons, and other solutions. Maybe there is a better way to prevent and recuperate produce currently being wasted, for instance. If the prompt doesn’t specifically ask for a global issue, however, you could simply focus on food deserts.

For another example, maybe you want to talk about climate change. A more personal and focused approach would deal with happenings in your community, or a community you’ve had contact with. For instance, perhaps your local river was polluted because of textile industry waste; in this case, it would be fitting to address fast fashion specifically (which is still a global issue).

Remember your audience

As you’re approaching this essay, take care to understand the political ramifications of what you’re suggesting and how the school you’re addressing might react to it. Make sure you understand the school’s political viewpoints, and keep in mind that schools are hoping to see how you might fit on their campus based on your response.

So, if you’re applying to a school known for being progressive, like Oberlin or Amherst, you might not want to write an essay arguing that religious freedom is under threat in America. Or, if you’re applying to Liberty University, you should probably avoid writing an essay with a strong pro-LGBTQ stance. You don’t have to take the opposite position, but try picking a different issue that won’t raise the same concerns.

If you have no political alignment, choose economics

If you find yourself applying to a school with which you share no political viewpoints, you might want to consider if the school would even be a good fit for you. Why do you really want to go there? Are those reasons worth it? If you think so, consider writing about an economic issue, which tend to be less contentious than social issues.

For instance, you could write about the impact of monopolies because your parents own an independent bookstore that has been affected by Amazon. Or you could discuss tax breaks for companies that keep or move their production domestically, after seeing how your town changed when factories were moved abroad. Maybe tax filing is a cause you’re really passionate about, and you think the government should institute a free electronic system for all. No matter what you write about here, the key is to keep it close to home however you can.

Pick the best possible framing

When you’re writing an essay that doesn’t fully align with the political views of the school you’re applying to, you’ll want to minimize the gap between your viewpoint and that of the school. While they still might disagree with your views, this will give your essay (and therefore you) the best possible chance. Let’s say you’re applying to a school with progressive economic views, while you firmly believe in free markets. Consider these two essay options:

Option 1:  You believe in free markets because they have pulled billions out of terrible poverty in the developing world.

Option 2:  “Greed is good,” baby! Nothing wrong with the rich getting richer.

Even if you believe equally in the two reasons above personally, essay option 1 would be more likely to resonate with an admissions committee at a progressive school.

Let’s look at another, more subtle example:

Option 1:  Adding 500 police officers to the New York City public transit system to catch fare evaders allows officers to unfairly and systematically profile individuals based on their race.

Option 2:  The cost of hiring 500 additional police officers in the New York City public transit system is higher than the money that would be recouped by fare evasion.

While you might believe both of these things, a school that places a lower priority on race issues may respond better to the second option’s focus on the fallible economics of the issue.

Structuring the Essay

Depending on how long the essay prompt is, you’ll want to use your time and word count slightly differently. For shorter essays (under 250 words), focus on your personal connection rather than the issue itself. You don’t have much space and you need to make it count. For standard essays (250-500 words), you can spend about half the time on the issue and half the time on your personal connection. This should allow you to get more into the nuance. For longer essays, you can write more on the issue itself. But remember, no matter how long the essay is, they ultimately want to learn about you–don’t spend so much time on the issue that you don’t bring it back to yourself.

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The Top Ten Most-Read Essays of 2021

In 2021, democracy’s fortunes were tested, and a tumultuous world became even more turbulent. Democratic setbacks arose in places as far flung as Burma, El Salvador, Tunisia, and Sudan, and a 20-year experiment in Afghanistan collapsed in days. The world’s democracies were beset by rising polarization, and people watched in shock as an insurrection took place in the United States. In a year marked by high political drama, economic unrest, and rising assaults on democracy, we at the  Journal of Democracy  sought to provide insight and analysis of the forces that imperil freedom. Here are our 10 most-read essays of 2021:

Manuel Meléndez-Sánchez Nayib Bukele has developed a blend of political tactics that combines populist appeals and classic autocratic behavior with a polished social-media brand. It poses a dire threat to the country’s democratic institutions.

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Political Science Essay Example

Get Inspired with these Amazing Political Science Essay Examples

Published on: May 8, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 30, 2024

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Many students struggle to write effective political science essays that meet the expectations of their professors. They may have difficulty organizing their thoughts, conducting research, or making persuasive arguments.

One way to improve your political science essay writing skills is to study examples of successful essays in this field. 

By analyzing the structure, and content of these essays, you can learn valuable lessons that will help you write better essays.

In this blog, we provide examples of high-quality political science essays in different different areas of the field. 

Whether you're a beginner or an advanced student, you'll find valuable insights to help you succeed in your coursework.

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What is a Political Science Essay? Understanding the Basics

A political science essay explores a particular topic or issue within the field of political science. It typically requires students to conduct research, analyze data, and make persuasive arguments based on their findings.

These essays can take many different forms, depending on the specific requirements of the assignment. They can be comparative essays that examine the similarities and differences between two or more political systems.

They can also be theoretical essays that explore different political theories that analyze real-world political phenomena.

Regardless of its specific type, all such essays should adhere to certain basic principles. They should have a clear thesis statement, use evidence to support their arguments, and be written in clear and concise language.

Political Science Essay Examples

Now that we have a basic understanding of these essays, let's take a closer look at some of its examples.

By analyzing these essays, you can gain valuable insights into how to write political essays.

Political Science Paper Example

Political Science Research Paper Example

Political Science Analysis Paper Example

Political Science Term Paper Examples

Political Science Essay Example for Different Fields

Political science is a diverse and dynamic field that encompasses a wide range of topics and perspectives. 

To gain a comprehensive understanding, it's important to study the examples that explore different areas of research and inquiry.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That's our Job!

The examples given below will help you understand the richness and complexity of political science research.

Political Essay About Poverty

Political Science

The Impact Of Social Movements On National Security

Characteristics Of Political Science

American Political Science

The Political Reform of Japan

The United States and Terrorism

The Role of Political Parties and Political Figures in Shaping Political Landscapes

Kosovo protests 2022

Rishi sunak's political career

Political Essay on Politics and Political Decisions

Tips To Write A Write A Compelling Political Science Essay 

To write an effective essay, it is important to approach the topic with care and attention to detail. Consider the following tips for writing a political essay that stands out:

• Define your Topic: Be clear about the focus of your essay and ensure that it is relevant and interesting to your readers.
• Conduct Thorough Research: Gather information from credible sources, including academic journals, government reports, and news outlets, to ensure that your arguments are well-supported.
• Develop A Clear Thesis Statement: Your thesis should be concise and clearly state your argument or position on the topic.
• Organize Your Essay Effectively: Use clear and logical structure to ensure that your arguments are presented in a coherent and convincing manner.
• Use Evidence To Support Your Arguments: Incorporate relevant data and examples to support your arguments, and ensure that they are credible and well-sourced.
• Consider Opposing Viewpoints: Acknowledge and address counterarguments to your position to demonstrate a thorough understanding of the topic.
• Write Clearly And Concisely : Use simple and direct language to convey your ideas, and avoid unnecessary jargon or technical terms.

Pitfalls To Avoid While Writing A Political Science Essay

To write a strong political essay, it is important to not only follow best practices, but also avoid common pitfalls. 

By keeping these pitfalls in mind, you can create a thoughtful and thorough essay that engages your readers.

• Oversimplification

Political science is a complex field that deals with multifaceted political issues. Avoid oversimplifying the topic or argument in your essay, and make sure to provide a nuanced and in-depth analysis.

These essays should be objective and free from personal biases. Avoid using emotionally charged language or cherry-picking evidence to support a preconceived conclusion.

• Using Vague Language

Political essays should be precise and clear in their language. Avoid using vague terms or generalizations, and strive to use concrete and specific language.

• Ignoring Counterarguments

To write a convincing political science essay, it is important to consider and address counterarguments. Avoid ignoring opposing viewpoints, and make sure to provide a thorough analysis of alternative perspectives.

In conclusion, writing political science essays is a great way to explore important political issues. It can also help you in learning about how power and governance work. 

By looking at examples, and writing tips, you can write a strong essay that contributes to the field. 

Whether you're a student, a policy analyst, or just interested in politics, political essays help you understand how decisions get made.

If you need help writing your essay, CollegeEssay.org has an AI essay generator that can assist you. 

Our political science essay writing service can help you write a well-organized essay that meets your needs.

So what are you waiting for? Reach out to us and request ' write me an essay ' to get started!

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Essay on Politics for Students and Children

500+ words essay on politics.

When we hear the term politics, we usually think of the government, politicians and political parties. For a country to have an organized government and work as per specific guidelines, we require a certain organization. This is where politics comes in, as it essentially forms the government. Every country, group and organization use politics to instrument various ways to organize their events, prospects and more.

Politics does not limit to those in power in the government. It is also about the ones who are in the run to achieve the same power. The candidates of the opposition party question the party on power during political debates . They intend to inform people and make them aware of their agenda and what the present government is doing. All this is done with the help of politics only.

Dirty Politics

Dirty politics refers to the kind of politics in which moves are made for the personal interest of a person or party. It ignores the overall development of a nation and hurts the essence of the country. If we look at it closely, there are various constituents of dirty politics.

The ministers of various political parties, in order to defame the opposition, spread fake news and give provocative speeches against them. This hampers with the harmony of the country and also degrades the essence of politics . They pass sexist remarks and instill hate in the hearts of people to watch their party win with a majority of seats.

Read 500 Words Essay on Corruption Here

Furthermore, the majority of politicians are corrupt. They abuse their power to advance their personal interests rather than that of the country. We see the news flooded with articles like ministers and their families involving in scams and illegal practices. The power they have makes them feel invincible which is why they get away with any crime.

Before coming into power, the government makes numerous promises to the public. They influence and manipulate them into thinking all their promises will be fulfilled. However, as soon as they gain power, they turn their back on the public. They work for their selfish motives and keep fooling people in every election. Out of all this, only the common suffers at the hands of lying and corrupt politicians.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Lack of Educated Ministers

If we look at the scenario of Indian elections, any random person with enough power and money can contest the elections. They just need to be a citizen of the country and be at least 25 years old. There are a few clauses too which are very easy.

The strangest thing is that contesting for elections does not require any minimum education qualification. Thus, we see how so many uneducated and non-deserving candidates get into power and then misuse it endlessly. A country with uneducated ministers cannot develop or even be on the right path.

We need educated ministers badly in the government. They are the ones who can make the country progress as they will handle things better than the illiterate ones. The candidates must be well-qualified in order to take on a big responsibility as running an entire nation. In short, we need to save our country from corrupt and uneducated politicians who are no less than parasites eating away the development growth of the country and its resources. All of us must unite to break the wheel and work for the prosperous future of our country.

FAQs on Politics

Q.1 Why is the political system corrupt?

A.1 Political system is corrupt because the ministers in power exercise their authority to get away with all their crimes. They bribe everyone into working for their selfish motives making the whole system corrupt.

Q.2 Why does India need educated ministers?

A.2 India does not have a minimum educational qualification requirement for ministers. This is why the uneducated lot is corrupting the system and pushing the country to doom. We need educated ministers so they can help the country develop with their progressive thinking.

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A Brief History of the Political Essay

From swift to woolf, david bromwich considers an evolving genre.

The political essay has never been a clearly defined genre. David Hume may have legitimated it in 1758 when he classified under a collective rubric his own Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. “Political,” however, should have come last in order, since Hume took a speculative and detached view of politics, and seems to have been incapable of feeling passion for a political cause. We commonly associate political thought with full-scale treatises by philosophers of a different sort, whose understanding of politics was central to their account of human nature. Hobbes’s Leviathan , Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws , Rousseau’s Social Contract , Mill’s Representative Government , and, closer to our time, Rawls’s Theory of Justice , all satisfy that expectation. What, then, is a political essay? By the late 18th century, the periodical writings of Steele, Swift, Goldsmith, and Johnson had broadened the scope of the English essay for serious purposes. The field of politics, as much as culture, appeared to their successors well suited to arguments on society and government.

A public act of praise, dissent, or original description may take on permanent value when it implicates concerns beyond the present moment. Where the issue is momentous, the commitment stirred by passion, and the writing strong enough, an essay may sink deep roots in the language of politics. An essay is an attempt , as the word implies—a trial of sense and persuasion, which any citizen may hazard in a society where people are free to speak their minds. A more restrictive idea of political argument—one that would confer special legitimacy on an elite caste of managers, consultants, and symbolic analysts—presumes an environment in which state papers justify decisions arrived at from a region above politics. By contrast, the absence of formal constraints or a settled audience for the essay means that the daily experience of the writer counts as evidence. A season of crisis tempts people to think politically; in the process, they sometimes discover reasons to back their convictions.

The experience of civic freedom and its discontents may lead the essayist to think beyond politics. In 1940, Virginia Woolf recalled the sound of German bombers circling overhead the night before; the insect-like irritant, with its promise of aggression, frightened her into thought: “It is a queer experience, lying in the dark and listening to the zoom of a hornet which may at any moment sting you to death.” The ugly noise, for Woolf, signaled the prerogative of the fighting half of the species: Englishwomen “must lie weaponless tonight.” Yet Englishmen would be called upon to destroy the menace; and she was not sorry for their help. The mood of the writer is poised between gratitude and a bewildered frustration. Woolf ’s essay, “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid,” declines to exhibit the patriotic sentiment by which most reporters in her position would have felt drawn. At the same time, its personal emphasis keeps the author honest through the awareness of her own dependency.

Begin with an incident— I could have been killed last night —and you may end with speculations on human nature. Start with a national policy that you deplore, and it may take you back to the question, “Who are my neighbors?” In 1846, Henry David Thoreau was arrested for having refused to pay a poll tax; he made a lesson of his resistance two years later, when he saw the greed and dishonesty of the Mexican War: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” But to Thoreau’s surprise, the window of the prison had opened onto the life of the town he lived in, with its everyday errands and duties, its compromises and arrangements, and for him that glimpse was a revelation:

They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn,—a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I had never seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about.

Slavery, at that time, was nicknamed “the peculiar institution,” and by calling the prison itself a peculiar institution, and maybe having in mind the adjacent inn as well, Thoreau prods his reader to think about the constraints that are a tacit condition of social life.

The risk of political writing may lure the citizen to write—a fact Hazlitt seems to acknowledge in his essay “On the Regal Character,” where his second sentence wonders if the essay will expose him to prosecution: “In writing a criticism, we hope we shall not be accused of intending a libel.” (His friend Leigh Hunt had recently served two years in prison for “seditious libel” of the Prince Regent—having characterized him as a dandy notorious for his ostentation and obesity.) The writer’s consciousness of provocative intent may indeed be inseparable from the wish to persuade; though the tone of commitment will vary with the zeal and composition of the audience, whether that means a political party, a movement, a vanguard of the enlightened, or “the people” at large.

Edmund Burke, for example, writes to the sheriffs of Bristol (and through them to the city’s electors) in order to warn against the suspension of habeas corpus by the British war ministry in 1777. The sudden introduction of the repressive act, he tells the electors, has imperiled their liberty even if they are for the moment individually exempt. In response to the charge that the Americans fighting for independence are an unrepresentative minority, he warns: “ General rebellions and revolts of an whole people never were encouraged , now or at any time. They are always provoked. ” So too, Mahatma Gandhi addresses his movement of resistance against British rule, as well as others who can be attracted to the cause, when he explains why nonviolent protest requires courage of a higher degree than the warrior’s: “Non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.” In both cases, the writer treats the immediate injustice as an occasion for broader strictures on the nature of justice. There are certain duties that governors owe to the governed, and duties hardly less compulsory that the people owe to themselves.

Apparently diverse topics connect the essays in Writing Politics ; but, taken loosely to illustrate a historical continuity, they show the changing face of oppression and violence, and the invention of new paths for improving justice. Arbitrary power is the enemy throughout—power that, by the nature of its asserted scope and authority, makes itself the judge of its own cause. King George III, whose reign spanned sixty years beginning in 1760, from the first was thought to have overextended monarchical power and prerogative, and by doing so to have reversed an understanding of parliamentary sovereignty that was tacitly recognized by his predecessors. Writing against the king, “Junius” (the pen name of Philip Francis) traced the monarch’s errors to a poor education; and he gave an edge of deliberate effrontery to the attack on arbitrary power by addressing the king as you. “It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every reproach and distress, which has attended your government, that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth, until you heard it in the complaints of your people.”

A similar frankness, without the ad hominem spur, can be felt in Burke’s attack on the monarchical distrust of liberty at home as well as abroad: “If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so; and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.” Writing in the same key from America, Thomas Paine, in his seventh number of The Crisis , gave a new description to the British attempt to preserve the unity of the empire by force of arms. He called it a war of conquest; and by addressing his warning directly “to the people of England,” he reminded the king’s subjects that war is always a social evil, for it sponsors a violence that does not terminate in itself. War enlarges every opportunity of vainglory—a malady familiar to monarchies.

The coming of democracy marks a turning point in modern discussions of sovereignty and the necessary protections of liberty. Confronted by the American annexation of parts of Mexico, in 1846–48, Thoreau saw to his disgust that a war of conquest could also be a popular war, the will of the people directed to the oppression of persons. It follows that the state apparatus built by democracy is at best an equivocal ally of individual rights. Yet as Emerson would recognize in his lecture “The Fugitive Slave Law,” and Frederick Douglass would confirm in “The Mission of the War,” the massed power of the state is likewise the only vehicle powerful enough to destroy a system of oppression as inveterate as American slavery had become by the 1850s.

Acceptance of political evil—a moral inertia that can corrupt the ablest of lawmakers—goes easily with the comforts of a society at peace where many are satisfied. “Here was the question,” writes Emerson: “Are you for man and for the good of man; or are you for the hurt and harm of man? It was question whether man shall be treated as leather? whether the Negroes shall be as the Indians were in Spanish America, a piece of money?” Emerson wondered at the apostasy of Daniel Webster, How came he there? The answer was that Webster had deluded himself by projecting a possible right from serial compromise with wrong.

Two ways lie open to correct the popular will without a relapse into docile assent and the rule of oligarchy. You may widen the terms of discourse and action by enlarging the community of participants. Alternatively, you may strengthen the opportunities of dissent through acts of exemplary protest—protest in speech, in action, or both. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. remain the commanding instances in this regard. Both led movements that demanded of every adherent that the protest serve as an express image of the society it means to bring about. Nonviolent resistance accordingly involves a public disclosure of the work of conscience—a demonstrated willingness to make oneself an exemplary warrior without war. Because they were practical reformers, Gandhi and King, within the societies they sought to reform, were engaged in what Michael Oakeshott calls “the pursuit of intimations.” They did not start from a model of the good society generated from outside. They built on existing practices of toleration, friendship, neighborly care, and respect for the dignity of strangers.

Nonviolent resistance, as a tactic of persuasion, aims to arouse an audience of the uncommitted by its show of discipline and civic responsibility. Well, but why not simply resist? Why show respect for the laws of a government you mean to change radically? Nonviolence, for Gandhi and King, was never merely a tactic, and there were moral as well as rhetorical reasons for their ethic of communal self-respect and self-command. Gandhi looked on the British empire as a commonwealth that had proved its ability to reform. King spoke with the authority of a native American, claiming the rights due to all Americans, and he evoked the ideals his countrymen often said they wished to live by. The stories the nation loved to tell of itself took pride in emancipation much more than pride in conquest and domination. “So,” wrote King from the Birmingham City Jail, “I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.”

A subtler enemy of liberty than outright prejudice and violent oppression is the psychological push toward conformity. This internalized docility inhabits and may be said to dictate the costume of manners in a democracy. Because the rule of mass opinion serves as a practical substitute for the absolute authority that is no longer available, it exerts an enormous and hidden pressure. This dangerous “omnipotence of the majority,” as Tocqueville called it, knows no power greater than itself; it resembles an absolute monarch in possessing neither the equipment nor the motive to render a judgment against itself. Toleration thus becomes a political value that requires as vigilant a defense as liberty. Minorities are marked not only by race, religion, and habits of association, but also by opinion.

“It is easy to see,” writes Walter Bagehot in “The Metaphysical Basis of Toleration,” “that very many believers would persecute sceptics” if they were given the means, “and that very many sceptics would persecute believers.” Bagehot has in mind religious belief, in particular, but the same intolerance operates when it is a question of penalizing a word, a gesture, a wrongly sympathetic or unsympathetic show of feeling by which a fellow citizen might claim to be offended. The more divided the society, the more it will crave implicit assurances of unity; the more unified it is, the more it wants an even greater show of unity—an unmistakable signal of membership and belonging that can be read as proof of collective solidarity. The “guilty fear of criticism,” Mary McCarthy remarked of the domestic fear of Communism in the 1950s, “the sense of being surrounded by an unappreciative world,” brought to American life a regimen of tests, codes, and loyalty oaths that were calculated to confirm rather than subdue the anxiety.

Proscribed and persecuted groups naturally seek a fortified community of their own, which should be proof against insult; and by 1870 or so, the sure method of creating such a community was to found a new nation. George Eliot took this remedy to be prudent and inevitable, in her sympathetic early account of the Zionist quest for a Jewish state, yet her unsparing portrait of English anti-Semitism seems to recognize the nation-remedy as a carrier of the same exclusion it hopes to abolish. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a widened sense of community is the apparently intuitive—but in fact regularly inculcated—intellectual habit by which we divide people into racial, religious, and ethnic identities. The idea of an international confederation for peace was tried twice, without success, in the 20th century, with the League of Nations and the United Nations; but some such goal, first formulated in the political writings of Kant, has found memorable popular expression again and again.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s essay “Of the Ruling of Men” affords a prospect of international liberty that seems to the author simply the next necessary advance of common sense in the cause of humanity. Du Bois noticed in 1920 how late the expansion of rights had arrived at the rights of women. Always, the last hiding places of arbitrary power are the trusted arenas of privilege a society has come to accept as customary, and to which it has accorded the spurious honor of supposing it part of the natural order: men over women; the strong nations over the weak; corporate heads over employees. The pattern had come under scrutiny already in Harriet Taylor Mill’s “Enfranchisement of Women,” and its application to the hierarchies of ownership and labor would be affirmed in William Morris’s lecture “Useful Work Versus Useless Toil.” The commercial and manufacturing class, wrote Morris, “ force the genuine workers to provide for them”; no better (only more recondite in their procedures) are “the parasites” whose function is to defend the cause of property, “sometimes, as in the case of lawyers, undisguisedly so.” The socialists Morris and Du Bois regard the ultimate aim of a democratic world as the replacement of useless by useful work. With that change must also come the invention of a shared experience of leisure that is neither wasteful nor thoughtless.

A necessary bulwark of personal freedom is property, and in the commercial democracies for the past three centuries a usual means of agreement for the defense of property has been the contract. In challenging the sacredness of contract, in certain cases of conflict with a common good, T. H. Green moved the idea of “freedom of contract” from the domain of nature to that of social arrangements that are settled by convention and therefore subject to revision. The freedom of contract must be susceptible of modification when it fails to meet a standard of public well-being. The right of a factory owner, for example, to employ child labor if the child agrees, should not be protected. “No contract,” Green argues, “is valid in which human persons, willingly or unwillingly, are dealt with as commodities”; for when we speak of freedom, “we mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying.” And again:

When we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom, we measure it by the increasing development and exercise on the whole of those powers of contributing to social good with which we believe the members of the society to be endowed; in short, by the greater power on the part of the citizens as a body to make the most and best of themselves.

Legislation in the public interest may still be consistent with the principles of free society when it parts from a leading maxim of contractual individualism.

The very idea of a social contract has usually been taken to imply an obligation to die for the state. Though Hobbes and Locke offered reservations on this point, the classical theorists agree that the state yields the prospect of “commodious living” without which human life would be unsocial and greatly impoverished; and there are times when the state can survive only through the sacrifice of citizens. May there also be a duty of self-sacrifice against a state whose whole direction and momentum has bent it toward injustice? Hannah Arendt, in “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” asked that question regarding the conduct of state officials as well as ordinary people under the encroaching tyranny of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Citizens then, Arendt observes, had live options of political conduct besides passive obedience and open revolt. Conscientious opposition could show itself in public indications of nonsupport . This is a fact that the pervasiveness of conformism and careerism in mass societies makes harder to see than it should be.

Jonathan Swift, a writer as temperamentally diverse from Arendt as possible, shows in “A Modest Proposal” how the human creature goes about rationalizing any act or any policy, however atrocious. Our propensity to make-normal, to approve whatever renders life more orderly, can lead by the lightest of expedient steps to a plan for marketing the babies of the Irish poor as flesh suitable for eating. It is, after all—so Swift’s fictional narrator argues—a plausible design to alleviate poverty and distress among a large sector of the population, and to eliminate the filth and crowding that disgusts persons of a more elevated sort. The justification is purely utilitarian, and the proposer cites the most disinterested of motives: he has no financial or personal stake in the design. Civility has often been praised as a necessity of political argument, but Swift’s proposal is at once civil and, in itself, atrocious.

An absorbing concern of Arendt’s, as of several of the other essay writers gathered here, was the difficulty of thinking. We measure, we compute, we calculate, we weigh advantages and disadvantages—that much is only sensible, only logical—but we give reasons that are often blind to our motives, we rationalize and we normalize in order to justify ourselves. It is supremely difficult to use the equipment we learn from parents and teachers, which instructs us how to deal fairly with persons, and apply it to the relationship between persons and society, and between the manners of society and the laws of a nation. The 21st century has saddled persons of all nations with a catastrophic possibility, the destruction of a planetary environment for organized human life; and in facing the predicament directly, and formulating answers to the question it poses, the political thinkers of the past may help us chiefly by intimations. The idea of a good or tolerable society now encompasses relations between people at the widest imaginable distance apart. It must also cover a new relation of stewardship between humankind and nature.

Having made the present selection with the abovementioned topics in view—the republican defense against arbitrary power; the progress of liberty; the coming of mass-suffrage democracy and its peculiar dangers; justifications for political dissent and disobedience; war, as chosen for the purpose of domination or as necessary to destroy a greater evil; the responsibilities of the citizen; the political meaning of work and the conditions of work—an anthology of writings all in English seemed warranted by the subject matter. For in the past three centuries, these issues have been discussed most searchingly by political critics and theorists in Britain and the United States.

The span covers the Glorious Revolution and its achievement of parliamentary sovereignty; the American Revolution, and the civil war that has rightly been called the second American revolution; the expansion of the franchise under the two great reform bills in England and the 15th amendment to the US constitution; the two world wars and the Holocaust; and the mass movements of nonviolent resistance that brought national independence to India and broadened the terms of citizenship of black Americans. The sequence gives adequate evidence of thinkers engaged in a single conversation. Many of these authors were reading the essayists who came before them; and in many cases (Burke and Paine, Lincoln and Douglass, Churchill and Orwell), they were reading each other.

Writing Politics contains no example of the half-political, half-commercial genre of “leadership” writing. Certain other principles that guided the editor will be obvious at a glance, but may as well be stated. Only complete essays are included, no extracts. This has meant excluding great writers—Hobbes, Locke, Wollstonecraft, and John Stuart Mill, among others—whose definitive political writing came in the shape of full-length books. There are likewise no chapters of books; no party manifestos or statements of creed; nothing that was first published posthumously. All of these essays were written at the time noted, were meant for an audience of the time, and were published with an eye to their immediate effect. This is so even in cases (as with Morris and Du Bois) where the author had in view the reformation of a whole way of thinking. Some lectures have been included—the printed lecture was an indispensable medium for political ideas in the 19th century—but there are no party speeches delivered by an official to advance a cause of the moment.

Two exceptions to the principles may prove the rule. Abraham Lincoln’s letter to James C. Conkling was a public letter, written to defend the Emancipation Proclamation, in which, a few months earlier, President Lincoln had declared the freedom of all slaves in the rebelling states; he now extended the order to cover black soldiers who fought for the Union: “If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.” Lincoln was risking his presidency when he published this extraordinary appeal and admonition, and his view was shared by Frederick Douglass in “The Mission of the War”: “No war but an Abolition war, no peace but an Abolition peace.” The other exception is “The Roots of Honour,” John Ruskin’s attack on the mercenary morality of 19th-century capitalism . He called the chapter “Essay I” in Unto This Last , and his nomenclature seemed a fair excuse for reprinting an ineradicable prophecy.

__________________________________

From Writing Politics , edited by David Bromwich. Copyright © 2020 by David Bromwich; courtesy of NYRB Classics.

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Political Science

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you to recognize and to follow writing standards in political science. The first step toward accomplishing this goal is to develop a basic understanding of political science and the kind of work political scientists do.

Defining politics and political science

Political scientist Harold Laswell said it best: at its most basic level, politics is the struggle of “who gets what, when, how.” This struggle may be as modest as competing interest groups fighting over control of a small municipal budget or as overwhelming as a military stand-off between international superpowers. Political scientists study such struggles, both small and large, in an effort to develop general principles or theories about the way the world of politics works. Think about the title of your course or re-read the course description in your syllabus. You’ll find that your course covers a particular sector of the large world of “politics” and brings with it a set of topics, issues, and approaches to information that may be helpful to consider as you begin a writing assignment. The diverse structure of political science reflects the diverse kinds of problems the discipline attempts to analyze and explain. In fact, political science includes at least eight major sub-fields:

• American politics examines political behavior and institutions in the United States.
• Comparative politics analyzes and compares political systems within and across different geographic regions.
• International relations investigates relations among nation states and the activities of international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and NATO, as well as international actors such as terrorists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multi-national corporations (MNCs).
• Political theory analyzes fundamental political concepts such as power and democracy and foundational questions, like “How should the individual and the state relate?”
• Political methodology deals with the ways that political scientists ask and investigate questions.
• Public policy examines the process by which governments make public decisions.
• Public administration studies the ways that government policies are implemented.
• Public law focuses on the role of law and courts in the political process.

What is scientific about political science?

Investigating relationships.

Although political scientists are prone to debate and disagreement, the majority view the discipline as a genuine science. As a result, political scientists generally strive to emulate the objectivity as well as the conceptual and methodological rigor typically associated with the so-called “hard” sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics). They see themselves as engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions. Based on these revelations, they attempt to state general principles about the way the world of politics works. Given these aims, it is important for political scientists’ writing to be conceptually precise, free from bias, and well-substantiated by empirical evidence. Knowing that political scientists value objectivity may help you in making decisions about how to write your paper and what to put in it.

Political theory is an important exception to this empirical approach. You can learn more about writing for political theory classes in the section “Writing in Political Theory” below.

Building theories

Since theory-building serves as the cornerstone of the discipline, it may be useful to see how it works. You may be wrestling with theories or proposing your own as you write your paper. Consider how political scientists have arrived at the theories you are reading and discussing in your course. Most political scientists adhere to a simple model of scientific inquiry when building theories. The key to building precise and persuasive theories is to develop and test hypotheses. Hypotheses are statements that researchers construct for the purpose of testing whether or not a certain relationship exists between two phenomena. To see how political scientists use hypotheses, and to imagine how you might use a hypothesis to develop a thesis for your paper, consider the following example. Suppose that we want to know whether presidential elections are affected by economic conditions. We could formulate this question into the following hypothesis:

“When the national unemployment rate is greater than 7 percent at the time of the election, presidential incumbents are not reelected.”

Collecting data

In the research model designed to test this hypothesis, the dependent variable (the phenomenon that is affected by other variables) would be the reelection of incumbent presidents; the independent variable (the phenomenon that may have some effect on the dependent variable) would be the national unemployment rate. You could test the relationship between the independent and dependent variables by collecting data on unemployment rates and the reelection of incumbent presidents and comparing the two sets of information. If you found that in every instance that the national unemployment rate was greater than 7 percent at the time of a presidential election the incumbent lost, you would have significant support for our hypothesis.

However, research in political science seldom yields immediately conclusive results. In this case, for example, although in most recent presidential elections our hypothesis holds true, President Franklin Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 despite the fact that the national unemployment rate was 17%. To explain this important exception and to make certain that other factors besides high unemployment rates were not primarily responsible for the defeat of incumbent presidents in other election years, you would need to do further research. So you can see how political scientists use the scientific method to build ever more precise and persuasive theories and how you might begin to think about the topics that interest you as you write your paper.

Clear, consistent, objective writing

Since political scientists construct and assess theories in accordance with the principles of the scientific method, writing in the field conveys the rigor, objectivity, and logical consistency that characterize this method. Thus political scientists avoid the use of impressionistic or metaphorical language, or language which appeals primarily to our senses, emotions, or moral beliefs. In other words, rather than persuade you with the elegance of their prose or the moral virtue of their beliefs, political scientists persuade through their command of the facts and their ability to relate those facts to theories that can withstand the test of empirical investigation. In writing of this sort, clarity and concision are at a premium. To achieve such clarity and concision, political scientists precisely define any terms or concepts that are important to the arguments that they make. This precision often requires that they “operationalize” key terms or concepts. “Operationalizing” simply means that important—but possibly vague or abstract—concepts like “justice” are defined in ways that allow them to be measured or tested through scientific investigation.

Fortunately, you will generally not be expected to devise or operationalize key concepts entirely on your own. In most cases, your professor or the authors of assigned readings will already have defined and/or operationalized concepts that are important to your research. And in the event that someone hasn’t already come up with precisely the definition you need, other political scientists will in all likelihood have written enough on the topic that you’re investigating to give you some clear guidance on how to proceed. For this reason, it is always a good idea to explore what research has already been done on your topic before you begin to construct your own argument. See our handout on making an academic argument .

Example of an operationalized term

To give you an example of the kind of rigor and objectivity political scientists aim for in their writing, let’s examine how someone might operationalize a term. Reading through this example should clarify the level of analysis and precision that you will be expected to employ in your writing. Here’s how you might define key concepts in a way that allows us to measure them.

We are all familiar with the term “democracy.” If you were asked to define this term, you might make a statement like the following:

“Democracy is government by the people.”

You would, of course, be correct—democracy is government by the people. But, in order to evaluate whether or not a particular government is fully democratic or is more or less democratic when compared with other governments, we would need to have more precise criteria with which to measure or assess democracy. For example, here are some criteria that political scientists have suggested are indicators of democracy:

• Freedom to form and join organizations
• Freedom of expression
• Right to vote
• Eligibility for public office
• Right of political leaders to compete for support
• Right of political leaders to compete for votes
• Alternative sources of information
• Free and fair elections
• Institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference

If we adopt these nine criteria, we now have a definition that will allow us to measure democracy empirically. Thus, if you want to determine whether Brazil is more democratic than Sweden, you can evaluate each country in terms of the degree to which it fulfills the above criteria.

What counts as good writing in political science?

While rigor, clarity, and concision will be valued in any piece of writing in political science, knowing the kind of writing task you’ve been assigned will help you to write a good paper. Two of the most common kinds of writing assignments in political science are the research paper and the theory paper.

Writing political science research papers

Your instructors use research paper assignments as a means of assessing your ability to understand a complex problem in the field, to develop a perspective on this problem, and to make a persuasive argument in favor of your perspective. In order for you to successfully meet this challenge, your research paper should include the following components:

• An introduction
• A problem statement
• A discussion of methodology
• A literature review
• A description and evaluation of your research findings
• A summary of your findings

Here’s a brief description of each component.

In the introduction of your research paper, you need to give the reader some basic background information on your topic that suggests why the question you are investigating is interesting and important. You will also need to provide the reader with a statement of the research problem you are attempting to address and a basic outline of your paper as a whole. The problem statement presents not only the general research problem you will address but also the hypotheses that you will consider. In the methodology section, you will explain to the reader the research methods you used to investigate your research topic and to test the hypotheses that you have formulated. For example, did you conduct interviews, use statistical analysis, rely upon previous research studies, or some combination of all of these methodological approaches?

Before you can develop each of the above components of your research paper, you will need to conduct a literature review. A literature review involves reading and analyzing what other researchers have written on your topic before going on to do research of your own. There are some very pragmatic reasons for doing this work. First, as insightful as your ideas may be, someone else may have had similar ideas and have already done research to test them. By reading what they have written on your topic, you can ensure that you don’t repeat, but rather learn from, work that has already been done. Second, to demonstrate the soundness of your hypotheses and methodology, you will need to indicate how you have borrowed from and/or improved upon the ideas of others.

By referring to what other researchers have found on your topic, you will have established a frame of reference that enables the reader to understand the full significance of your research results. Thus, once you have conducted your literature review, you will be in a position to present your research findings. In presenting these findings, you will need to refer back to your original hypotheses and explain the manner and degree to which your results fit with what you anticipated you would find. If you see strong support for your argument or perhaps some unexpected results that your original hypotheses cannot account for, this section is the place to convey such important information to your reader. This is also the place to suggest further lines of research that will help refine, clarify inconsistencies with, or provide additional support for your hypotheses. Finally, in the summary section of your paper, reiterate the significance of your research and your research findings and speculate upon the path that future research efforts should take.

Writing in political theory

Political theory differs from other subfields in political science in that it deals primarily with historical and normative, rather than empirical, analysis. In other words, political theorists are less concerned with the scientific measurement of political phenomena than with understanding how important political ideas develop over time. And they are less concerned with evaluating how things are than in debating how they should be. A return to our democracy example will make these distinctions clearer and give you some clues about how to write well in political theory.

Earlier, we talked about how to define democracy empirically so that it can be measured and tested in accordance with scientific principles. Political theorists also define democracy, but they use a different standard of measurement. Their definitions of democracy reflect their interest in political ideals—for example, liberty, equality, and citizenship—rather than scientific measurement. So, when writing about democracy from the perspective of a political theorist, you may be asked to make an argument about the proper way to define citizenship in a democratic society. Should citizens of a democratic society be expected to engage in decision-making and administration of government, or should they be satisfied with casting votes every couple of years?

In order to substantiate your position on such questions, you will need to pay special attention to two interrelated components of your writing: (1) the logical consistency of your ideas and (2) the manner in which you use the arguments of other theorists to support your own. First, you need to make sure that your conclusion and all points leading up to it follow from your original premises or assumptions. If, for example, you argue that democracy is a system of government through which citizens develop their full capacities as human beings, then your notion of citizenship will somehow need to support this broad definition of democracy. A narrow view of citizenship based exclusively or primarily on voting probably will not do. Whatever you argue, however, you will need to be sure to demonstrate in your analysis that you have considered the arguments of other theorists who have written about these issues. In some cases, their arguments will provide support for your own; in others, they will raise criticisms and concerns that you will need to address if you are going to make a convincing case for your point of view.

Drafting your paper

If you have used material from outside sources in your paper, be sure to cite them appropriately in your paper. In political science, writers most often use the APA or Turabian (a version of the Chicago Manual of Style) style guides when formatting references. Check with your instructor if they have not specified a citation style in the assignment. For more information on constructing citations, see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Although all assignments are different, the preceding outlines provide a clear and simple guide that should help you in writing papers in any sub-field of political science. If you find that you need more assistance than this short guide provides, refer to the list of additional resources below or make an appointment to see a tutor at the Writing Center.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Becker, Howard S. 2007. Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article , 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cuba, Lee. 2002. A Short Guide to Writing About Social Science , 4th ed. New York: Longman.

Lasswell, Harold Dwight. 1936. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Scott, Gregory M., and Stephen M. Garrison. 1998. The Political Science Student Writer’s Manual , 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Turabian, Kate. 2018. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, Dissertations , 9th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to Write Political Essay

A political essay deals with political or governmental issues. It is a piece of writing made as a way to practice in interpreting specific political theories. It is usually composed of historical information and statistics and is somewhat similar to  writing a rhetorical analysis essay . The purpose of which is for students to demonstrate their ability to argue effectively and logically within defined theoretical frameworks. We've got some tips for you in order to make your writing easier.

Guidelines to Write a Political Essay

Create an argument. Political essays often deal with normative issues. The goal of the student is to give a concrete treatment of the basic interpretative facts and give his thoughts on the theoretical problem. As it is an opinion, there is no correct or wrong answer. The student just simply has to persuade his readers by developing a compelling argument which is well substantiated by a comprehensive and insightful interpretative work.

Develop a thesis. The goal of the student is to develop a thesis which he should sustain during whole paper. A political essay should be organized in such a way that it will be a thesis emphasizing a conceptual argument. That is, the student should choose a position which is clearly stated, and assemble references to offer the readers some sense of credibility. The textual references will ensure the readers that the student has observed the question in a thoughtful manner.

Apply theories learned in the course. Political essays and essays, in general, are technically the application of all the lectures and seminars attended by the student, all the discussions, and all the of the assigned readings. The student then should be able to apply all these theories and lessons learned in school.

Define your terms. Political essays are scholarly written documents that give a new perspective on the conceptual sides of main political theories and problems this is why a student who is writing a political essay should define terms used in the document with great precision.

Cite sources. When making an argument, the student has to ensure that he substantiates it with facts that are properly cited in the footnotes. The reason for this, aside from not plagiarizing these authors, is to refer the readers to a particular factual claim to its proper reference should they want to read about it further. It also helps to write an essay  that is more interesting and informative.

Write an outline and several drafts. A good political essay is not crafted overnight. It takes a great amount of critical revisions. The outline should also have a timeline to ensure that you have ample time to make revisions and finalize it accordingly before the due date. Editing and proofreading eliminate weak paragraphs and illogical transitions, and ultimately makes the political essay a well-research and well-written one. 

Other Reminders on Writing a Political Essay

Be analytical. A political essay is not just a simple collation of all data and information related to political theories. The student must emphasize an informed argument and ensure that he has made a thorough research so he has enough tools to use for independent and creative thinking. As an example, you can include obvious meanings to arguments, as well as the subtle and even contradictory dimensions of it.

Keep it scholarly. The student author must avoid casual language and sloppy argumentations. He has to remember that political essays are an academic type of discourse. A scholarly tone will give the readers the impression that the essay is going to be informative and interesting, without compromising the kind of words and arguments to be included in the essay.

Comment on quotes. At some point, the student will have to quote sources and references to build an argument. But after providing the direct quotation, he must ensure to make a commentary on it. After all, the paper has to be an analysis of your research, not a simple compilation of it.

Be concise. For a student to avoid filling the political essay with too many quotes, he can paraphrase passages, using paraphrase tool . Although, he has to remember that plagiarism is no way acceptable in the academe and must still cite the original source. The rule still applies that the student has to include a commentary of the paraphrased passage. This is to avoid making your paper strike a reader as a plain summary as it is not supposed to.

Explore texts carefully. While the student may oppose arguments, he must avoid bias and recognize both its strengths and weaknesses to engage in advanced forms of interpretative work.

Assume non-experts as readers. In writing political essays, make sure to limit the use of jargons and complicated terminologies. And when the student does use it, he must define the terms thoroughly. A good political essay must not only present a well-researched and well-written paper but should be able to educate the reader about political theories. To do so, the student then should craft in a way that is easy to understand by the common mind.

Embrace objections. Not everyone will agree with your thesis or arguments. When a reader raises an issue, accept it and rebut accordingly. This process should be able to develop your political essay in a way that you can spot weaknesses and instead make it richer and more penetrating.

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Technical Requirements of a Political Essay

Ultimately, the requirements will be coming from the professor or instructor assigning the political essay. General rules, however, apply starting from presenting the different parts of your argument in a logical order, footnoting original sources used or writing a bibliography for references not included in the footnotes, avoiding plagiarism at all cost and practicing proper citation, meeting the deadline set by the professor or instructor, and following the format prescribed.

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• Essay on Politics

Essay on Politics for Students in English

Politics is a hugely important domain in the world and it has a profound impact on the functioning as well as the policies of the governments. Politics has an effect on all types of government including democratic, autocratic, monarchical, theocratic and others. The government is responsible for making decisions on different matters of public interest, issuing orders for the public health, directing the citizens towards development and growth, and performing a wide range of other related functions.

There are numerous definitions of what politics means. Politics can be described as the disagreement between the various groups on what they like. One of the broad definitions of politics, which is widely agreed, is the art of governance. The government is the entity having the legal authority of regulating people’s actions. The word politics is usually used for defining how the countries are governed and how the governments make the rules and the laws. 

Defining laws and regulations that tell people what they can or cannot do is one of the ways in which the government leads the people. These regulations and laws are enacted by the government for ensuring order and protection in the society. Beyond the laws, the government might also regulate the citizens and the functioning of the country in other ways. Most of the countries have specific groups or political parties for expressing their views and policies. 

The political parties form a consensus on the common policies or path that they should take in communicating their ideas or policies to the people. These parties support legislative bills or reforms and the candidates based on the agenda agreed upon by the members. The election is usually contested or fought between the opposite political parties of different spectrum. 

One of the conventional explanations of politics refers to politics being conducted within the system of checks and balances for avoiding misuse of political power. The several institutions that exist within the governing system include the legislative body that is responsible for making laws, executive body that imposes them, and judiciary that interprets them thus providing a powerful and well-rounded political spectrum.

If you want to study in detail about politics and its various concepts of applications for your essay in English then you can refer to it on the Vedantu website or app. Vedantu is a leading learning platform with a wide range of learning resources, tutorials, solutions, reference notes, and sample questions papers with solutions for students of different branches.

Short Politics Essay in English

Politics, in general, is the platform by which people create, maintain, and change the laws that govern their lives. As a result, conflict and collaboration are inextricably connected in politics. On the one hand, the presence of conflicting views, competing expectations, competing needs, and competing interests is expected to result in conflict over the rules under which people live.

Politics is fascinating because everyone has a different perspective on life and its rules. They have differing opinions about how they should live. What money should go to whom? What is the best way to disperse power to help the powerless? Is it better for society to be built on collaboration or conflict? And so forth. They also talk about how such disputes can be resolved. What is the best way to make decisions as a group? In what conditions does who have a say? How much say should each person have in decisions? The list goes on.

This, according to Aristotle, made politics the "master science," which he described as "the action by which human beings strive to better their lives and build and contribute to a Good Society." Politics is, first and foremost, a social practice. It's still a conversation, but the parties have reduced it to a monologue.

Any effort to grasp the sense of the word "politics" must always grapple with two major issues. The first is the different connotations that this word has in everyday speech. Unlike economics, geography, history, and biology, which most people think of as academic subjects, few people approach politics without preconceptions. The second, more complicated issue is that even well-respected authorities cannot agree about what politics is all about. It has infiltrated nearly every aspect of society.

Hence, we can say that the exercise of authority, the sacred science of governance, the making of unified decisions, the distribution of limited resources, the art of deceit and exploitation, and so on are all terms used to describe politics.

FAQs on Essay on Politics

1. How do we define politics?

Politics is the collection of activities connected with community decision-making or other types of power relations between individuals, such as resource allocation or status.

2. Name the Various national-level political parties in india.

There are several national-level political parties in India. The major ones include:

All India Trinamool Congress(AITC)

Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP)

Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP)

Communist Party of India(CPI)

Communist Party of India(Marxist)

Indian National Congress(INC)

National People’s Party(NPP)

Nationalist Congress Party(NCP)

3. What is the definition of politics?

Politics has numerous definitions and explanations. In the basic broad term politics can be defined as the art of governance through a collection of activities that are associated with society, decision-making, and power relations between the individuals, like status or resource allocation. The concept of politics is very important in the governance of a country and it is an important topic related to public life that the students must learn about.

4.  Which are the different major political parties in India?

There are several major political parties in India. Some of these political parties include All India Trinamool Congress (AITMC), Indian National Congress (INC), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India (CPI), and National People’s Party (NPP) amongst a host of others. Each of these political parties have their own political manifesto based on which they conduct their operations.

5. Why is politics an important subject for students to learn?

Politics is related to day-to-day functioning of a country or a society and thus it is important for students to learn and be well informed about it. Politics includes vital policies and decisions that have a direct impact on people and as a responsible citizen it is crucial for students to have a basic grasp of developments in the country that charts out the future path of the nation.

6. How can I prepare for an essay on politics?

If you want to write an essay on politics then you would need to prepare well by understanding the definitions and various other aspects related to politics. One of the ways you can do this is by learning and reading about politics on the internet. You can also find a detailed essay on politics for students in English at Vedantu. This essay incorporates all the important points and provides an excellent guide on how the essay should be done.

7. How can I download the English essay on politics from Vedantu?

If you want to download the English essay on Politics provided by Vedantu then you can do it from either the website or the app. All you need to do is go to the English section and browse to the essay on politics. Here you will have the “Download PDF” option and you just need to click on that button to download the English essay by Vedantu on your device for free. Once you downloaded the PDF file you can access it offline any time you want.

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Essay on Politics in 500 Words

• Updated on  
• Jan 16, 2024

Essay on Politics: Every day we see or hear in the news about politics. Politics is not just about government, bureaucracy, elections, or political parties . The process of decision-making, active participation of the people, belief systems and values, etc. are all aspects of politics. Every year, there are elections in a state or region of the country. In a democracy like ours, people are free to choose their leaders. People vote for the candidate who they think will best represent their interests. This is what we were taught right from the beginning. This is just one of the many features of politics, for it is a multifaceted concept. 

Table of Contents

• 1 What is Politics?
• 2 How Politics Shape the Future of a Country?
• 3 100 Words Paragraph on Politics

Also Read: Essay on Road Accident

What is Politics?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, Politics refers to the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power. Talking practically, politics refers to all the activities a person or group of people wants in their interest. 

On a bigger level, politics involves the distribution and exchange of power among organizations and administrations, such as political parties. Politics includes different mechanisms and values, such as governance, political institutions and ideologies, elections, international relations, public policies, social change, etc. These mechanisms and values allow us to know what politics is about and how it works.

The concept of politics has been followed since ancient times. Today’s politics is more or less like the ancient Hindu political philosophy of Dharma. Dharma meant rules and orders, which everyone was abiding by through birth. It included duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and the right way of living.

How Politics Shape the Future of a Country?

Politics is meant for development. We have seen how political parties and other people play politics for their benefit. During election times, politicians make big promises to gain people’s interest. All the promises and decisions of political leaders are taken to shape the future of the country. 

• The progress in the economic, social, and cultural aspects of a country or region depends on political decision and their effective implementation. Policies related to education, healthcare, infrastructure, and the economy shape the conditions in which citizens live and work.
• To bring economic development, governments work on fiscal and monetary policies, taxation and trade agreements, and other similar laws.
• Infrastructural developments can be introduced to shape the physical and technological landscape of a country.
• Effective social policies like healthcare, education, and equality can help deal with everyday life.
• Friendly and cooperative diplomatic policies can help establish strong global relationships with other nations. Treaties, alliances, and trade agreements shape a country’s position in the international community, influencing its security, economic ties, and diplomatic engagements.
• Political decisions can have a significant impact on environmental challenges. Policies related to climate change, natural resource management, and environmental conservation determine a country’s commitment to sustainability and the well-being of future generations.
• Political support for research, development, and innovation drives technological advancements. Governments that invest in science, technology, and education contribute to a country’s ability to compete globally and adapt to the challenges and opportunities of the future.

A country with good and effective politics can thrive for longer. This can be only possible through effective decision-making by the political leaders, who form the decision-making body. Politics can shape the future of an individual and a country at the same time.

Also Read: Essay on My Ambition in 300 Words

Also Read: Essay on 5g Technology

100 Words Paragraph on Politics

Now that we have gone through an Essay on Politics, let us explore a paragraph on politics:

Also Read: How to Prepare for UPSC in 6 Months?

Ans: Politics refers to the activities of governance and decision-making in a country. Politics involves the distribution and exchange of power among organizations and administrations, such as political parties. Politics includes different mechanisms and values, such as governance, political institutions and ideologies, elections, international relations, public policies, social change, etc. These mechanisms and values allow us to know what politics is about and how it works.

Ans: Politics is an important field of study that goes beyond the traditional notions of partisan conflicts. It is an academic discipline that examines the structures, processes, and behaviors that shape governance and decision-making within societies. Politics makes us aware of governance, policy analysis, civic engagement, diversity of ideologies, social justice and advocacy, etc.

Ans: The different types of politics are democracy, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism, which include features of both democracy and authoritarianism.

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The American Abyss

A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.

The police forced the crowd out of the Capitol building after facing off in the Rotunda, Jan. 6, 3:40 p.m. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson/VII, for The New York Times

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By Timothy Snyder

• Published Jan. 9, 2021 Updated Dec. 28, 2021

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When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.

Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.

People believed him, which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in institutions different points of view.

In this sense, the responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election must be shared by a very large number of Republican members of Congress. Rather than contradict Trump from the beginning, they allowed his electoral fiction to flourish. They had different reasons for doing so. One group of Republicans is concerned above all with gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters. They have no interest in the collapse of the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party disproportionate control of government. The most important among them, Mitch McConnell , indulged Trump’s lie while making no comment on its consequences.

Yet other Republicans saw the situation differently: They might actually break the system and have power without democracy. The split between these two groups, the gamers and the breakers, became sharply visible on Dec. 30, when Senator Josh Hawley announced that he would support Trump’s challenge by questioning the validity of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. Ted Cruz then promised his own support, joined by about 10 other senators. More than a hundred Republican representatives took the same position. For many, this seemed like nothing more than a show: challenges to states’ electoral votes would force delays and floor votes but would not affect the outcome.

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Lessons in this course.

Introduction: Articles of Confederation and the Constitutional Convention

Written following the Constitutional Convention of 1787,  The Federalist Papers  is the foremost American contribution to political thought. Originally published as newspaper essays in New York, they were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the pen name Publius. The essays defended the merits of the Constitution as a necessary and good replacement for the Articles of Confederation, which had proven defective as a means of governance.

The Improved Science of Politics

Publius argued that the “science of politics . . . has received great improvement” in his own day. These improvements include separation of powers, legislative checks and balances, judges who serve a life term during good behavior, and what he called “the ENLARGEMENT of the ORBIT” of government. Contrary to the practice of previous republics, Publius argued that a republic had a much greater chance of achieving success if it is spread out over a large or extended territory, rather than a small or contracted one.

The Problem of Majority Faction

In  Federalist  10, Publius confronts one of the most important Anti-Federalist arguments against ratification: Republican government is impossible on a territory as large as the United States. In fact, such an undertaking had never been successful. In response, Publius proposes that the principal remedy for the political disease of faction—a disease “most incident to republican government”—is the large or extended sphere or territory.

Federalism and Republicanism

In the summer of 1787, the Framers labored to set up a political regime that would not only secure liberty and republicanism, but also bring energy and stability to the national government. Because of the failures of government under the Articles of Confederation, American political institutions were at risk. In order to secure these institutions, the Framers constructed a republican form of government that—among many other important features—instituted a new form of federalism.

Separation of Powers

In constituting a new government, the Framers knew that written rules—what Publius calls “parchment barriers”—would not be enough by themselves to protect liberty and prevent tyranny. Instead, Publius looks to the “interior structure” as the best means for keeping the branches properly and effectively separated. Separation of powers, the most important of the Constitution’s “auxiliary precautions,” works to prevent governmental tyranny, and by keeping each branch within its proper sphere of authority allows each branch to do its job well.

The Legislative: House and Senate

The Founders understood that the legislative branch is by nature the most powerful in a republican government. Experience of government under the Articles of Confederation, when state legislatures routinely encroached on executive and judicial powers, confirmed this. Thus, the Framers divided the legislative branch into two parts—the House and the Senate. In addition, they differentiated them as much as possible, consistent with the principles of republican government, with the goal of preventing tyranny and encouraging good government.

The Executive

Following their experience under the Articles of Confederation, and armed with the improved science of politics, the Framers instituted a unitary executive in the office of the president. Unlike the executive office in any previous republic, it was designed so as to ensure energy and responsibility in the executive, which are absolutely essential for good execution of the laws, and therefore for good government.

The Judiciary

In the Declaration of Independence, one charge leveled against King George III was that he had “made Judges dependent on his Will alone.” In framing a republican government, the Founders believed that an independent judiciary was indispensable. Publius argues that the term of life tenure during good behavior and a protected salary ensure this independence.

“The Constitution Is Itself . . . a Bill of Rights”

In  Federalist  84, Publius writes, “The truth is, after all the declamation we have heard, that the constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS.” In other words, the structure of the Constitution protects the rights of the people. In addition, the American people retain all powers not granted to the federal and state governments.

Conclusion: Constitutionalism Today

American government today is much different from the constitutional republic outlined in  The Federalist Papers —which relies on structure, representation, and limitations on the functions of the federal government. Administrative regulations and entitlements are two distinguishing features of modern government. These new features require a kind of government that is unlimited, disregards separation of powers, and violates the supreme law under which it claims to operate.

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The Age of Incomplete Religions

B eware the copula “and.” Politics and religion. Church and state. What does it mean to bring these into relationship? Are they immiscible? Soluble? In certain respects, but not others? At certain times, but not others? A host of questions to be considered anew. How did conservatives get here? What prompts them today to wonder aloud if they need to rethink the relationship between church and state, between politics and religion?

First, conservatives have witnessed the appallingly rapid takeover of nearly every American institution by that constellation of phenomena called CRT, wokeness, DEI, cancel culture, and what has been called virtue-signaling, but which is better understood as innocence -signaling. Unable to name the genus to which these species belong, unable to see the underlying logic that gathers all of these phenomena together, they have been unable to fight back against them, save for a minor victory here or there. To win the war, conservatives must first name the enemy. That enemy is identity politics.

Second, conservatives have been unwilling to abandon terms for the enemy that have brought coherence to the conservative movement since the 1950s. The terms “cultural Marxism” and “progressivism” are hopelessly out of date and analytically inadequate to the current crisis, yet they are invoked at every like-minded gathering or convention. We are engaged in a monstrous twenty-first-century struggle. The Cold War is over. We must jettison terms that were fitting seventy years ago. 

Regarding cultural Marxism, the “long slow march through the institutions” never happened. Instead, we have witnessed the breathtakingly rapid sprint of identity politics through our institutions. Bernie Sanders is a Marxist; his thinking has been thrown into the dustbin of history by the identitarians who now rule the left. What about progressivism—the belief that the “expert competence” of elites who have been trained in our best universities can redeem the American regime from the founders’ illusions that citizen competence is enough? That movement has been terminated by the left itself. Today, our best colleges and universities do not teach “expert competence.” Students there are taught identity politics instead. They are taught to think in terms of innocent victimhood and transgressive stain. Why do conservatives acquiesce to the “progressive” self-description coming from the left today, which seeks to link a new and destructive movement to a tradition of thought that, even if mistaken, sought to strengthen America? The left today is not progressive; it is identitarian. It does not want experts to rule; it wants innocent victims to rule. It does not wish to strengthen America; it wishes to destroy it.

Conservatives dare to raise questions about church and state because identity politics has so completely overrun our institutions that they now wonder if the constitutional regime set up by the founders was either faulty from the beginning, or is unfixable now even if initially well-established—hence the emergence of serious thinking about Christian nationalism, a post-liberal order, and pre-modern integralism. Conservatives dare think down these paths because they intimate that America is on the verge of a regime change—the new regime being based on innocent victimhood rather than citizen competence, as the one established by the founders was. We should be under no illusion: that is the project of the left today. 

Here, let us wrestle with our problem not by developing any institutional claims about church and state, or any category claims about politics and religion, but rather by clearing the decks for a moment, and talking about three kinds of debt, and three kinds of economies. Afterward, I will offer some observations about the debilitated state of our regime, and why conservatives have been so impotent in the trench warfare that is upon us.

In the beginning was debt. That’s not the biblical formulation, but debt has been a central consideration from the very beginning of human civilization, so this claim is not far off the mark. Among the oldest written civilizational records is the Code of Hammurabi, which stipulates what payments—debts—are due for what transgressions. No agreed understanding of debt, no civilization. The most important work by mortal hands in Western civilization—Plato’s Republic —begins with the seemingly random claim by Cephalus that justice involves “paying our debts,” and ends with the mysterious claim that “justice is beyond price.” Does Plato introduce this idea of justice at the very beginning of the Republic because he understands that debt is the most primordial experience of man, and that the primitive way of understanding it—every debt must be repaid—does not grasp the deeper mystery of justice? I think he does. What of the great breakthrough of the Hebrews and Christians? Genesis 3 does indeed make a claim about the primordiality of debt. Christians since Paul and Athanasius have understood this chapter to have established that man cannot pay the price to liberate himself from his slavery to sin—hence the “divine ransom” Christ paid, to adopt fallen man and bring him, as an adopted son, into the household of God. 

The left in America today is consumed by the primordiality of debt in human life, while conservatives have little to say about it. Or, rather, conservatives have had little to say about the deeper, more mysterious understanding of debt toward which Plato seems to be pointing, or the understanding of debt that underwrites the central Christian claim about unpayable debt. Since the 1950s, American conservatives have, of course, focused on two more immediately obvious kinds of debt: economic debt, the commercial balance sheet of costs and benefit; and tradition, the debt we owe our fathers. Indeed, it could be said that these have been the two pillars of conservatism, aligned in some measure but never exactly pointing in the same direction.  

To begin to understand the place of this deeper, third kind of debt and economy, which we must grasp if we are to understand the sort of debt that identity politics has in mind, consider Tocqueville’s thinking about religion and its deformation. In 1835, in Democracy in America , he had written the following: “Eighteenth century thinkers believed that religion would die out as enlightenment and freedom spread. It is tiresome that the facts do not fit the theory.” The age of enlightenment would not blot out Christianity. In 1851, in The Old Regime , he added a new twist to his theory: The French Revolution, he wrote, was an “incomplete religion.” Christianity would weaken, and into its place would step one incomplete religion after another. After Christendom would not come “secularism,” but rather the age of incomplete religions. 

What is an incomplete religion? Consider these two characteristics: 

• Second, an idea that follows from the first: The innocent victim is justified (to use not irrelevant theological terms), so that his revolutionary acts—say, guillotining landed aristocrats and churchmen during The Terror; slaughtering whole classes of citizens during the blood sacrifice that was communism; butchering Israelis on October 7; rioting, burning neighborhoods, and destroying livelihoods during the “mostly peaceful protests” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death; or cheering on a would-be presidential assassin—are “covered over,” to use Christian language to explain the “pass” given to the parishioners of the incomplete religions that have befallen us since 1789. The legal status of what the incomplete religionists do may be criminal, but the legal debt they might owe is discounted or canceled because their act is justified in the third, higher, trans-legal economy of debt within which incomplete religions operate. Whether we are considering the French Revolution, communism, the ghastly simplifications of “post-colonial studies,” or the raging fire of identity politics in America and Western Europe today, the so-called innocent victim is never guilty, no matter how many laws he or she breaks. The stained transgressors, on the other hand, are forever under indictment, and need to vindicate themselves—hence the never-ending acts of performative justice we witness, say, by guilty white liberals, who several years ago painted “Black Lives Matter” on streets across America, did nothing to actually heal wounds and make the lives of the least among us any better, and quivered in the hope that social death would pass them over. More recently, “White Men for Kamala” videos on X display the same sick fawning, in the hope that the debt owed by those with “white privilege” might be eased.

T he incomplete religions that have overshadowed the so-called secular enlightened West for two-and-a-half centuries operate, like Christianity, in a third economy, in which the moneyed economy that conservatives know so well counts as nothing. Judas, the Apostle, received his silver coins for his betrayal, yet took his life because his betrayal could not be atoned for in the moneyed economy. The money of the landed aristocracy and the priests could not buy their pardon during The Terror. The richest members of the bourgeoisie could not cleanse their ledger with gold, and so they were extinguished. Concertgoers pleaded for their lives on October 7. No matter. They carried no guns, but were guilty of being “colonizers,” as our wise young people have declared on elite college campuses across America this past year. And of reparations in the identity politics world, even if Americans reach a consensus on the size of the check, we all know that the debt would continue to be called in.  

Like Christianity, all of the incomplete religions operate within a third, spiritual economy, and assert that the transgressor has an unpayable debt. In Christianity, the transgressor is every member of mankind—and his unpayable debt is canceled by the divine innocent victim, Christ. In all the incomplete religions, the transgressors, too, have an unpayable debt, which they can discharge only by being purged—hence the ongoing cancellation, traceable to the French Revolution, of all those who believe, not in cosmopolitan man and globalism, but their particular nation; hence the hatred of our bourgeois institutions of family and church by the Frankfurt School in the mid-twentieth century, and the project of destroying them; hence the current hatred of Israel because it is simply and unequivocally a “colonizer” who must be eradicated “from the river to the sea”; hence the hatred of “whiteness,” and the language of “toxicity,” applied especially to young white men who have dutifully stayed in the lane afforded them within the identity politics regime—drugs, online gaming, pornography, effeminacy, and so forth.

The categories of these incomplete religions—universalist vs. particularist, oppressed vs. oppressor, colonized vs. colonizer, innocent victim vs. “white straight man”— establish a sharp line of demarcation between the pure and the damned, as does Christianity. But in the case of incomplete religions, there is no repentance, atonement, or forgiveness. The debt accumulates and can only be discharged via violence against the stained transgressor. The innocent victim does not, as in Christianity, “take away the sins of the world.” Rather, only by purging the impure group can the world be made pure again. The purportedly pure innocent victim assures himself that his very survival depends on purging the toxicity he beholds, which is “out there,” but never “in here.” Regarding the upcoming election, identitarians declare that we must “save our democracy” from the deplorables. So goes this dangerous line of thinking, which can be satisfied only with the shedding of blood. Never a thought about the poison that lies within them.

Let me conclude with a number of succinct points:

• Finally, conservatives who dream of Christian nationalism for America are too late. We have an established church, and our elite educational institutions provide its clergy, as they did long ago in America. The spiritual economy of identity politics suffuses all of our institutions. What was once an ecclesiastical matter—how may man lift the burden of his unpayable debt and be redeemed—has now become a political matter. Politics and religion have become one. Identity politics is that unity.

Joshua Mitchell  is professor of political theory at Georgetown University and a fellow of the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life. This essay is adapted from a speech delivered at the 2024 National Conservatism Conference.

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Politics | Boodlers and bandits: In Illinois and Chicago,…

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Politics | Boodlers, bandits and notorious politicians

In chicago, corruption is a source of both shame and perverse pride.

On many nights during his long career as alderman of the 43rd Ward, Mathias “Paddy” Bauler would hold court in the North Avenue tavern that served as his headquarters from the 1930s into the 1960s. Often with a beer in hand, he would loudly proclaim, “Chicago ain’t ready for reform.”

He might as well have said or added, “Chicago is always ready for corruption.”

This city, and by extension the state, have long been and remain what a University of Chicago political science professor – and many others, from writers to late-night television hosts – have derided as “the only completely corrupt city in America.” As one local, the late Studs Terkel, charmingly put it in 1986: “Chicago is not the most corrupt of cities. The state of New Jersey has a couple. Need we mention Nevada? Chicago, though, is the Big Daddy. Not more corrupt, just more theatrical, more colorful in its shadiness.”

How did we get so “lucky”?

Political wrongdoers have come at us in a steady stream just about from the time the first settlers arrived. Since then, we have watched (or withstood) all manner of scandals and crimes, orchestrated by boodlers, bandits and outright crooks.

According to a report the University of Illinois at Chicago’s political science department issued last year, Chicago was the country’s most corrupt city for the fourth year in a row. The most recent examples of infamy – convicted former Ald. Ed Burke and accused former Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, two of the most powerful politicians in this city’s long history – have been prominent in newspaper headlines and on television. And, depending on your age, you surely remember some of the better-known names of scandals and those involved.

Burke and Madigan are the latest additions to a l ist the Tribune has compiled of roughly 200 convicted, indicted or otherwise notorious politicians. It is a stunning gathering really, almost exclusively men elected or appointed to varying positions – most predominantly aldermen (more than three dozen of them convicted of crimes since the early 1970s), but other offices too. Have a look .

Historian Richard Lindberg told me: “This was a city and state that first drew people who were adventurers, rogues and men of large ambitions and this was for a time a place with no rules and flexible morals and ethics. And as each succeeding wave of immigrants arrived they would look at what others had done before them and wanted to grab a slice of the action by whatever means they could concoct.”

One obvious road to such “success” was getting elected to public office, and it is here one can hear the echo of something said by a long-gone English historian, Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

True enough, and it’s important to remember that temptation is all around us and has the ability to touch not only politicians but also those in the realms of business, sports, religion, law enforcement, the military and on and on.

With variations and embellishments, political corruption takes two principal forms. There’s using public authority or resources for political gain (such as buying votes or rewarding campaign workers with taxpayer-funded jobs), and there’s using one’s position for private gain (think of taking bribes, or of putting Uncle Harry into a ghost-payrolling job where he doesn’t even have to show up to get paid).

Many see political corruption as an inevitability, a fact of Chicago life, tied to the patronage system that began in the early 20th century and flourished during the decades that followed.

“You’ve got to mention Lorimer,” said Mike Flannery, a political reporter for newspapers and television for more than three decades. He retired last year but was called back for Democratic National Convention duty for WFLD-Ch. 32.

His mention of William Lorimer goes back to the early years of the 20th century, when U.S. senators were still not elected by the popular vote of citizens but rather appointed by state lawmakers. That ended forever in 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment, which provided for direct election of U.S. senators by vote of the people. Part of the impetus was the revelation Lorimer attained his Senate post in 1909 by bribing legislators. His “election” deemed invalid, he was booted from the Senate.

Jail? Are you kidding? He came back to Chicago and was greeted with a parade.

“Lorimer was one of the first statewide bad guys,” Flannery said. “But you can see how past corruption echoes and has influenced generations, convincing many that they could get away with plenty. Much of it has been nickel-and-dime stuff but with some big-name crooks. It’s really been a culture of corruption .”

Since the city’s earliest days, there have always been people who railed against the corruption they were witnessing, with some of the loudest voices coming from the pages of various publications.

In the early 1890s, the Herald newspaper put it this way: “The average representative in the City Council is a tramp, if not worse. … He is in nine cases out of ten a bummer and disreputable who can be bought and sold as hogs are bought and sold at the stockyards.”

Around this same time, the weekly magazine Graphic complained: “It has been an open secret for many months that the council is controlled by a gang of corruptionists and that municipal franchises are as clearly matters of bargain and sale as goods at a bargain counter … from year to year men of notorious official and political corruption have been reelected as lawmakers for the people.”

The men who set the bar for aldermanic corruption were a couple of characters named John “Bathhouse John” Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, who served as aldermen of the First Ward at a time when the city was divided into 35 wards and each was run by two elected aldermen.

The tiny, cigar-chomping Kenna was a genius at political organization and the owner of the Workingman’s Exchange, a popular saloon near Clark and Van Buren streets. Coughlin had been a bathhouse masseur, wrote terrible poetry and wore garish clothes. He blustered while Kenna said little. They shared the duties for an area that included dwellings of the rich, tenements for the poor and the notorious Levee, home to pimps, prostitutes and pickpockets. (The area is bordered today roughly between 18th and 22nd streets and Wabash Avenue and Clark Street.)

In City Council, the two were eagerly abetted by others who included Ald. John “Johnny de Pow” Powers of the 19th Ward, about whom the Times-Herald newspaper wrote, “He is bloodless, personally unattractive … autocratic, arrogant and insolent.”

Dubbed “the gray wolves” by muckraking reporter Lincoln Steffens “for the color of their hair and the rapacious cunning and greed of their natures,” these men and a few cronies exercised wicked control of the City Council.

Corruption continued and thrived with the 1915 election of Republican Mayor William Hale Thompson, a former cowboy and athlete, who launched the city into one of its most politically raucous eras. The day after his election, he bellowed: “The crooks had better move out of Chicago. In no manner is this to be a political machine-building organization. I am my own man!”

Well, nonsense. My father, Herman, and his newspaper pal Lloyd Wendt wrote a Thompson biography, 1953’s “Big Bill of Chicago,” and in it one can read about the close alliance Thompson had with a fellow named Al Capone.

“From the start, Capone’s money rolled into Big Bill’s campaign coffers,” they wrote. One of Capone’s associates, “an oily pimp and gambler named Jack Zuta proudly proclaimed, ‘Big Bill’s for me hook, line and sinker.’”

I read “Big Bill” when I was 12, when I already knew my 43rd Ward alderman, Bauler, and our precinct captain. I was like many who grew up here, living where politics was close by and knowledge of corruption came early. Who among you did not learn, when you were old enough to drive, how to beat a speeding ticket?

“If you’re caught, just wrap your driver’s license in a $5 or $10 bill when you hand it to the cop,” your father, uncle, big brother or maybe even your mom would tell you. “Do that, smile and say, ‘Sorry,’ and you’ll soon drive away.”

Few knew the pervasiveness of political corruption better than columnist Mike Royko. He knew it from its humblest level, growing up above his parents’ Milwaukee Avenue tavern, the Blue Sky Lounge. He knew the aldermanic foot soldiers known as precinct captains and would later write: “A decent precinct captain used to be out there with a wad of bills big enough to choke his clout, handing a few dollars to every needy voter. And there was nothing wrong with that. With the kind of aldermen Chicago has had, people should be paid to vote for them.”

Royko also noted, “I wouldn’t call any alderman a loudmouth because it wouldn’t be accurate. Most of them have prudently learned to talk in a whisper. A whisper is harder for a listening device to pick up.”

And he once suggested that the city’s motto be changed from the Latin phrase “Urbs In Horto,” meaning “City in a Garden,” to “Ube Est Mea,” which means “Where’s mine?”

You will notice that the Tribune’s “Dishonor Roll” is dominated by aldermen, but you should also know that many on the list have never been convicted of a crime. Some of them, including Bauler, Kenna and Coughlin, are filed under the label “notorious,” which is also to say “colorful.” Bauler, for instance, used to amuse Mayor Anton Cermak, who laid the foundation for the city’s Democratic machine, by rolling around the City Hall floor in wrestling matches with his 275-pound self.

John Davies made a recent movie about corruption, an hour-long documentary, called “Lincoln Is Crying: The Grifters, Grafters and Governors of Illinois.” It covers a lot of bases and bad deeds and does so in a purposefully lighthearted way. One critic called it an “entertaining take on the state’s history of systemic political corruption.”

“When people from other states see this film they are shocked,” Davies said. “The idea came to me over the years. Look, I am not a serious news producer, so with some advice from people at The Second City, we decided to take a humorous look at corruption. Yes, it is a serious matter, and there are many places and sources where that can be explored.”

He continued, “This could easily have been a 10-hour miniseries with endless cases of bribery and thievery or attempted bribery and thievery by Illinois politicians representing both parties.

“But many of my friends and those who live here have become so used to this corruption they just think it’s the way it’s been done for years so why worry about it? ‘Besides, it’s funny,’ one friend told me. That’s the comment that made me decide to tell this story with a sense of humor. It’s so ugly and so depressing you probably couldn’t watch or listen to it otherwise.”

Writer Bill Bryson once wrote that “Chicago was to corruption what Pittsburgh was to steel or Hollywood to motion pictures. It refined and cultivated it, and embraced it without embarrassment.”

There are undoubtedly people who take a strange pride in the city and state’s blatant wickedness. But others have fought for reform.

“There is great value in being loudly anti-corruption,” Flannery said. “And those on the federal level have more tools, power and resources.”

James Thompson, after becoming a federal prosecutor in the early 1970s, energetically went after political corruption and, among other high-profile targets, obtained a conviction against former governor Otto Kerner for his use of improper influence on behalf of the horse-racing industry.

He also secured the indictments of powerful alderman Thomas Keane, County Clerk Matt Danaher and others, setting the corruption-seeking tone for those who followed him into the office of U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

His cases established a heroic image that helped keep him in the Illinois governor’s office for four terms. But other reformers have not been particularly effective. The first ethics reform ordinance in the history of Chicago wasn’t passed until 1987, and progress has been incremental at best.

Many fine books detail the dark side of the city. The aforementioned Richard Lindberg has a shelf full, including such titles as “To Serve and Collect,” “Gangland Chicago” and “Whiskey Breakfast.”

Dick Simpson was a reform-minded alderman of the 44th Ward from 1971 to 1979. He also was a professor of political science (now emeritus) and the author of many fine books, among them 2001’s “Rogues, Rebels, And Rubber Stamps: The Politics of the Chicago City Council from 1863 to the Present” in 2001.

Few have observed city and state politics more closely or spoken about them more articulately.

Some years ago, sitting with me in a bygone local tavern, he said, “I have always been – and remain – hopeful that our better angels will win out. There is great power in the people, and we must trust the people to help make Chicago not just a global city but a livable and humane city.”

The new edition of “Illinois Politics: A Citizen’s Guide to Power, Politics, and Government,” published by the University of Illinois Press, has a fine chapter titled “Political Corruption.” In it the authors write, “Illinois cannot change its history of political corruption, but it does not have to constantly repeat it.”

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