We explain what a political scientist is, what fields of study they specialize in and some famous political scientists.
What is a political scientist?
A political scientist is called a political scientistthat is, someone who studied Political Science: a discipline dedicated to the design and execution of the different organizational systems of societies.
Therefore, political scientists are considered specialists in politics, and the term can often be extended to those who, having trained in other fields of knowledge, demonstrate great erudition in the subject. In other words, a political scientist demonstrates extensive knowledge of power dynamics in human societybeing able to analyze it from various critical perspectives.
Political science as a field of organized knowledge makes use of various areas of knowledge, such as sociology, economics, history and other specialized tools such as statistics, discourse analysis, etc.
This multidisciplinary approach should give a political scientist sufficient tools to explain and therefore understand the political problems faced by a given society.
Likewise, a political scientist can work professionally in areas such as public administration, inter-institutional relations or public relations, or work as a teacher, communicator and researcher.
Its performance in the public sector is key, since it contributes to the political leadership of the nation and/or the administration of its resources (human and material); while in the private sector you can perfectly dedicate your complex thinking and needs detection capabilities to the design of strategies and planning objectives. These are extremely versatile professionals in terms of their immediate field of work.
See also: Factual sciences
famous political scientists
A list of renowned political scientists in the history of this discipline must begin even before their formal acceptance into the academy of social sciences: in ancient philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Plutarchwho developed political philosophy; but also, later, in the work of other modern thinkers such as Nicolás Machiavelli (author of the famous treatise The prince), Baron de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau or Karl Marx.
Other notable names, although much more contemporary, are Max Weber, Harold Lasswell, Norberto Bobbio, Hannah Arendt and Robert Alan Dahl. Many of them are responsible for forging contemporary political thought and also, indirectly, for the current political configuration of many nations.
