Research Guides: Political Theory: Overview

Recommended Resources

Library Search
This is your best bet for interdisciplinary topics. Look for subject filters like politics, political thought, political philosophy, or political ethics to help focus your search results. Use the Library Catalog filter when searching for primary source texts, as they tend to be found in books.

Philosopher's Index
Identifies journal articles, books, and contributions to anthologies. Includes political philosophy and social philosophy.
JSTOR
Provides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals, as well as books and primary sources in 75 disciplines. Consult the online tables of contents for holdings, as coverage varies for each title.
Data for Research is a free JSTOR service available to anyone interested in mining data for their research project.
Project MUSE
Provides full-text online access to all journals published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Disciplines covered are humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Religion, Spirituality, Reform and Society
Provides essential documentary materials that explore religious and philosophical movements in the nineteenth century. It examines the influence of both faith and skepticism on the shaping of many aspects of society—politics, law, economics, and social and radical reform movements.

Political Theory
This is a major journal for this field. Sometimes it's helpful to search a major journal to focus your results rather than only searching across large databases. Look for the search icon to perform a keyword search.
Contemporary Political Theory
This is another major journal, only available in a business database, so be sure to search this in addition to searching across other databases.
Journal of Political Philosophy

Library Search for Political Science -- Philosophy
This is a Library Search on the subject of political science and philosophy. Add your own keywords to the search to narrow the results.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Find articles written by experts on concepts, theories, and thinkers in philosophy. This is the best place to start for understanding on ideas from philosophy.

Oxford Bibliographies: Philosophy
Combines the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia to provide overviews and authoritative sources about philosophy.
Oxford Bibliographies: Political Science
Get background info and specialized bibliographies for political science topics.
Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment
Includes a wide range of books in English or French on all aspects of the Enlightenment, including history, cultural studies, literature, biography, religious studies, philosophy, and gender studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory
Publication Date: 2006
Chapters by political theorists look at the state of the field, where it has been in the recent past, and where it is likely to go in future. A handbook has articles that summarize the research and thought on specific topics, and give you citations to associated major scholarship.
Encyclopedia of Political Theory
Publication Date: 2010
Examines the ideas of the major political theorists from before Plato to our own times; the main schools of political thought; the concepts and issues that have captured the imagination and attention of political theorists; and some of the main institutions and practices inspired by political thought.

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