IS POLITICAL SCIENCE POLITICAL AND SHOULD IT BE?

On the one hand, science has always been political—much like art, literature, and any other human enterprise. Opportunities for personal ideologies to seep into the process can happen with what we choose to study, who studies it, how we study it, and how we interpret and apply results. Political science, as a discipline, certainly offers no exception to this general observation. Debates about the proper role of political science and of individual political scientists in the political arena have long occupied the attention of many in the field (Lowi Reference Lowi1992; Smith Reference Smith2015). Describing the discipline in its infancy, for instance, Lowi (Reference Lowi1992, 2) acknowledged the diversity of approaches to real-world politics in evidence from the outset, writing that “Some early political scientists were active reformers, others were radical muckrakers, and a few may have been completely aloof.” Of course, Lowi famously would go on to excoriate much of the discipline for failing to lay challenge to conservative efforts at rebranding political liberalism and for uncritically adopting the preferred language of the state. A similar critique was leveled at the discipline a few decades later by Smith (Reference Smith2015), in which he argued that some of the only scholarship that experienced any impact beyond academia had an unmistakable conservative slant. Of course, much of the public rarely views the output of the academy in this way.

On the other hand, the public has increasingly politicized science, which is likely an outgrowth of efforts by political entrepreneurs to create just such an environment. This makes it difficult for the scientific community to communicate important findings (Lupia Reference Lupia2013) and counter misinformation. This is true of many fields; however, for a discipline that examines the political world, the lines become even more hazy. The principal objects of study by the field—that is, politicians and other political actors—can “fight back” by reframing any critique of the functioning of American democracy that might emerge from the personal politics or professional judgments of scholars. This sensitivity to the political environment was captured in responses to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter when academics reduced their engagement (Bisbee and Munger Reference Bisbee and Munger2025).

Although there are debates within the field on “objective and normative approaches” (Trent Reference Trent2011), we think this is why many political scientists, on average, may find it important to separate as much as possible their personal politics from their work. Some academics have cautioned that this separation between personal commitments and particular ideals, values of teaching democracy to students, and who funds our research has led to decreasing relevance of our discipline’s work to the actual political world (Smith Reference Smith2015). This may prove to be self-defeating given that even value-neutral approaches to the study of politics also tend to be viewed through a political lens (Trent Reference Trent2011).

Yet, we know there are many political scientists actively engaging in various public activities related to their research, teaching, and personal convictions. Some even have gone so far as to recommend that participation in political life should be incentivized at an institutional level (Trent Reference Trent2011). How do political scientists participate in politics and why?

HAVE POLITICAL SCIENTISTS PARTICIPATED?

In what is likely the earliest record of American political scientists’ personal political behavior, Turner and Hetrick (Reference Turner and Hetrick1972) took a similar approach to ours and surveyed 304 American Political Science Association (APSA) members in 1970. At that time, the majority of their sample had contributed money, attended a political rally, signed a petition, participated in a campaign, and engaged in a variety of other political activities. Another survey of APSA members in 1980 continued this trend, finding high levels of participation in most personal political activities. However, approximately 10% to 30% of the sample engaged in demonstrating, running for office, or stating that they gave a political speech (Roettger and Winebrenner Reference Roettger and Winebrenner1983). Generally, political scientists participated at higher levels than the average American, and this gulf appeared to be increasing from 1970 to 1980. Of course, much has changed in the discipline and demographic composition of political science faculty members in the United States since then, including diversification by gender, ethnicity, nationality, and other group memberships that often are consequential for political engagement.

Much of the recent research on political scientists and activism, particularly as it relates to equity-seeking groups, focuses more on the discipline (see, e.g., Mershon Reference Mershon2023) and less on activism in broader society by individual political scientists. Relatedly, departments, societies, professional organizations, and other academic groups have generated political statements about major current issues. This has led to disagreement about whether these types of statements should be made at all (Blake Reference Blake2024). This can be confusing because many institutions require faculty members to avoid any political activities or statements while identifying as representatives of the university but simultaneously push scholars to mobilize knowledge and engage in public scholarship.

Selection into political science would suggest an interest in the subject matter, a natural extension of which may be personal involvement in the political process. Indeed, comparing public voting records of American academics across several US states reveals that political scientists voted more frequently than their ethicist and political philosophy peers (Schwitzgebel and Rust Reference Schwitzgebel and Rust2010). Left-wing or liberal academics overall are more likely to sign petitions (Beyer and Pühringer Reference Beyer and Pühringer2022), and American scientists are more likely to donate to candidates and organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party than to Republican-affiliated candidates and groups. This trend toward Democratic support has intensified over time (Kaurov et al. Reference Kaurov, Cologna, Tyson and Oreskes2022); therefore, when we are publicly active, the entire field is painted with a partisan lens.

Although personal voting, campaigning, donating, and other political activities may be kept separate from their occupation, political scientists also publicly engage in their roles as faculty members and researchers. Whether through policy consultation, media interviews, or blog posts, many political scientists are interested in applying their research and mobilizing knowledge for societal use. For example, the global network Evidence in Governance and Politics brings together academic researchers and practitioners to build applied projects—particularly field experiments—across 38 countries.

Media interviews and scholarly blog posts are popular ways that political scientists publicly apply their expertise. Although this may be an enjoyable part of the job for many political scientists—perhaps even an essential element of it—engagement is not without potential consequences. Increasingly, scholars are facing harassment and threats from both the public and elected officials in particular states. The Researcher Support Consortium was developed to provide resources to help individual researchers and their institutions navigate these threats.Footnote ¹ This mounting evidence of how academics (specifically, women and racial minorities) experience backlash from these activities—even if they are nonpartisan media commentary—may explain the reluctance of some scholars to participate in these ways.

Our current focus is largely on the United StatesFootnote ²; however, it is worth noting that the incentives and consequences of political participation, public engagement, and personal activism vary widely around the globe, including extreme situations in which simply working as an academic can be threatening.

DATA

The data result from a 2024 survey of professors in the discipline following the approach of Djupe, Smith, and Sokhey (Reference Djupe, Smith and Sokhey2022) by starting with a sample of half of APSA-member departments and then taking a census of faculty members in those departments. After acquiring ethics approval from one of our institutions, we sent a recruitment invitation to 4,025 email addresses (approximately 3% failed or bounced). In total, almost 25% clicked through to the survey landing page in Qualtrics, partial responses were received from 865, and nearly complete surveys were generated by 637 respondents, for a final response rate of more than 15%. The sample distribution is close to the APSA percentage of women (36% versus 39% in August 2022), but it is too white (82% versus 71% of American APSA members), has a substantial number of full professors (47%), and has two-thirds working in PhD programs.

Although the email invitation did not mention political involvement, the sample likely features other biases. We might expect that those who responded to our survey would be more politically active than those who did not—much as is the case with the population more generally (Sciarini and Goldberg Reference Sciarini and Goldberg2016). Moreover, departments with APSA membership may not necessarily reflect the entire universe of political science departments in the profession because they tend to be better funded. We used data from the APSA membership dashboardFootnote ³ (limited to Americans) to compose weights for race, gender, and field of study. Although we used the weights, they did not change the results substantially.

The survey questions asked about respondents’ political activity in 2024; their beliefs about political activity more generally; and their rank, institution, demographics, fields, and methods of study. We present sample-level distributions of activities and beliefs about them as we develop a model of the three activity types. (Full coding information for all measures is presented in online appendix A.)

BELIEFS ABOUT THE PLACE OF POLITICS

The survey asked a range of questions that tapped into political scientists’ beliefs about the appropriate place of public politics in the pursuit of a science of politics.Footnote ⁵ The responses to these measures shown in figure 3 are organized by principal components. (See online appendix A, table A1, for the results of the analysis.) We found three components: beliefs about the value of impartiality, beliefs about mobilizing the public, and beliefs about being a political role model. These make sense, given the level of analysis—that is, impartiality concerns the reputation of the discipline, whereas the other two belief sets concern the individual. Mobilizing is concerned about what individuals should do, and being a role model involves how individuals want to be viewed. These beliefs have key roles in explaining who participates in which political activity.

Figure 3

Political Scientist Beliefs About the Place of Politics in the Profession (Weighted)

Source: June 2024 Survey of Political Scientists.

Political scientists are wary of being overtly partisan, soundly rejecting the idea that they garner public trust when they take sides on salient issues. Less than a third of respondents indicated that their students know their party affiliation—although they very well could be wrong in their assessment.Footnote ⁶ Likewise, just over a quarter stated that their students know how politically active they are—despite almost a majority agreeing that they should set an example for other citizens, and even more agreeing that they should encourage students to be politically active. Many of the other items showcase the pressure that political scientists feel to avoid being perceived as political. Majorities avoided certain issues as too controversial and agreed that they should remain impartial to maintain their objectivity.Footnote ⁷ Substantial minorities of respondents did not agree with these notions, although almost two thirds believed that public politicking would undermine public trust in political science.

There is an interesting tension in the results about the state politics of higher education. Over time, states have reduced their support for higher education while also increasing their scrutiny of it. Moreover, a sizable minority of respondents (41%) agreed that academic activities encouraged state legislatures to more tightly regulate higher education. However, a much larger majority (81%) believed that conservatives are unfairly targeting universities. Of course, both can be true. The two are negatively correlated, as expected, but the relationship was weak (r=-0.15).

THE STRUCTURE OF OUR POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT

We do not think that engagement among political scientists is random and neither are political scientists firmly limited by abstract professional obligations. Instead, levels of activity vary systematically, given our beliefs about what is appropriate and right for advancing our tripartite mission of educating the public, maintaining trust, and being true to our own political commitments. To assess the structure of participation from the listed items, we conducted a principal components analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation and tetrachoric correlations, which are appropriate for binary variables. The results, presented in online appendix A, table A2, reveal three components that we termed partisans, public scholars, and pedagogues. Partisans are overtly political, sharing their stances publicly in their front yards or on their lapels and working for campaigns. Public scholars eschew those activities in favor of writing for popular audiences (i.e., op-eds and blogging), giving public talks, being interviewed by journalists, and other consulting work—that is, their “political work” is their political science. Pedagogues host campus events and help to get students and other citizens registered to vote.Footnote ⁸ We composed three additive variables (rescaled to run from 0 to 1) based on the PCA results; although the resulting scales are positively correlated, the relationships are not strong.Footnote ⁹

This defines the public face of political science to the extent that our survey is representative. It is useful to observe that, in general, the activity types are not engaged at different rates by field specialists: the weighted sample means were 0.35 for partisans, 0.50 for public scholarship, and 0.36 for pedagogues. As shown in figure 4, these activity types were displayed almost evenly across fields but with a few exceptions that mainly affect smaller groups. It is not surprising that a few more policy and American politics specialists sponsor campus events and voter-registration drives. Political methodologists do less of everything. Conversely, theorists are more partisan and have more pedagogic engagement while doing somewhat less public scholarship. This makes sense because theorists have the lowest level of agreement with the statement: “It is my duty to remain impartial in political matters to maintain our objectivity” (Cohen Reference Cohen2025). Comparativists are not far behind theorists in their rejection of this belief.

Figure 4

How Types of Activities Are Pursued by Academic Subfield (Weighted)

Source: June 2024 Survey of Political Scientists. The percentages are the average number of activities engaged in each activity type out of seven for partisan activities, out of five for public scholarship, and out of three for pedagogic activities.

We conclude our review of these data with models of the three types of activities. The results in figure 5 suggest few differences by rank, institution, and demographics, which reinforces our previous discussion (see also online appendix A, table A3).Footnote ¹⁰ Women were modestly less likely to be public scholars, whereas whites and those at PhD-granting institutions participate in less campus activity—the latter is likely a function of the enormity of those institutions and departments. Reviewing load is our weak proxy for research productivity, although it also counts as its own time-use metric—those who review more manuscripts actually do more of all three activity types.

Figure 5

Estimated Effects on Activity Types (Negative Binomial Model, Weighted)

Source: June 2024 Survey of Political Scientists. Tabular results are presented in online appendix A, table A3.

Much of the structure of activities can be explained with our substantive beliefs about the appropriateness of politicking.Footnote ¹¹ Of course, it certainly could be the case that the causal arrow points in the opposite direction, with involvement in politics driving an understanding that doing so is acceptable. Those who place more value on impartiality (e.g., agreement that “The public trusts academics less when they take political stands in public”) are much less engaged with partisan politics in overt ways and are more likely to conduct pedagogic activities. Conversely, those who believe that they should be political role models (e.g., agreement that “My students know how politically engaged I am”) are more likely to engage in partisan activities and public scholarship. Moreover, a worldview that highlights the importance of mobilizing the public (e.g., “Educating the public is an essential part of my career”) promotes all three types of activity in almost equivalent ways.

According to this sample, there is little political diversity in political science, but this diversity has consequences for participation. Republicans do less partisan work and are slightly more likely to engage in public scholarship. This means that Democrats do more partisan work than Republicans, which reinforces the stereotype of the discipline. The pattern reverses with respect to public scholarship, although the gap between strong Democrats and Republicans is only about 0.75 activities. There were no systematic partisan gaps on pedagogic activities.

Quantitative scholars do as much of all types of activities as qualitative scholars, which contradicts Ricci’s (Reference Ricci1984) arguments about the political and policy irrelevance of quantitative work (see also Lowi Reference Lowi1992). However, it is true that the small number of theorists in the sample (7%) were more engaged with partisan and pedagogic activity and lean toward less public scholarship.Footnote ¹²