Social Sciences
Power — how it is acquired, constrained, distributed and abused.
10 fields · 112 topics · 137 curated works
The normative questions underneath every political argument.
Foundations & Overviews · Justice · Liberty · Equality · Social Contract Theory
Explaining why states differ — regime types, democratisation, electoral systems, and the state capacity underneath.
Foundations & Overviews · Regime Types · Democratisation · Authoritarian Resilience · Party Systems
Interaction between states in the absence of a sovereign above them.
Foundations & Overviews · Realism · Liberal Institutionalism · Constructivism · Balance of Power
Geography, resources and long-run national position.
Foundations & Overviews · Geographic Determinants of Power · Sea Power & Land Power · Chokepoints & Trade Routes · Spheres of Influence
Organised violence, its causes and its termination.
Foundations & Overviews · Causes of War · Civil War & Insurgency · Counterinsurgency · Terrorism
Turning political intent into administrative reality.
Foundations & Overviews · Policy Analysis · Agenda Setting · Policy Implementation · Programme Evaluation
The machinery of the state, and why it works badly.
Foundations & Overviews · Bureaucratic Theory · Civil Service Systems · Public Sector Reform · Government Procurement
How people vote and why — public opinion, polling method, partisanship, and media effects that are overstated.
Foundations & Overviews · Voting Behaviour · Public Opinion · Polling Methodology · Campaign Strategy
The stories groups tell about who they are.
Foundations & Overviews · Theories of Nationalism · Nation-Building · Ethnic Conflict · Populism
Information as an instrument of power.
Foundations & Overviews · Intelligence Analysis · Espionage · Signals Intelligence · Covert Action
No prior grounding assumed.
Politics and the English Language
George Orwell · 1946
Vague, stale language conceals bad thinking and defends the indefensible; clear prose is a political act.
+29 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli · 1532
Separates political effectiveness from moral goodness, describing how power is actually held rather than how it ought to be.
+56 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
The Federalist Papers
Hamilton, Madison & Jay · 1788
Argues that factions are inevitable and must be channelled through structure rather than suppressed by virtue.
+49 more at this level
12 of 137 works
George Orwell
Vague, stale language conceals bad thinking and defends the indefensible; clear prose is a political act.
Assumes nothing, and it is short enough to finish before you next write anything
≈5,000 wordslink checked 17 Sept 2026Plato
Socrates argues that having accepted the benefits of a state's laws for a lifetime, he is bound by an implicit agreement to accept its judgment even when it is unjust, and escaping his sentence would itself be a wrong.
about 25 minutes to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copyÉtienne de La Boétie
Tyranny survives only because the many actively cooperate in their own subjection, so obedience rather than force is what a tyrant actually depends on, and it can be withdrawn without a single blow struck.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Thomas Paine
Written against Burke's Reflections, argues that rights come from being human rather than from inherited precedent, so each generation may remake its own government rather than being bound by the arrangements of the dead.
about 6 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Mary Wollstonecraft
Women appear inferior in reason and virtue only because they are denied the education given to men, so equality between the sexes requires equal education rather than a different nature.
about 6 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026James Monroe
Declares the Western Hemisphere closed to further European colonisation and warns that the United States will treat any European attempt to extend its political system there as an unfriendly act.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John Stuart Mill
Society may limit an individual's actions only to prevent harm to others, never merely to enforce a majority's taste or morality.
about 3.5 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Karl Marx
Attacks the draft programme of German social democracy for compromising on the labour theory of value and for imagining a distributive formula, 'to each according to his needs,' that only becomes possible once scarcity itself is abolished.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Pyotr Kropotkin
Cooperation, not competition, is the dominant factor in evolution and in human society, which undercuts the case for coercive states built on the premise that people must be forced to cooperate.
about 6.5 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026T. E. Lawrence
Field notes for a foreign officer advising an Arab-led revolt, arguing influence over local forces is won by deference to their own customs and command rather than by taking the fight over yourself.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Walter Lippmann
People act on the 'pictures in their heads' rather than on the environment itself, and mass media and stereotype construct that picture long before any individual can verify it against reality.
about 7 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026United Nations
Founds a permanent international organisation on the principle of collective security, binding members to settle disputes peacefully and outlawing the use of force except in self-defence or with Security Council authorisation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026