While plenty of people both within and outside of academia hold strong opinions regarding which institutions have the best political science departments, there are some schools that stand at the top of everyone’s list. Whether you agree or disagree with rankings, the reality is that they matter for students and professionals alike. As of 2013, 20% of political science professors in the United States earned their PhDs at one of four institutions (note that there are nearly 3,000 universities in the U.S.), which happen to hold the top four spots in U.S. News and World Report Rankings.

We therefore appreciate the significance of such rankings, but also think it’s important to recognize that there are well-respected institutions across the world, offering great programs to a vast diversity of students. For this reason, the list below includes a mix of top-ranked and hand-selected political science departments located at schools around the globe. While nearly all of the departments listed here fall within the top 200 QS rankings, we’ve arranged them geographically, rather than just by rank.

InstitutionLocation

Harvard UniversityUnited States

Yale UniversityUnited States

Stanford UniversityUnited States

University of TorontoCanada

Universidade de São Paulo (USP)Brazil

Pontificia Universidad Católica de ChileChile

The University of TokyoJapan

National University of Singapore (NUS)Singapore

Peking UniversityChina

University of Hong KongHong Kong

Australian National UniversityAustralia

The University of AucklandNew Zealand

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)United Kingdom

University of OxfordUnited Kingdom

Trinity College DublinIreland

Sciences Po ParisFrance

Leiden UniversityNetherlands

University of CopenhagenDenmark

Aarhus UniversityDenmark

University of MannheimGermany

Although this list offers a wide range of schools from around the world, please do check out our more comprehensive list of courses on offer here. Moreover, if you’re on the fence about whether or not you’d like to earn a higher degree in political science, take a look at our post Should I Pursue a PhD in Political Science? for some tips and information on the discipline.

Photo credit: Hammerin Man