A political theorist is someone who engages in political theory.
Notable historic political theorists
- Aristotle
- John Austin
- Jeremy Bentham
- Jean Bodin
- Edmund Burke
- Frederick Engels
- Hugo Grotius
- Johann Gottfried von Herder
- Thomas Hobbes
- John Locke
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Niccolo Machiavelli
- Karl Marx
- John Stuart Mill
- John Milton
- Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
- Thomas More
- Thomas Paine
- Plato
- Samuel Pufendorf
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- John of Salisbury
- Baruch Spinoza
- Alexis de Tocqueville
- Gabriel Almomd
- Noam Chomsky
- David Easton
- David Friedman
- Clive Hamilton
- V.O. Key Jr
- Harold J. Laski
- Harold D. Lasswell
- Robert Paul Nozick
- G. Bingham Powell
- John Rawls
- Roberto Mangabeira Unger
- Graham Wallas
- Stephen L. Wasby
- Beatrice Webb
- Sidney Webb