LibGuides: Political Science: Start Here

How to use this guide

Welcome to the Political Science subject guide. These resources are recommended as starting points for your research in political science, policy, and international relations.

Find Data & Statistics

For finding data (mostly polling data) and summary statistics. "Data" may not have accompanying analysis; "statistics" usually result from data analysis and include charts and reported summary statistics. See ICPSR's Data vs Summary statistics decision tree if you're not sure which of these you're looking for

Find Books
Useful for finding books and e-books, both available at the Leatherby Libraries as well as worldwide through Interlibrary Loan.

Find Articles
Useful for finding peer-reviewed articles, case studies, news articles, conference proceedings, dissertations, book reviews, and more.

Find Grey Literature

"Grey literature" is a term used by researchers and librarians to encompass everything published outside of journal articles and books. This can be very important to political science research, as many policy experts work in government, think tanks, IGOs, or NGOs rather than at universities and do not publish in traditional "scholarly" ways. This page has resources to help you find documents from these types of institutions.

Best Bets

The Libraries' Discover search (the same as the Start Your Search box on the homepage) searches the full collection, from books to DvDs to journal articles. A good place for a very broad search. You can use filters and more complex searches to narrow results to usable quantities.

These databases are good choices for many political science topics:

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
An interdisciplinary ebook and journal platform to support scholarship and teaching. Provides access to select current subscriptions as well as the archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Terms of Use.
ProQuest Political Science Database This link opens in a new window
Includes full-text political science and international relations journals & dissertations from U.S. & Canadian universities with thousands working papers from the Political Science Research Network. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1985-present.

Google Scholar is a popular search location that uses the same technology as normal Google search to collect articles from around the internet, unlike databases that contain have specific journals. This means that Google Scholar is searching an enormous number of articles, but also that no human filtering has occurred like what happens when a journal is added to a database.

Topic Sources

CQ Researcher Plus Archive This link opens in a new window In-depth analysis reporting on the most current and controversial issues of the day. Each issue features a look ahead, a pro-con section that presents opposing viewpoints, a chronology, and annotated bibliographies to point the way to additional research. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1923-present.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window An interdisciplinary ebook and journal platform to support scholarship and teaching. Provides access to select current subscriptions as well as the archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Terms of Use.
ProQuest Political Science Database This link opens in a new window Includes full-text political science and international relations journals & dissertations from U.S. & Canadian universities with thousands working papers from the Political Science Research Network. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1985-present.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (WPSA) This link opens in a new window Provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of journals, book chapters, and other media covering international political science, international relations, law, and public administration and policy. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1975-present.

CQ Almanac This link opens in a new window Starting in 1946 and releasing annually, CQ Almanac offers original narrative accounts of every major piece of legislation considered during a congressional session. The Almanac organizes, distills, and cross-indexes the full year in Congress and national politics into thematic categories. Terms of Use. Coverage: 2013-2016.
CQ Researcher Plus Archive This link opens in a new window In-depth analysis reporting on the most current and controversial issues of the day. Each issue features a look ahead, a pro-con section that presents opposing viewpoints, a chronology, and annotated bibliographies to point the way to additional research. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1923-present.
ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window A comprehensive collection of congressional documents from 1789 to the present. Includes primary sources such as Legislative Insight, Bills by Number, Research Reports, and Committee Hearings & Testimony. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1789-present.
ProQuest Legislative Insight This link opens in a new window Includes full text history of the legislation, all versions of related bills, law-specific Congressional Record excerpts, committee hearings, reports, prints, and other congressional publications. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1882-present.
ProQuest Regulatory Insight This link opens in a new window Offers U.S. federal administrative law histories for the period 1936-2014 organized by federal statute and Executive Order. Agency view provides a view of historic rulemaking by an agency. It includes Final Rules as published in Federal Register articles. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1936-present.
ProQuest Supreme Court Insight This link opens in a new window A digital collection of decided U.S. Supreme Court cases. Associated content is organized to facilitate understanding of the judicial process. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1975-present.

California State Legislature This website allows for users to look up laws and proposed legislature form the California State House and Senate. Information includes bill analysis and changes put to bills in legislation.
U.S. Congress The US Congress website allows for users to look up laws and proposed legislation (as well as items like congressional reports) and information related to them, such as CBO scores and legislative history.

Civil Rights and Social Justice This link opens in a new window Hearings and committee prints, legislative histories, CRS and GAO reports, briefs from major Supreme Court cases, and publications from the Commission on Civil Rights covering civil rights in the United States as legal protections and definitions are expanded. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1734-present.
Gun Regulation and Legislation in America This link opens in a new window More than 500 titles dealing with gun regulation and legislation, includeding periodicals, key compiled federal legislative histories, relevant congressional hearings, CRS Reports, Supreme Court briefs, and more. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1788-present.

CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online) This link opens in a new window A comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs with a wide range of scholarship from 1991 onward including working papers, occasional papers series, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings, books, journals, and policy briefs. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1991-present.
Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics This link opens in a new window Focuses on the major theories, concepts, and conclusions that define the field comparative politics. Entries cover topics including failed states, grand strategies, soft power, and individual countries. Terms of Use. Restricted to 3 users at a time.
Oxford Companion to International Relations This link opens in a new window Covers theories and applications of international relations, as well as controversies, prominent figures in the field, and ways in which international relations have shaped political history. Terms of Use. Restricted to 3 users at a time.
PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) Index This link opens in a new window PIAS is an index of millions of records worldwide including books, journals, reports, and statistics for scholarship and research in public affairs, public and social policies. Newspapers and newsletters are not indexed. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1915-present.

American Founding Era Collection This link opens in a new window Cross-search digital collections from the University of Virginia Press, including the Adams Papers Digital Edition, the Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, the Dolley Madison Digital Edition, and the Papers of George Washington Digital Edition. Terms of Use.
U.S. Declassified Documents Online This link opens in a new window Previously classified federal records from presidential libraries and executive agencies in the 20th and 21st centuries, including intelligence studies, policy papers, diplomatic correspondence, cabinet meeting minutes, briefing materials, domestic surveillance, and military reports. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1900-2021.
Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window Approximately 140,000 declassified U.S. government documents relating to twentieth and twenty-first century history politics, and international relations. The digitized documents are made available in 56 topic-based collections. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1945-present.

Related guides

Depending on the nature of your research, you may also want to look at the Leatherby Libraries' guides for: