Journals of the Century in Political Science and International Relations

Politics as a topic of intellectual inquiry can be traced to Aristotle and Plato. Yet political science as an academic discipline did not emerge until the last quarter of the 19th century, when what had previously been termed “social science” or “political economy” divided into separate disciplines. The first political science graduate program in the United States was established at Columbia University in 1880 by John W. Burgess. The American Academy of Political and Social Science was founded in 1889 and the American Political Science Association in 1903. ¹