Political Science *

Described below are links to databases that support the study of political philosophy and thought. There is no database devoted solely to the study of political philosophy and theory and the underlying questions of governance, power, civic virtue, statecraft and justice and ethics. Therefore, you will need to search resources in both disciplines to gain a thorough understanding of the topic being investigated.

Sources in Philosophy

• L’Année philologique– a specialized database of scholarly works relating to all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. Its subjects are Greek and Latin literature and linguistics, including early Christian texts and patristics, Greek and Roman history, art, archaeology, philosophy, religion, mythology, music, and science. With over 810,000 records, L’Année philologique includes citations to journal articles and books, with abstracts in English, German, Spanish, French or Italian. Excellent source for researching ancient Greek and Roman political thought and philosophy.
• Loeb Classical Library – searchable, perpetually growing, virtual library of up-to-date texts and accurate English translations of Greek and Latin literature encompassing all aspects of thought, including epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; history, travel, philosophy, and oration. More than 520 volumes of Latin, Greek, and English texts are available. A good place to identify ancient texts on political philosophy.
• Philosopher's Index -- a comprehensive database covering worldwide research in all areas of philosophy. The database features documents from philosophy and interdisciplinary publications, with source publications from more than 135 countries, and has records from 1940 to present, with additional records dating back to 1902. This is a good place to begin your search for scholarly literature in the field of political philosophy.
• PhilPapers: Philosophical Research Online -- a comprehensive index and bibliography of philosophy maintained by the community of philosophers. Sources include journal articles, books, open access materials, and personal pages maintained by philosophers. The database aims to be comprehensive for philosophical publications back to the 15^th century.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy -- a comprehensive open access encyclopedia of philosophical terms and concepts from all areas of the discipline, including profiles on individual philosophers. Entries are extensive but written clearly by experts in each particular topic; subject experts edited and review each entry to validate its scholarly content. Each entry includes a comprehensive list of references to additional sources on the topic.

NOTE: For a more comprehensive list of scholarly sources in philosophy, review the USC Libraries Philosophy Research Guide. The guide also includes contact information of the subject specialist librarian in the Hoose Library of Philosophy located on the second floor of Mudd Hall.

Sources in Political Science

• Political Database of the Americas – an open access database that offers centralized and systematized information about institutions and political processes, national constitutions, branches of government, elections, political constitutional studies and other subjects related to the strengthening of democracy relevant to the 35 countries of the region. The information is presented in an objective and independent manner and offered free of charge, facilitating political analysis and debates from a comparative perspective.
• Political Extremism and Radicalism – covers a broad assortment of both far-right and radical left political groups. It offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera, covering the 1900s to the 2010s. Contents encompasses the rise and fall of a number of peripheral groups deemed 'extreme' or 'radical' by contemporaries, such as anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-war, communist or socialist, creationist, environmentalist, hate, holocaust denial, new left, survivalist, white supremacist, and white nationalist.
• ProQuest Political Science -- this database gives users access to hundreds of leading political science and international relations journals from Worldwide Political Science Abstracts. However, also included is more than a thousand recent full-text doctoral dissertations, together with working papers, conference proceedings, country profiles, political news and other sources.
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts -- provides indexing of the international journal literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration and policy. Over 1,700 titles are monitored for coverage and, of these, 67% are published outside of the United States.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

Listed below are databases that provide access to studies of political thought and philosophy from particular perspectives or framed within a specific discipline. Search these to gain additional understanding of your topic.

• Alternative Press Index -- an interdisciplinary database [with links to full-text] of more than 474,000 journal, newspaper, and magazine articles in over 700 international alternative, radical, and left periodicals. It covers theories and practices of socialism and revolution along with the topics of Ecology, Democracy and Anarchism, Feminism and Organized Labor, Indigenous Peoples and Gays/Lesbians.
• America: History and Life -- definitive index to articles and other literature [books, dissertations, book reviews, etc.] covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from the 15th century to the present. Indexes nearly 1,800 journals from 1860s to the present, including all key journals in the discipline, state and local history publications, and selected articles from scholarly journals in the social sciences and humanities.
• Diaolong Full-text Database of Chinese and Japanese Ancient Books -- a project based on collaboration among scholars and experts from China, Japan, and Taiwan to compile and make accessible a comprehensive collection of Chinese and Japanese ancient books. It contains about 30,000 ancient books covering historical, political, economic, religious, philosophic, literary, ethnic, and geographic documents. In Chinese but doe include text on political philosophy.
• Ethnic NewsWatch -- a resource that comprehensively covers multi-cultural and multi-ethnic issues in periodical literature. The database contains ethnic and minority press content from the U.S. and Canada, often being the only online source of these publications and include scholarly journals, trade journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and important grass-roots publications from 1970 forward.
• Historical Abstracts -- covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) focusing on the 15th century forward. Indexes more than 2,300 journals in over 40 languages back to 1955. Content provided dating back to 1953, with some coverage for titles back to the early 20th century.
• Index Islamicus -- indexes literature on Islam, the Middle East, and the Muslim world. Records included in the database cover almost 100 years of publications on the world of Islam. Material cited in the the database includes not only work written about the Middle East, but also about the other main Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, plus Muslim minorities elsewhere.
• Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts -- abstracts and indexes the international literature in linguistics and related disciplines in the language sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 600 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, and doctoral dissertations. Key source for identifying research on the intersection of language behavior and philosophical thought applied to politics.
• Oxford Bibliographies Online -- combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this database is frequently updated to help researchers find reliable sources of information quickly by directing them to chapters, books, websites, archives, or data sets selected and annotated by experts in the subject.
• Women's Studies International -- indexes feminist research literature in a wide range of subject areas including medicine and health, literature, sociology, history, international relations, arts and humanities, business, political science, public policy, education, economics, law, and psychology. It indexes over 2,000 journals as well as newspapers, newsletters, bulletins, books, book chapters, proceedings, reports, theses, dissertations, NGO studies, web sites and digital documents, and grey literature. An excellent place to obtain feminist research studies of political philosophy.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

Described below are scholarly online resources that support research in political thought and philosophy.

• Directory of Open Access Journals--Philosophy -- a collection of freely accessible, mostly scholarly philosophy journals. Many of these journals are not indexed in the databases listed in this guide.
• Hanover Historical Texts Collection – makes available digital versions of historical texts arranged under categories of historical time periods: Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval Europe, Early Modern Europe, Modern Europe, Africa and Asia, and separate entries for 17th, 8th, 19th, and 20th Century America. The site contains many relevant philosophical texts and writings using a custom search engine.
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy -- founded in 1995, this open access source provides detailed, scholarly, peer-reviewed information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of academic philosophy. The Encyclopedia's articles are written with the intention that the essay can be understood by advanced undergraduates majoring in philosophy and by other scholars who are not working in the field covered by that article.
• Paideia Project On-Line – provides access to the nearly 1000 archived of contributed papers presented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy and published in The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.