political theory
Americannoun
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any theory concerning how political power is acquired and used in government, either generally or within a particular ideology.
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the branch of political science dealing with such theories.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Trump also responded to a comment by Xi referring to the "Thucydides Trap," a political theory that war becomes more likely when a rising new power competes with an established great power.
From Barron's • May 14, 2026
An LLM is trained on the sum of human written knowledge: philosophy, history, science, political theory.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 13, 2026
I base this not on any grand political theory but on how many times I stood next to members of Congress at urinals at DCA during my years living in D.C.
From Slate • Nov. 7, 2025
Carl Schmitt, a German legal scholar, was a supporter of the Nazi Party who sought to justify Hitler's policies in his writings on legal and political theory.
From BBC • May 30, 2025
The pure ethical theory of justice, he says, bears to the political theory the relation of pure to applied mathematics.
From Schopenhauer by Whittaker, Thomas
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
