'n Politieke teoretikus is iemand wat bemoeid is met die samestelling of evaluering van politieke teorie, insluitend politieke filosofie. Teoretici kan akademici of onafhanklike geleerdes wees. Alexis de Tocqueville Aristoteles Baruch Spinoza Benjamin Franklin Chanakya Charles Montesquieu Cicero Edmund Burke Frederic Bastiat Friedrich Engels Gustave de Molinari Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Hugo Grotius Immanuel Kant Jean Bodin Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jeremy Bentham Johann Gottfried von Herder John Austin John C. Calhoun John Locke John Milton John of Salisbury John Stuart Mill Karl Marx Lysander Spooner Niccolò Machiavelli Plato Samuel Pufendorf Simion Bărnuțiu Thomas Hobbes Thomas More Thomas Paine Antonio Gramsci Ayn Rand David Easton Francis Fukuyama Hannah Arendt Henry Kissinger Jean-Paul Sartre John Rawls Jürgen Habermas Kim Il-Sung Leo Strauss Murray Rothbard Noam Chomsky Robert Dahl Robert D. Putnam Rosa Luxemburg Vladimir Lenin