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2017     Blacks and social justice by Bernard Boxill
2015     Seeing like a state : how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed by James C. Scott
2013     Sources of the self : the making of the modern identity by Charles Taylor
2011     After virtue : a study in moral theory by Alasdair MacIntyre
2009     Structural transformation of the public sphere by Jürgen Habermas; Social choice and individual values by Kenneth J. Arrow
2007     An economic theory of democracy by Anthony Downs
2005     The sexual contract by Carole Pateman
2003     The passions and the interests : political arguments for capitalism before its triumph by Albert O. Hirschman
2001     Foundations of modern political thought by Quentin Skinner
1999     The terms of political discourse by William E. Connolly (the link is to the 3d edition of 1993)
1997     The concept of representation by Hanna F. Pitkin
1995     Politics and markets : the world's political economic systems by Charles E. Lindblom
1993     The Machiavellian moment : Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition by J. G. A. Pocock
1991     The revolution of the saints : a study in the origins of radical politics by Michael Walzer
1989     A preface to democratic theory by Robert A. Dahl
1987     A theory of justice by John Rawls
1985     Politics and vision by Sheldon Wolin
(In 1985 the award was changed to a biennial basis)
1984     Collected essays on political theory dating from 1939 through 1969 by Sir Isaiah Berlin
1983     The theory of committees and elections by Duncan Black
1982     Experience and its modes, and two essays, "The voice of poetry" and his Introduction to Hobbes' Leviathan by Michael Oakeshott
1981     The second sex by Simone de Beauvoir
1980     The concept of law by H. L. A. Hart
1979     The political theory of possessive individualism: Hobbes to Locke by C. B. Macpherson
1978     The new science of politics : an introduction, and Order and history by Eric Voegelin
1977     The liberal tradition in America : an interpretation of American political thought since the Revolution by Louis Hartz
1976     The open society and its enemies by Karl Popper
1975     The human condition by Hannah Arendt