Yale has been home to some of the world's foremost political scientists, including Gabriel Almond, Robert Dahl, Karl Deutsch, Robert Lane, Harold Lasswell, and Charles Lindblom. The current faculty has been recruited from the best departments in the world. It includes practitioners of all the major methodologies of political science, scholars of many parts of the world, and a diverse political philosophy group.

Many Political Science faculty also play active roles in related programs at Yale, such as the Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics; Directed Studies; the Institution for Social And Policy Studies; the Center for International and Area Studies; The Robert Wood Johnson Program in Health Policy; and the Globalization Program. The Department also sponsors numerous seminars, lectures, and conferences that are open to all members of the Yale community.