Politics reading list: Oxford, St Peter's College (PPE)
Oxford, St Peter's College (PPE) lists 11 books for applicants and new students in Politics. The list starts with The Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau, On Liberty by John Stuart Mill and Political Philosophy: A Beginners' Guide for Students and Politicians by Adam Swift. 4 of the books also appear on other Oxford and Cambridge lists we collected.
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Pre-Reading List, Academic Year 2026-2027 (University of Oxford), PDF. www.spc.ox.ac.uk/asset/Politics_2026-7_Incoming-Students-Reading-List.pdf
Retrieved 3 October 2026. Check the source for the current year's version.
The 11 books
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- 1.The Social ContractJean Jacques Rousseau
- 2.On LibertyJohn Stuart Mill
- 3.
- 4.An Introduction to Political PhilosophyJonathan Wolff
- 5.Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performances in Thirty-Six CountriesArend Ljiphart
- 6.Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have FailedJames C. Scott
- 7.
- 8.Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and PovertyDarren Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
- 9.The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman times to the French RevolutionFrancis Fukuyama
- 10.
- 11.
Other Politics lists
- Oxford, Somerville College (PPE) · 8 books
- Cambridge, Human, Social and Political Sciences · 19 books
How this list was made
We fetched the list from the institution's own page or PDF on the date shown and recorded each title and author as printed. We did not add books, and we copied no descriptions. Obvious misprints are corrected and marked. The extraction was done with AI assistance and checked against the source. Lists change every year, so check the source page before you buy anything.