Rawls and Habermas are the "leaders" of political theory

The Oxford University Press has published a 10-volume "Oxford Handbooks of Political Science" (2006-2009), edited by Robert E. Goodin. In a new supplementary volume with selected chapters from the ten volumes, Robert Goodin has written a chapter on "the state of the discipline" which contains lists of the "leaders" of the sub-disciplines of political science (defined as the 1 percent of people whose names appear most frequently in the indices of the volumes).

In the sub-discipline "Political Theory", the leaders are:

1. John Rawls (86 entries)
2. Jürgen Habermas (50)
3. Michel Foucault (48)
4. Iris Marion Young (36)
5. Ronald Dworkin (35)
6. Will Kymlicka (34)
7. Charles Taylor (30)
8. Seyla Benhabib (29)
9. W. E. Connolly (28)
10. David Miller (24)
11. Hannah Arendt (23)
12. Brian Barry (23)
13. Leo Strauss (23)
14. Jeremy Waldron (22)
15. Sheldon S. Wolin (22)

All pre-20th century authors are excluded from the list.

Both W.E. Connolly and David Miller have authored a chapter in the volume on political theory.

On the list of the "leaders of the discipline" (defined as the most frequently names in the indices of the ten volumes), John Rawls is number 3 (132 entries) and Habermas number 9 (95 entries).