Research and practice regarding politics within and for the educational management administration and leadership community are well established. The 50th anniversary issue of the journal educational management, administration and leadership is an opportunity to examine knowledge production where I have developed a new conceptual framework based on three approaches to ontology and epistemology in the social sciences. This framework presents positivist, interpretive and critical approaches to political relationality, and I deploy this conceptualisation in order to read and analyse field outputs. I present an account of each of these three approaches where I show the main authors, projects and knowledge claims that have raised awareness and established a conceptual and empirical database. I identify the resilience and dominance of positivist politics, but recognise the ongoing validity of interpretive and critical politics.