Political Science – II

Examined on Political theory and Indian politics — no governing enactment, Constitution of India. Examined on argument rather than on an Act. Ideology, justice, rights, equality and democracy are taken from the theoretical literature; the Indian material — federalism in practice, parties and the party system, pressure groups, and the working of Panchayati Raj — is taken from the empirical political science literature and read against the constitutional text.

This page is the map of the paper: every syllabus unit, the leading cases with full summaries, and the exam questions the paper actually sets.

Units

1. Unit 1 · Power, Authority and Legitimacy — Module I — power as a concept, the exercise of political power and the role of government in decision-making, external influences including interest groups and lobbying, and the elite and Marxist theories of power; authority, its features, de jure and de facto, Weber’s classification and the sources of legalised power; the comparison of power with authority; and legitimacy
2. Unit 2 · Political Obligation — State Authority and the Citizen — Module II — the concept of political obligation and the command-and-obedience relationship; the grounds of obligation and Raphael’s view; the divine right, social contract, force and prescriptive possession theories with Marx; the problem of obedience to unjust laws, the right of resistance and dissent in Green, Gandhi, Laski, King and Mandela, and satyagraha; and punishment — its objectives, Kant’s retributivism, Bentham’s utilitarianism, the deterrent and preventive approaches, the Gandhian reformative view, and implicit bias in the justice delivery system
3. Unit 3 · Political Ideologies — Module III — liberalism, and the other ideologies prescribed by the syllabus, including the comparative study of Gandhism and communism
4. Unit 4 · Indian Democracy at Work — Module IV — the significance of political parties in India, how they differ from interest groups, the features of Indian parties and coalition politics; political legitimacy and democracy — the consent of the governed, the conditions essential for success, ethical decay, and the old and new challenges to Indian democracy; and democratic decentralisation — Gandhian Gram Swaraj, Article 40 and the 73rd and 74th Amendments, the Gram Sabha and participatory democracy, and the implications for gender and social inclusion