POLITICAL THEORY (MPS-001)

TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT

Course Code: MPS-001
Assignment Code: Asst/TMA/2019-20
Marks: 100
Answer five questions in all, selecting at least two questions from each section. Each
question is to be answered in about 500 words. Each question carries 20 marks.

SECTION- I
1. Explain the major functions and significance political theory.
Answer- ​Functions of Political theory - ​A scientific political theory is an ideal, whereas an
empirical or modern political theory is the working model which Political Science aims at to build
and develop. In its ideal form, as Meehan has summed up, a theory ‘is an act of creation and a
work of art. Good theories are things of beauty and aesthetic worth: fertile, suggestive, simple,
productive and satisfying’. Good empirical theories are rarely available.

They perform functions as mentioned hereunder:

(1) An empirical political theory is a must for the growth of Political Science as a re-established
discipline. Only an overarching or general theory can bring about integration, coherence and
autonomy to its subject matter. In fact, it is an indicator of the health and youth of the discipline.
No science can be fruitful or grow without having a compre​hensive theory.

(2) Theory explains political phenomena and events, finding out cause-effect relationships. It
helps us to understand the political behaviour of man and systems; phenomena of violence, war
or devel​opment; problems like racism, casteism, regionalism, etc. Many a time, it predicts
coming events, thus warning man against their evil conse​quences. In this sense, it becomes a
powerful tool to defend oneself. A theory based on empirical reality is a weapon to fight with
false and motivated ideologies.

(3) Theory guides us to collect relevant facts and fill up the gaps or remove inconsistencies, if
any. A science without a theory can be regarded as blind. Only theory enables a science to
organise facts and give direction to research. Easton has remarked that without theory ‘political
research must remain fragmentary and heterogeneous’. It enables the researcher to face the
avalanche of facts and draw relevant generalisations.

(4) Abound theory (not an ideology) evokes satisfaction, self-confidence and proper
understanding among all concerned. It unites human beings, groups and associations, and
infuses coherence in their activ​ities. A scientific political theory often becomes a powerful
weapon to win over battles or fight against enemies. Occasionally, it provides legit​imacy to the
system of government or its rulers. Attainment of legitimacy reduces the cost of government,
and makes it acceptable, effective and efficient. The ruling class, time and again, can spread
the information that its actions are based on a sound, scientific and all-acceptable political
theory.

(5) Arnold Brecht has regarded a scientific political theory as one of the greatest weapons to
defend humanity. On the one hand, it can provide the basis to solve problems like war,
development, and abundance; on the other hand, it can expose the ideologies propagated as
scientific theories which factually are subversive of the human values. In its applied aspects a
theory can control, demarcate and direct the forces of violence, racism, nationalism, sovereign
status of states etc. Unless this is done, science and technology are likely to devour its own
maker – man.

(6) As theory presents political reality in brief and concise form, political actors – leaders,
politicians, citizens, administrators and diplomats – can make use of this knowledge, and can
take appropriate decisions. The adversaries and citizens can also raise their voice, if action is
not taken in accordance with the scientific theory. In the absence of non-adherence to such
theory, ruling or governance becomes subjective, secretive, and segregate, people causing
immense damage or harm to humanity. If the rulers themselves learn the tenets of an advanced
modern political theory or act on the advice of such theorists, blunders and wasteful cost in
terms of man and material can be avoided.

(7) Even with the present state of developing a modem political theory, one can hope to reach
higher levels of knowing political reality, and construct structures, systems and processes
suitable to a collectivity. In view of the fast developing science and technology, the speed and
volume of empirical theorisation is likely to grow faster. In conse​quence, newer forms of
postmodern political theory is surely to lead from micro to macro, even cosmic levels.

In the way, man can use his discretion in approximating his ultimate values in the light of
empirical analysis and observation of their consequences for man. The devel​opment of such
modern political theory may not allow the rulers to run governments in the name of some mystic
values or to operate it as their personal estate.

Significance of political theory:- The significance of political theory lies in its understanding
and explains the political realities and if necessary to change it. It also provide the moral criteria
and the basis of the state and is institutions and proposes the alternative political arrangements
and practices to suit the moral standards.

Thus, the main significance of political theories lies in the fact that it provides a systematic study
about socio-political a systematic study about socio-political phenomena and makes the people
aware of them. It makes the people aware of their rights and duties in the society. But what is
important is that it helps us to evolve ways and means to changes the society itself.

5. Explain the meaning, nature and Marxist conception of equality.

Answer- Equality originates from aequalis, aequus and aequalitas. These are all old French or
Latin words. These French/Latin words mean even, level and equal. Thus the meaning of the
word equality used in political science corresponds to the meaning from which it originates.

The term equality used in political science differs from uniformity, identity and sameness. Some
people, of course, want to use it to denote uniformity. But this does not convey the meaning
when it is used by political scientists. Equality does not mean obliteration of diversity.

Number of political scientists has defined the concept and Prof. Laski is one of them. We shall
mention his definition because of its special approach. According to Laski equality means
“coherence of ideas”.

In the treatment meted out to different individuals there shall persist coherence. While privileges
are distributed among the individuals justice and reason must be maintained so that no
individual can think that he is neglected or is deprived of his due share. In the distribution of
privileges attention shall be paid to the development of personality.

This definition leads us to find out another meaning (definition) of equality. It means the absence
of special privileges. Individual’s claim for the privileges rests on the ground that without it he
cannot develop his personality and because of this reason an individual’s claim for something is
logical and legitimate.

Marxist Theory of Equality:

Part of Marx’s Political Philosophy:
Like his other political concepts, equality is also a part of his entire .political philosophy which is
primarily linked with the unmasking the real nature of capitalist system, its abolition and
emancipation of working class. From the study of various aspects of society Marx concluded
that there were number of inequalities in capitalist system.

For example, social, political, economic etc.; and these were due to the bourgeois structure. In
any capitalist state there were inequalities between men and women, rich and poor, there were
discriminations among various religious groups.

Even the inequalities were institutionalised by the capitalists. Theoretically the bourgeois
scholars and political scientists propagate for equality and strongly argue for formal or legal
equality. Even the bourgeois constitutions (constitutions framed by the bourgeois scholars to
meet the needs of a particular class) pontifically announce the inclusions of rights, liberties and
equalities as parts of the constitution and also make provision for their protection.

But in actual situation most of the rights, liberties and equalities remain unfulfilled. Marxists
claim that all “these allegations against the bourgeois society are not based on any concoction
or emotion. It is their claim that Marx and Engels studied the capitalist society from a very close
distance.” In the second half of the nineteenth century the capitalist systems of Britain, Germany
and France were matured.

How to Achieve Equality?

On the Jewish Question Marx dealt with several issues and one of these is equality. He had
said that it was mere farce to think of emancipation of all exploited people through the
declaration of equal civil rights and liberties. To Marx such declaration amounted to political
emancipation.

But people’s equal rights and privileges could never be obtained through the announcement of
political emancipation. According to Marx it was merely partial emancipation. For achievement
of all forms of equality (also of rights and liberties) human emancipation was necessary. By
human emancipation he meant emancipation of all men and women from every type of bondage
created and imposed by the capitalists. Emancipation only of the Jews could not achieve that
ambitious objective.

So Marx on the Jewish Question ridiculed the emancipation only of the Jews. Marx believed that
the institution of private property was the chief evil and it always acted for the creation of
inequalities and differences among people. For this reason he recommended the abolition of
private property through the seizure of political power. Prevalence of market economy was
another factor for the growing menace of inequality and exploitation.

SECTION- II

Write a short note on the following

7. (a) Rise of liberalism

Answer- Liberalism, the belief in freedom and human rights, is historically associated with
thinkers such as John Locke and Montesquieu. It is a political movement which spans the better
part of the last four centuries, though the use of the word "liberalism" to refer to a specific
political doctrine did not occur until the 19th century. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in
England laid the foundations for the development of the modern liberal state by constitutionally
limiting the power of the monarch, affirming parliamentary supremacy, passing the Bill of Rights
and establishing the principle of "consent of the governed". The 1776 Declaration of
Independence of the United States founded the nascent republic on liberal principles without the
encumbrance of hereditary aristocracy—the declaration stated that "all men are created equal
and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness", echoing John Locke's phrase "life, liberty, and property". A few years
later, the French Revolution overthrew the hereditary aristocracy, with the slogan "liberty,
equality, fraternity" and was the first state in history to grant universal male suffrage. The
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, first codified in 1789 in France, is a
foundational document of both liberalism and human rights. The intellectual progress of the
Enlightenment, which questioned old traditions about societies and governments, eventually
coalesced into powerful revolutionary movements that toppled what the French called the
Ancien Régime, the belief in absolute monarchy and established religion, especially in Europe,
Latin America and North- America.

William Henry of Orange in the Glorious Revolution, Thomas Jefferson in the American
Revolution and Lafayette in the French Revolution used liberal philosophy to justify the armed
overthrow of what they saw as tyrannical rule. Liberalism started to spread rapidly especially
after the French Revolution. The 19th century saw liberal governments established in nations
across Europe, South America and North America. In this period, the dominant ideological
opponent of classical liberalism was conservatism, but liberalism later survived major ideological
challenges from new opponents, such as fascism and communism. Liberal government often
adopted the economic beliefs espoused by Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and others, which
broadly emphasized the importance of free markets and laissez-faire governance, with a
minimum of interference in trade.

During 19th and early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire and Middle East, liberalism
influenced periods of reform such as the Tanzimat and Nahda and the rise of secularism,
constitutionalism and nationalism. These changes, along with other factors, helped to create a
sense of crisis within Islam which continues to this day—this led to Islamic revivalism. During
the 20th century, liberal ideas spread even further as liberal democracies found themselves on
the winning side in both world wars. In Europe and North America, the establishment of social
liberalism (often called simply "liberalism" in the United States) became a key component in the
expansion of the welfare state. Today, liberal parties continue to wield power and influence
throughout the world, but it still has challenges to overcome in Africa and Asia. Later waves of
modern liberal thought and struggle were strongly influenced by the need to expand civil rights.
Liberals have advocated for gender equality and racial equality and a global social movement
for civil rights in the 20th century achieved several objectives towards both goals.

(b) Welfare state today

Answer- The welfare state is a form of government in which the state protects and promotes
the economic and social well-being of the citizens, based upon the principles of equal
opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for citizens unable to avail
themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life. Sociologist T. H. Marshall described the
modern welfare state as a distinctive combination of democracy, welfare, and capitalism.

As a type of mixed economy, the welfare state funds the governmental institutions for
healthcare and education along with direct benefits paid to individual citizens. Modern welfare
states include Germany and France, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as the Nordic
countries, which employ a system known as the Nordic model. The various implementations of
the welfare state fall into three categories: (i) social democratic, (ii) conservative, and (iii) liberal.
Broadly speaking, welfare states are either universal – with provisions that cover everybody, or
selective – with provisions covering only those deemed most needy. In his 1990 book, The
Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Danish sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen further
identified three subtypes of welfare state models. Though increasingly criticised, these
classifications are still used as a starting point in analysis of modern welfare states[b] and
remain a fundamental heuristic tool for welfare state scholars. Even for those who claim that
in-depth analysis of a single case is more suited to capture the complexity of different social
policy arrangements, welfare typologies can provide a comparative lens that can help to place
single cases in perspective.

Esping-Andersen's welfare classification acknowledges the historical role of three dominant

twentieth-century Western European and American political movements: Social Democracy
(socialism), Christian Democracy (conservatism); and Liberalism.

The Social-Democratic welfare state model is based on the principle of Universalism, granting
access to benefits and services based on citizenship. Such a welfare state is said to provide a
relatively high degree of citizen autonomy, limiting reliance on family and market. In this context,
social policies are perceived as "politics against the market".

The Christian-Democratic welfare state model is based on the principle of subsidiarity

(decentralization) and the dominance of social insurance schemes, offering a medium level of
decommodification and permitting a high degree of social stratification.

The Liberal model is based on market dominance and private provision; ideally, in this model,
the state only interferes to ameliorate poverty and provide for basic needs, largely on a
means-tested basis. Hence, the decommodification potential of state benefits is assumed to be
low and social stratification high.

8. (a) Historical Materialism

Answer- Historical materialism, also known as the materialist conception of history, is a
methodology used by some communist and Marxist historiographers that focuses on human
societies and their development through history, arguing that history is the result of material
conditions rather than ideas. This was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883) as the
"materialist conception of history." It is principally a theory of history which asserts that the
material conditions of a society's mode of production or in Marxist terms, the union of a society's
productive forces and relations of production, fundamentally determine society's organization
and development. Historical materialism is an example of Marx and Engel's scientific socialism,
attempting to show that socialism and communism are scientific necessities rather than
philosophical ideals.
Historical materialism is materialist as it does not believe that history has been driven by
individual's consciousness or ideals, but rather ascribes to the philosophical monism that matter
is the fundamental substance of nature and henceforth the driving force in all of world history;
this drove Marx and other historical materialists to abandon ideas such as rights (e.g. "right to
life, liberty, and property" as liberalism professed). In contrast, idealists believe that human
consciousness creates reality rather than the materialist conception that material reality creates
human consciousness. This put Marx in direct conflict with groups like the liberals who believed
that reality was governed by some set of ideals, when he stated in The German Ideology:
"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality
will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present
state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence".

(b) Rise and growth of Nationalism

Answer- Indian nationalism developed as a concept during the Indian independence
movement fought against the colonial British Raj. Indian nationalism is an instance of territorial
nationalism, inclusive of all its people, despite their diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. It
continues to strongly influence the politics of India and reflects an opposition to the sectarian
strands of Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism.

Several factors contributed to the emergence of Indian nationalism which can be analyzed as
follows:

1. Political and Administrative Unity:

One of the significant results of the British conquest of India was the establishment of a
centralized state. It brought about a political and administrative unification of the country.

The pre- British India was divided into numerous feudal states frequently struggling among
themselves to extend their boundaries. The British authority established a centralized state
structure in India with a uniform reign of law. They enacted and codified laws which were
applicable to every citizen of the state. These laws were enforced by a hierarchically graded
system of tribunals.

The public services brought about the administrative unification of the country. The
establishment of uniform currency system, common administration, common laws and judicial
structure contributed to India’s unification which ultimately helped the rise of national
consciousness.

2. English Language and Western Education:

Introduction of western education was another important factor which paved the way for the
growth of nationalism. Three main agencies were responsible for the spread of modem
education in India. They were the foreign Christian missionaries, the British Government and the
progressive Indians. With the intension of spreading Christianity among the Indians, the
Christian missionaries did extensive work in the spread of modern education. They were among
the pioneers of modern education in India. The British Government was the principal agent of
disseminating modern liberal and technical education in India.

3. Development of Transport and Means of Communication:

Modern means of transport helps in the consolidation of people into modern nations. In India
too, the establishment of railways, construction of roads, canals and organisation of postal,
telegraph and wireless services all over India contributed in forging the people into a nation. Of
course, all these facilities were developed in the interest of the British industries and for political,
administrative and military reasons.

However, these modern means of communications helped the growth of political and cultural life
on a national scale. It promoted the organisation and functioning of a number of political
organisations like Indian National Congress, All India Kishan Sabha, Youth League, All India
Trade Union Congress etc.. Railways made it possible for the people of different towns, villages,
districts and provinces to meet, to exchange views and to decide upon programmes for the
nationalist movements. Without the modern means of transport, no national conferences could
have been held.

4. Emergence of Modern Press:

As a powerful social institution, the press facilitates the exchange of thought on a mass scale
within a short time. The introduction of the printing press in India was an event of revolutionary
significance. Raja Ram Mohan Roy was the founder of nationalist press in India. His ‘Sambad
Kaumudi’ in Bengali published in 1821 and ‘Mirat-UL-Akbar’ in Persian published in 1822, were
the first publications with a distinct nationalist and democratic progressive orientation.

5. Economic Exploitation:
The worst feature of the British rule in India was the economic exploitation of all classes.
Britishers came to India as traders and their primary motive was how to gain financial benefit.
The industrial revolution in Britain necessitated the import of raw materials from different foreign
countries and to search extensive market for its goods out side. India provided both to them.

The British government maintained its civil service and military force at the cost of India. Attempt
was made to destroy the indigenous Indian industries to expand the public demand for British
industrial goods. While heavy import duties were put on Indian goods to restrict their entry into
British market, there was free trade policy for the transactions of the raw materials or British
goods in India. Leaders like Dadabhai Naroji, Mahadev Gobinda Ranade, G.K. Gokhale etc.
analyzed the economic impact of colonial rule in India. Economic exploitation to such a high
extent had great repercussion on the growth of Indian nationalism and the people agitated
against the foreign government.

6. Revival of Glorious Indian Heritage:

When Indians were developing a sense of inferiority complex being exploited under the colonial
rule, the glorious heritage of India was revived by some western scholars like Max Muller,
William Jones, Charles Wilkins etc. They translated some Sanskrit texts into English and
attempted to prove the supremacy of ancient Indian culture, its heritage and philosophy. Some
Indian scholars like R.G. Bhandarkar, H.P. Shastri etc. also helped in reviving the past glory of
India. All these helped in regenerating a sense of self confidence and patriotism among the
people.

7. Impact of International Events:

Several movements and events in foreign countries also helped in awakening national
consciousness. The Declaration of Independence by U.S.A. in 1776, the French Revolution of
1789, the unification of Italy and Germany in 1870, defeat of Russia by Japan in 1904 etc.
inspired the Indians. They became confident that it would be possible to fight against the mighty
British authority for their right of self-determination. World events thus, motivated Indians and
promoted the rise of nationalism.

8. Social and Religious Reform Movements:

The various social and religious reform movements which took place in India during the British
rule were nothing but expression of the rising national consciousness of the people. The new
educated class who imbibed the liberal western culture, recognized the need of reforming social
institutions and religious outlooks as these were regarded as obstacles to national advance. A
number of organisations like Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj, Rama Krishna.

9. (a) Mao’s motion of Democracy

Answer- Mao Tse-tung or Mao Zedong was one of the founders of the Chinese Communist
Party and the first chairman of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. He had enormous
influence over his country, and was greatly admired for founding the Chinese republic and for
the changes he introduced in the early years of his rule. He is numbered as one of the beings
who enriched the treasury of Marxism-Lenninism and contributed further developments. His
theory of the Chinese Revolution is best expressed in the term ‘New Democracy’.

The scenario in China in the 19th and early 20th century was such that the working class
members were few, weak and unorganised, the peasants were numerous, poor, desperate,
revolutionary and potentially the strongest force, and the national capitalists, the despised
compradors, helped the foreign capitalists to despoil the rest. New Democracy aimed at carrying
out the first anti-imperialist revolution, by uniting the peasants, workers and the national
capitalists under the leadership of the Communist Party, and replacing the rule of the
bureaucratic capitalists and feudal landlords by the Dictatorship of People’s Democracy.
However, Mao himself explained in his booklet, ‘On the Dictatorship of the People’s Democracy’
that this form of rule was not very ‘democratic’; on the contrary, towards the defeated class, it
was self-confessedly autocratic.
This was the first stage. The second stage of the Revolution required China to become
industrially strong, implement land reforms, and educate and enlighten workers. Next came the
Higher Stage of Cooperatives, which took place in 1955 and 1956, which transformed the rural
areas by merging farms into cooperatives, where every owner acquired a share, but all
boundaries were eliminated and all villages worked under one Committee, elected by members
of the cooperative. This was then followed by merging them into larger units called Communes.

As a result of industrialization, China faced the problem of the pressure of population upon
scanty means of subsistence, which would prove to be the greatest test to Mao’s theory.
However, the Communists showed great skill in handling the distribution of food crops. Even
during the three expectionally bad years of 1959-61, when widespread crop failures as a result
of natural calamities occurred, famine, in the sense of mass starvation was avoided. In spite of
criticisms over the fact that peasants were required to pay taxes under the ambit of New
Democracy, it has been observed that there is no reason to expect better conditions from a rival
system. Further, the tax money is used for national and local treasuries and is not embezzled.

New Democracy raised health and living standards of citizens, providing education and
sheltering from want, unlike the previous government. Even the merchants and petty capitalists
benefitted from the fact that this regime helped in ending inflation, and restored internal trade
and communication. One major setback of this regime was that capitalism was seen as a
necessary evil, a kind of disease of childhood, through which every community must pass
before reaching maturity, that is Socialism or Communism. The theory of New Democracy saw
the capitalist as a dangerous beast, to be domesticated under the whip of the Communist
Government. However, the capitalists were not unaware of the Communist intentions of using
them simply for industrialization, which can be said to be the characteristic weakness or vice of
Chinese Communism: intellectual arrogance. This is where this so called ‘ideology’ falls short of
realism.

(b) Marxism and Democratic Socialism

Answer- Marxism is a system of economic, social, and political philosophy based on ideas that
view social change in terms of economic factors.

In terms of his prescription for a better society, Marx outlined a utopian society centred upon
common ownership.

Based on a Hegelian understanding of the forces of history, communism represents the final
stage of human history and with it the end of class conflict. In a classless society poverty and
other social ills would no longer exist. Communism would provide an abundance of goods and
services because productivity would be greater than anything recorded under capitalism. In a
world of plenty, the working week would be greatly reduced and the proletariat would no longer
experience alienation and exploitation in the workplace.
In one of his most idealistic passages, Marx states that under communism a person could hunt
in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening and engage in literary criticism
after dinner without being defined in a narrow sense by such actions.

In his vision of a communist utopia, Marx conceptualises progress in a dialectic manner and
views society as the result of economic relations. However, both of these ideological constructs
could be said to be reductive.

The counter-argument states that human nature and the relationships between social agents
are too complex to be understood purely by reference to economic factors. Marxism has also
been criticised for its romanticised view of the working-class. Born out of a patronising mentality
of someone who did little manual work himself, Marx viewed the working-classes as a form of
noble savages whose role is predestined.

Democratic socialism is a term used to refer to the socialist political philosophy that advocates
political democracy alongside a socially owned economy, with an emphasis on workers'
self-management and democratic control of economic institutions within a market or some form
of a decentralised planned socialist economy. Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is
inherently incompatible with the values of freedom, equality and solidarity and that these ideals
can be achieved only through the realisation of a socialist society. Democratic socialism can
support either revolutionary or reformist politics as a means to establish socialism.

In the term democratic socialism, the adjective democratic is added and used to distinguish
democratic socialists from Marxist–Leninist inspired socialism which to many is viewed as being
undemocratic or authoritarian in practice. Democratic socialists oppose the Stalinist political
system and the Soviet-type economic system, rejecting the perceived authoritarian form of
governance and highly centralised command economy that took form in the Soviet Union and
other Marxist–Leninist states in the early 20th century. Democratic socialism is distinguished
from meliorist and Third Way social democracy on the basis that democratic socialists are
committed to systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism whereas
Third Way social democrats are opposed to ultimately ending capitalism and are instead
supportive of progressive reforms to capitalism.

In contrast to modern social democrats, democratic socialists believe that policy reforms and
state interventions aimed at addressing social inequalities and suppressing the economic
contradictions of capitalism will ultimately exacerbate the contradictions, seeing them emerge
elsewhere in the economy under a different guise. Democratic socialists believe the
fundamental issues with capitalism are systemic in nature and can only be resolved by replacing
the capitalist economic system with socialism, i.e. by replacing private ownership with collective
ownership of the means of production and extending democracy to the economic sphere.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: THEORY AND PROBLEMS (MPS-002)
TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT
Course Code: MPS-002
Assignment Code: Asst/TMA/2019-20
Marks: 100
Answer five questions in all, selecting at least two questions from each section. Each
question is to be answered in about 500 words. Each question carries 20 marks.

SECTION- I
1. Discuss any two approaches to the study of International Relations.
Answer- Approach is a way of looking at and then explaining a particular phenomenon. The
perspective may be broad enough to cover a vast area like World as a whole, or it may be very
small embracing an aspect of local, regional, national or international politics. Besides, it may
cover with in its fold every other thing related to the collection and selection of evidence followed
by an investigation and analysis of a particular hypothesis for an academic purpose. In this way,
an approach consists of a criteria of selection criteria employed in selecting the problems or
questions to consider and in selecting the data to bring to bear. It consists of standards
governing the inclusion and exclusion of questions and data. An approach is distinguishable
from a theory. An approach is closely related to a theory in view of the fact that it’s very
character determines the way of generalization, explanation, and -prediction. are among the
main functions of a theory. An approach is transformed into a theory if and when its function
extends beyond the selection of problems and data about the subject under study.

There are two main categories of approaches of international relations studies i.e. traditional
approaches and modern approaches.

Classical or Traditional Approaches of IR

Historical Approach: This Approach lays emphasis on certain permanent issues of international
relations and politics like origins and characteristics of the state system, ideas underlying legal
and diplomatic practices of the concert of Europe, balance of power and its relevance in the light
of concrete achievements, causes of international conflicts and their cure etc. The historical
approach is Id to have its own merit. It can help bring to light, to make more explicit. the
assumptions of thought and also the value judgments that color the perceptions of the scholar
and the practitioner alike.

Philosophical Approach: Ethical approach is the study of world world in inextricably mixed up
with the quest of certain goals, morals, truths and high norms supposed to be underlying all
knowledge and. reality. The philosophical approach is widely criticized for being too abstract
and speculative. It is said that such an approach to the study of International Relations and
politics takes away from the world of reality and for this reason: it is accused of being utopian.

Legal Approach: Ever since Grotius produced his great work on International law, a good
number of leading figures have followed the legal approach to the study of international politics.
Obviously, the legal approach. as applied to the study of national or international willies, stands
on this assumption that law prescribes action to be Liken in a given situation and also forbids
the action.

Institutional Approach: It may be treated as an extension of the legal approach discussed

above. Here the focus is on the formal structure of an existing or proposed organization
entrusted with the job of maintaining peace among the states or implementing the principles of
international law. It places may be seen in the studies of the organization and structure of the
league of Nations, the United Nations and other specialized agencies like International Labor
Organization, UNESCO and UNICEF etc.

New and Modern Approaches of International Relations -

Behavioral Approach: The first sightings of this approach occurred in the 1920s. Frank Kent. an
American journalist was the creator of this approach. Behavioral Approach specifies the
behaviour of persons and social groups rather than events, structures, institutions ideologies. It
stresses the mutual interdependence of theory and research and tries to develop vigorous
research design and to apply precise methods of analysis to political behaviour problems.

Equilibrium Approach: Originally developed by the pioneer of the behavioural movement in

political science like Author Bentley Charles Merriam and George Caitlin, it signifies that politics
is the instant product of the interaction of variables characteristics of the forces in conflict and
the public policy is the product of adjustment between conflicting interests. It studied the world
as equilibrium. Equilibrium is defined as a relationship among the forces operating upon or
within an entity or group of entities so that the whole manifests in some degree and some form
of stability.

Communication Approach: It seeks to demonstrate the' political aspects of International

communications to the degree to that these flew of communication condition political behaviour.
This approach lays stress on the point that if politics is envisaged as a system; the control of the
system centers on communication and the ability of a state to control are related to its ability to
deal with information.

Integration Approach: Another approach with that the name of Karl Deutsch is associated is
known by the name of integration approach that. in a strict sense seeks to pour old wine into a
new bottle. It desires the integration of two or more states to form a new and larger entity for
defending themselves as well as for contributing to the situation of world peace. Deutsch argues
that integration is the attainment within a territory of a sense of community and of institutions
and practices strong and widespread enough to assure, for a long time. dependable
expectations of peaceful change among the population.

Game theory: It is defined as a body of thought dealing with rational decision strategies in
situations of conflict and competition where in each participant or player seeks to maximize his
gains and minimize his losses. Davis B. Bobrow, suggests the following proposals of
the.situation with that game theory deals.

Each player has two or more choices as to how to proceed in the game.

A player of the. game consists of a single simultaneous choice of a strategy of each of the
players.

The outcome of the game is determined once each player has chosen a strategy.

And each possible outcome is associated with a particular payoff or return (Positive or negative)
to each player.

Marxist Approach: Basically different from the liberal view of international politics, the Marxists
regard politics as a struggle for power hinging on the basis of class interests. In the domestic
sphere, politics signifies a continuous fight between the two contending classes. The dominant
class having control over the means of production, distribution, and exchange and the
dominated one that becomes the victim of exploitation and oppression at the hands of dominant
class. The same fact finds its extension in the international sphere where capitalist states fight
for economic exploitation and political subjugation of the weaker states of the world. With a view
to establish their monopolistic hold, they fight against each other for the partition of the globe as
a result of that world war occurs.

2. Examine the Feminist approach in International Relations.

Answer- ​From the outset, feminist theory has challenged women’s near complete absence
from traditional IR theory and practice. This absence is visible both in women’s marginalisation
from decision-making and in the assumption that the reality of women’s day-to-day lives is not
impacted by or important to international relations. Beyond this, feminist contributions to IR can
also be understood through their deconstruction of gender – both as socially constructed
identities and as a powerful organising logic. This means recognising and then challenging
assumptions about masculine and feminine gender roles that dictate what both women and men
should or can do in global politics and what counts as important in considerations of
international relations. These assumptions in turn shape the process of global politics and the
impacts these have on men and women’s lives. Rather than suggest that traditional IR was
gender-neutral – that is, that gender and IR were two separate spheres that did not impact on
each other – feminist theory has shown that traditional IR is in fact gender-blind. Feminist
scholarship therefore takes both women and gender seriously – and in doing so it challenges
IR’s foundational concepts and assumptions.

If we start with feminism’s first contribution – making women visible – an early contribution of
feminist theorists is revealing that women were and are routinely exposed to gendered violence.
In making violence against women visible, an international system that tacitly accepted a large
amount of violence against women as a normal state of affairs was also exposed. For example,
former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s ‘UNiTE’ campaign to end violence against women
estimated that up to seven out of ten women will experience violence at some point in their lives
– and that approximately 600 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not yet
considered a crime. Violence against women is prevalent globally and is not specific to any
particular political or economic system. Jacqui True (2012) has demonstrated the links between
violence against women in the private sphere (for example, domestic violence) and the kinds of
violence women experience in public, in an increasingly globalised workplace and in times of
war. In short, nowhere do women share the same economic, political or social rights as men
and everywhere there are prevalent forms of gendered violence, whether this be domestic
violence in the home or sexual violence in conflict. In looking at violence against women in such
a way, it is possible to see a continuum of gendered violence that does not reflect neat and
distinct categories of peace, stability and so on. Many societies are thought of as predominantly
peaceful or stable despite high levels of violence against a particular portion of the population. It
also presents a very different image of violence and insecurity to that viewed through the
security agendas of states, which is characteristic of traditional IR viewpoints.

In making women visible, feminism has also highlighted women’s absence from
decision-making and institutional structures. For example, in 2015 the World Bank estimated
that globally women made up just 22.9% of national parliaments. One of the core assumptions
of traditional perspectives that feminism has challenged is the exclusionary focus on areas that
are considered ‘high’ politics – for example, sovereignty, the state and military security. The
traditional focus on states and relations between them overlooks the fact that men are
predominantly in charge of state institutions, dominating power and decision-making structures.
It also ignores other areas that both impact global politics and are impacted by it. This is a
gendered exclusion as women contribute in essential ways to global politics even though they
are more likely to populate those areas not considered high politics and their day-to-day lives
may be considered peripheral. Traditional perspectives that ignore gender not only overlook the
contributions of women and the impact global politics has on them but also perpetually justify
this exclusion. If women are outside these domains of power, then their experiences and
contributions are not relevant. Feminist theorists have worked to demonstrate that this
distinction between private and public is false. In doing so they show that previously excluded
areas are central to the functioning of IR, even if they are not acknowledged, and that the
exclusion and inclusion of certain areas in traditional IR thinking is based on gendered ideas of
what counts and does not count.
This brings us to the second key contribution of feminism – exposing and deconstructing
socially constructed gender norms. In making sense of IR in a way that takes both women and
gender seriously, feminism has demonstrated the construction of gendered identities that
perpetuate normative ideas of what men and women should do. In this regard, it is important to
understand the distinction between ‘sex’ as biological and ‘gender’ as socially constructed. Not
all gender considerations rest on the analysis of women, nor should they, and gender relates to
expectations and identities attached to both men and women. Gender is understood as the
socially constructed assumptions that are assigned to either male or female bodies – that is,
behaviour that is assumed to be appropriate ‘masculine’ (male) or ‘feminine’ (female) behaviour.
Masculinity is often associated with rationality, power, independence and the public sphere.
Femininity is often associated with irrationality, in need of protection, domesticity and the private
sphere. These socially and politically produced gender identities shape and influence global
interactions, and IR as theory – and global politics as practice – also produces such gendered
identities in perpetuating assumptions about who should do what and why. These gender
identities are also imbued with power, in particular patriarchal power, which subordinates
women and feminine gender identities to men and masculine gender identities. What this means
is that socially constructed gender identities also determine distributions of power, which impact
where women are in global politics. Whereas men can be feminine and women masculine,
masculinity is expected for men and femininity of women.

3. Critically examine international debates in the context of global environmental crisis.

Answer- The study of environment today is about those momentous choices which nations will
have to make to save the biosphere, their resources, democracy and the nation state system.
The way international politics functioned and influenced the national resource policies and the
political systems of other countries is now undergoing a transformation. Since the overthrow of
colonialism after the second world war to the publication of the report ‘The Limits to Growth’ in
the beginning of the second development decade in USA national policies subscribed to two
entrenched beliefs which had been in circulation since the industrial revolution: first, that nature
exists for man and second, that environmental conservation is anti-growth, anti-progress and
anti-technology.

The Stockholm Conference in 1972 which followed the publication of ‘The Limits to Growth’
stunned the speeding industrialisation. At the same time the publication of the book ‘The Silent
Springs’ by Rachael Carson shook off the apathy and silence of those who stood and watched
the destruction occurring through the massive destruction of forests and wildlife , irresponsible
spread of chemicals in nature and the food chain and the gradual effacing of the community
resource systems. Barry Commoner writes: “Human beings have broken out of the circle of life,
driven not by biological need , but by the social organisation which they have devised to
‘conquer’ nature: means of gaining wealth which conflict with those which govern nature”.
The attempts of the underdeveloped and developing countries to catch up with the West and
repeat their economic miracles, has led to poverty, indebtedness and a steady decline in the
supply of essential goods. The accumulating debt has put developing countries in a trap of
underdevelopment. These countries are forced to overuse their environment to overcome the
possibility of their liquidation. So much so that the debt services alone amounts to between six
and seven per cent of their gross national products [Parkin 1992:8]. More than eight hundred
million people around the world live below the poverty line with endemic malnutrition and no
access to primary health services. As industrialisation and urbanisation progresses, the people
of the poorer regions lose their habitat and their resources.

Greater Interdependence of Nations - S ​ ince nature does not observe boundaries there are
rivers, forests, mineral wealth, wild life, rich mangroves and aboriginal communities which are
spread from more than one country and their ecological bonds have transcended their political
boundaries. Thus any action by one state sends waves of disturbances to the neighbours. For
example the Indus region between India and Pakistan is home to some of the rare species of
fish and mangroves while it also acts as a natural wall to the sea currents. Any action of
pollution, effluent discharge or destruction of mangroves affects the resource flow of the other
country as well as the natural protection to their coastal belt. The world wide bleaching of corals
all over the Indian Ocean coastal belt in 1985-86 had been attributed to the sea bed nuclear
tests conducted by France and China. International rivers such as Rhine in Europe or Ravi
between India and Pakistan have remained contentious issues between them for the
development policies which these nations have undertaken at its catchment zones. The oil fields
of Siberia or Kuwait which have spread underground to other states are presently forcing these
states to enforce action against their overuse and help conservation measures on riparian
states. The ozone hole is the best example of what industrial action in developed states can do
to damage the rest of the world environment and health of people. Some developmental action
in one state may send earthquakes, sea storms, hurricanes or even drought in other states. The
studies related to geological links of the earth’s stratosphere, troposphere, hydrosphere and
tectonic plate action along.with the revelations from remote sensing technologies have proved
that no state could be given unrestricted and unrestrained right to undertake its industrial
adventures. People are so much affected by environmental crisis that it has even forced them to
enter civil war like situations rendering millions to leave their home and hearth to become
ecological refugees. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Red Cross
Society are appalled by the ever increasing number of ecological refugees worldwide. The state
sovereignty is restrained by these natural rights of inhabitants of this earth which are sacrosanct
and uncompromising.

Environment and Development Debate - ​The protection of environment is always associated

with some form of visible slowing of the industrialisation process. This is because many short
cut methods and cheap processes which jump over the limitations of resource availability and
community rights over them are used for rapid production and growth. When The Limits to
Growth was published in USA, the industrialists consolidated their cadres against
environmentalists into an aggressive battle in which they termed them as ‘anti-industrialisation’,
‘anti-development’ and ‘anti-growth’. The idea which was floated by them was that environment
and development stand against each other and one cannot have both at the same time.

This debate is an outcome of the two different ways or value systems in which the environment
was conceptualised in the developing and the developed countries. Although the conservation
movement has a class connotation in the sense that the social force emerging out of it may
pose a threat to the fragile agrosystems on which the world’s 40 percent of the poor eke out a
living. It has been referred to as the pretty trees and tiger syndrome in India. This was quite
obvious in the debate that emerged in the United Nations in 1972 when it completely
subordinated the need for environmental conservation for the developing countries: “It may be
premature for many of them to divert their administrative energies to the establishment of new
institutions or machinery” [UN 1972:27]. It was comfortably assumed that environmental action
could wait for development to take over and thus on one hand the developed nations were able
to divest themselves of their responsibility towards funding for environmentally clean
technology, on the other hand they were also able to put off their obligation towards restricting
biodiversity exploitation and climate change. It was in this period that effluent discharges from
the chemical industries, agro-businesses, biotechnology research and nuclear weapon
proliferation programmes ruthlessly devastated the meagre resources that the South could have
laid their hands on. The symptomatic manifestation in the form of Ozone Hole, the Greenhouse
Effect and the Sea-level rise became realities of the aggressive industrialisation pursued by the
developed countries. This principal weakness that was inherited in the environmental history
from its womb led the world to a stage when solutions always got meshed up into newer
problems. The Stockholm Conference passed 26 main resolutions and 109 recommendations
but a review which was undertaken ten years later revealed that it was not just the population
explosion that had nullified development but the enormity and intensity of the toxins in air, water
and land polluted the planet beyond human control. The list of endangered species of plants
and animals had bloated to threaten the very existence of mankind. The World Conservation
Strategy of 1980 for the first time presented a proportionally better view of the problem
diagnosis by linking developmental processes with the environmental distress and thus laid the
foundation of the interlinkages and interdependence prevailing between the two. It laid at rest
the perceived dichotomy between environment and development and suggested a three
pronged action in the following areas:
• Maintenance of essential ecological processes and life support systems
• Preservation of genetic diversity
• Sustainable utilisation of species and ecosystems.

However the World Conservation Strategy was far from indicating the need for political and
social changes which were required to achieve the conservation goals. In the same year the
Brandt Commission Report also acknowledged the threat that would come to the developmental
policies due to environmental deterioration in poor countries yet even this report failed to point
out the various biases splitting the environmental perspectives from within. An integrative and a
wholesome approach towards this problem of
environment got meddled into global politics of natural resources sharing which indicates the
status and availability of resources and their consumption pattern across the globe. This aspect
of resource sharing which bridges the environment-development dichotomy was brought into an
analytical framework by the Brundtland Commission Report of 1987 and its flowering took place
in the Rio Meet of 1992 when the Agenda 21 benchmarked areas which sent warning signals to
both the North and the South. This was found to have deep inroads into the political and social
structures dominating global governance systems. The environmental framework for
conservation was linked to policies being adopted to deal with the problems of Population,
Urbanisation, Social Development
and Women, and it is here that a combined and coordinated approach towards environment and
development found a foothold. At the Rio Conference which was more appropriately called the
World Conference on Environment and Development or the Earth Summit it was well
understood that environment and development cannot be dealt with in separate chambers since
they question the existing framework of resources sharing between the rich and the poor
nations and within countries between the dominant groups and the subsistence communities.

SECTION- II
Write a short note on the following in about 250 words each.

7. a) Core characteristics of global corporatism

Answer- In Political Science discourse, the term “corporatism” is defined as a system of
interest representation in which constituent units are organised into a limited number of singular,
compulsory, non-competitive and functionally differentiated categories. They are granted by the
state a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories for observing
some controls for articulation of demands and supports. In nation-state systems, certain interest
groups say, labour or peasantry, is deliberately reorganised and, thereby, essentially “captured”
by the government. As a result, these reorganised groups function not as pluralist interest
groups negotiating independently with employers, but presented their demands mostly through
state apparatus. By granting representational monopoly to these interest groups within their
respective categories, the state exercises authority and control for articulation of demands of the
interests they represent and extends support. Often, distinctions are also made between what
are called “inclusionary” and “exclusionary” corporatism wherein the former seeks to integrate
new groups into the bosom of the state before they become organised on an autonomous basis,
and the latter attempts to bring groups under control after they begin to act and function
independently. Finally, corporatist experiments have normally been a response to real or
imagined political crisis that threatened the dominant interests of groups or class, be it economic
or otherwise.

In many respects the evolving global system seems to reflect the above-mentioned features of
corporatism at a global level. As some scholars contend that whereas globalisation is a process,
globalism is a project based on a “new” logic, which as a “historical category”, encompasses all
processes and structures of domination developing on a worldwide scale. Mention was made
earlier that the corporatist experiments have more often been a response to crisis that
threatened the dominant interests groups. At least three major and unprecedented events in the
recent past have cumulatively contributed to a situation of crisis to the world capitalist class. The
first is the end of the superpower Cold War and the consequent collapse of the socialist ‘Second
World’ often portrayed as the triumph of transnational capitalism. The second is the
disintegration and further marginalisation of the so-called ‘Third World’ developing countries
saddled with high levels of external indebtedness. The third, is the far-reaching changes brought
about by the multiple and profound innovations in a variety of technology areas including in the
information and communication resulting in the reduction of time, space and cost.

As a consequence, the polarities that existed in the post-Second World War among nation-
states-between the East and the West and between the North and the South-have been
replaced in recent years by a single core-periphery global order. The Western core or the so
called ‘First World’, has remained as it was-an interdependent and stratified bloc of dominant
economic interest, whereas the other two-the ‘Second’ and ‘Third’ worlds have collapsed into a
complex set of actors, including the ‘newly industrialising’, ‘developing’, ‘poor’ and ‘transitional’
countries.

b) Internationalisation of Human Rights

Answer- The internationalization of human rights standards, under way for decades, has
accelerated in recent years. More countries than ever before have incorporated human rights
norms and protections in their constitutions, legal codes, and judicial processes. New
international courts with jurisdiction over human rights abuses have been created or
strengthened, while international enforcement mechanisms have become more effective.
International efforts to define and implement social and economic human rights have also
intensified.

The trend toward increasing public and governmental support for human rights norms and
institutions in much of the world, including most of Latin America, contrasts with the current drift
of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. If current trends continue, human rights could become a
significant arena of contention between the United States and its neighbors.

The internationalization of human rights implies that human rights standards are universally
applicable despite cultural and other differences between nations. Internationalization also
embodies the idea that wealthy nations, corporations, and individuals have a responsibility to
help alleviate poverty, disease, and ignorance that afflict much of the third world.
Internationalization also involves international enforcement mechanisms to punish transgressors
when local and national courts are unable to do so.
In Latin America, the consolidation of democratic regimes after decades of authoritarian and
military rule has led most countries in the region to embrace these trends. Democracy clauses in
trade agreements and aid programs became common in the 1990s. Although such clauses are
a relatively weak mechanism lacking specific standards, their adoption helped to underpin the
increasing activism of the Organization of American States and contributed to modifying or
reversing unconstitutional takeovers in Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.

Human rights treaties and agreements now make it possible for prosecutors to pursue human
rights violators no matter where they are living or what their citizenship. International
agreements, including the treaty that established the new International Criminal Court, generally
give precedence to courts in the alleged perpetrator's home country. ICC prosecutors can
intervene only when home country courts are unable to work; and like prosecutors in other
settings, they have discretion to refuse to pursue frivolous cases.

Most of the governments in the hemisphere have ratified the treaty establishing the ICC. The
new court's Chief Prosecutor is Luis Moreno Ocampo, who helped lead the prosecution of
Argentine generals in the 1980s. A number of Latin American governments have also moved to
fulfill their commitments under other agreements to cooperate with international efforts to track
down, arrest, and extradite individuals accused of serious human rights abuses. This year, for
example, Mexico honored a request for extradition from a Spanish court. Mexican police
arrested Ricardo Miguel Cavallo and turned him over to Spanish authorities on a warrant
charging the former Argentine naval officer with kidnapping, torturing, and murdering hundreds
of victims at the Mechanics School of the navy (ESMA) in Buenos Aires.

10. a) Post –second world war international organisations

Answer- International organisation is the process by which states establish and develop
formal, continuing institutional structures for the conduct of certain aspects of their relationships
with each other. It represents a reaction to the extreme decentralization of the traditional system
of international relations and an effort by statesmen to adapt the mechanics of that system to
the requirements posed by the constantly increasing complexity of the interdependence of
states. Particular international organizations may be regarded as manifestations of the
organizing process on the international level.

The process of international organization had its origins in the nineteenth century, largely in
Europe. Innovations associated with the rise of industrialism and the introduction of new
methods of transport and communication stimulated the creation of special-purpose agencies,
usually called public international unions, designed to facilitate the collaboration of governments
in dealing with economic, social, and technical problems. Notable among these were the
International Telegraphic Union (1865) and the Universal Postal Union (1874), which survived to
become specialized agencies of the United Nations system (the former under the title
International Telecommunication Union) after World War II. In the political field, an effort to
institutionalize the dominant role of the great powers of Europe was undertaken at the Congress
of Vienna in 1815. While the resultant Concert of Europe did not assume the character of a
standing political organization, the same pattern functioned until World War I as the framework
for a system of occasional great-power conferences which lent some substance to the idea that
the European family of states constituted an organized entity. This concept was broadened by
the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, which admitted small states as well as great powers,
and extra-European as well as European states, to participation in collective political
deliberations. Near the end of the nineteenth century, the establishment of the Pan American
Union and the initiation of a series of inter-American conferences reinforced the Monroe
Doctrine and Simón Bolívar’s pronouncements by giving institutional expression to the idea that
the states of the Western Hemisphere constituted a distinct subgroup within the larger
multi-state system.

These nineteenth-century beginnings provided, in large measure, the basis for the phenomenal
development of international organization since World War I. Certain distinctions which emerged
during this period—between political and nonpolitical agencies, between the status of great
powers and that of small states, between regional and geographically undefined
organizations—were to prove significant in the later course of international organization. Basic
patterns of institutional structure and procedure were evolved. The trend toward broadening the
conception of international organization to include entities beyond the confines of the European
state system was initiated. Most importantly, the dual motivations of international institution
building—(a) the urge to promote coordinated responses by states to the problems of peaceful
intercourse in an era of growing economic, social, and technical interdependence, and(b)the
recognition of the necessity for moderating conflict in the political and military spheres—became
operative in this period.

b) Concept of Justice in International Relations.

Answer- The concepts of order and stability have enjoyed a higher priority than the idea of
justice in the practice and the scholarship of international relations. This article attempts to
demonstrate that such prioritisation is conceptually flawed, particularly during this era of
globalisation. This article argues that international relations is relatively insensitive to the
question of justice, both on the diplomatic plane and within the mainstream scholarly discourse
on the subject. Historically, the guiding principles of international relations have been stability,
predictability and order at the cost of justice. The article argues that this legacy is among its
'original sins'. It also explores, in the context of the ongoing process of globalisation, the abiding
continuity of some of the recurrent 'sins' of international relations and the implications of this
continuity for critical security.

The concept of justice differs in every culture. Early theories of justice were set out by the
Ancient Greek philosophers Plato in his work The Republic, and Aristotle in his Nicomachean
Ethics. Throughout history various theories have been established. Advocates of divine
command theory argue that justice issues from God. In the 1600s, theorists like John Locke
argued for the theory of natural law. Thinkers in the social contract tradition argued that justice
is derived from the mutual agreement of everyone concerned. In the 1800s, utilitarian thinkers
including John Stuart Mill argued that justice is what has the best consequences. Theories of
distributive justice concern what is distributed, between whom they are to be distributed, and
what is the proper distribution. Egalitarians argued that justice can only exist within the
coordinates of equality. John Rawls used a social contract argument to show that justice, and
especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness. Property rights theorists (like Robert Nozick)
also take a consequentialist view of distributive justice and argue that property rights-based
justice maximizes the overall wealth of an economic system. Theories of retributive justice are
concerned with punishment for wrongdoing. Restorative justice (also sometimes called
"reparative justice") is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of victims and offenders.

INDIA: DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT (MPS-003)

TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT

Course Code: MPS-003

Assignment Code: ASST/TMA/2019-20
Marks: 100
Answer any five questions in about 500 words each. Attempt at least two questions from
each section. Each question carries 20 marks.

SECTION-I
1. Discuss the significance of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment in Indian democracy.
Answer- The 73rd Amendment 1992 added a new Part IX to the constitution titled “The
Panchayats” covering provisions from Article 243 to 243(O); and a new Eleventh Schedule
covering 29 subjects within the functions of the Panchayats.

This amendment implements the article 40 of the DPSP which says that “State shall take steps
to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be
necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government” and have upgraded them
from non-justifiable to justifiable part of the constitution and has put constitutional obligation
upon states to enact the Panchayati Raj Acts as per provisions of the Part IX. However, states
have been given enough freedom to take their geographical, politico-administrative and others
conditions into account while adopting the Panchayati Raj System.

Salient Features
Gram Sabha
Gram Sabha is a body consisting of all the persons registered in the electoral rolls relating to a
village comprised within the area of Panchayat at the village level. Since all the persons
registered in electoral rolls are members of Gram Sabha, there are no elected representatives.
Further, Gram Sabha is the only permanent unit in Panchayati Raj system and not constituted
for a particular period. Although it serves as foundation of the Panchayati Raj, yet it is not
among the three tiers of the same. The powers and functions of Gram Sabha are fixed by state
legislature by law.

Three Tiers of Panchayati Raj

Part IX provides for a 3 tier Panchayat system, which would be constituted in every state at the
village level, intermediate level and district level. This provision brought the uniformity in the
Panchayati Raj structure in India. However, the states which were having population below 20
Lakh were given an option to not to have the intermediate level.

All the members of these three level are elected. Further, the chairperson of panchayats at the
intermediate and district levels are indirectly elected from amongst the elected members. But at
the village level, the election of chairperson of Panchayat (Sarpanch) may be direct or indirect
as provided by the state in its own Panchayati Raj Act.

Reservation in Panchayats
There is a provision of reservation of seats for SCs and STs at every level of Panchayat. The
seats are to be reserved for SCs and STs in proportion to their population at each level. Out of
the Reserved Seats, 1/3rd have to be reserved for the women of the SC and ST. Out of the
total number of seats to be filled by the direct elections, 1/3rd have to be reserved for women.
There has been an amendment bill pending that seeks to increase reservation for women to
50%. The reserved seats may be allotted by rotation to different constituencies in the
Panchayat. The State by law may also provide for reservations for the offices of the
Chairpersons.

Duration of Panchayats
A clear term for 5 years has been provided for the Panchayats and elections must take place
before the expiry of the terms. However, the Panchayat may be dissolved earlier on specific
grounds in accordance with the state legislations. In that case the elections must take place
before expiry of 6 months of the dissolution.

Disqualification of Members
Article 243F makes provisions for disqualification from the membership. As per this article, any
person who is qualified to become an MLA is qualified to become a member of the Panchayat,
but for Panchayat the minimum age prescribed is 21 years. Further, the disqualification criteria
are to be decided by the state legislature by law.

Finance Commission
State Government needs to appoint a finance commission every five years, which shall review
the financial position of the Panchayats and to make recommendation on the following:

The Distribution of the taxes, duties, tolls, fees etc. levied by the state which is to be divided
between the Panchayats.
Allocation of proceeds between various tiers.
Taxes, tolls, fees assigned to Panchayats
Grant in aids.

This report of the Finance Commission would be laid on the table in the State legislature.
Further, the Union Finance Commission also suggests the measures needed to augment the
Consolidated Funds of States to supplement the resources of the panchayats in the states.

3. Discuss the main challenges of ethnicity for the nation-state of India.

Answer- India came to independence in 1947 amidst the trauma of partition. The nationalist
movement, led by Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, aimed to gather what was then
British India plus the 562 princely states under British paramountcy into a secular and
democratic state. But Mohammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, feared that his
coreligionists, who made up almost a quarter of the subcontinent's population, would find
themselves a permanent and embattled minority in a Hindu-dominated land. For Jinnah, India
was "two nations," Hindu and Muslim, and he was determined that Muslims should secure
protection in an Islamic state of Pakistan, made up of the Muslim-majority areas of India. In the
violence that accompanied partition, some half a million people were killed, while upwards of 11
million Hindus and Muslims crossed the newly created borders as refugees. But even all this
bloodshed and suffering did not settle matters, for the creation of Pakistan left nearly half of the
subcontinent's Muslims in India.

Muslims today are India's largest religious minority, accounting for 11 percent of the total
population. Among other religious groups, the Sikhs, some of whom in 1947 had sought an
independent Sikhistan, are concentrated in the northern state of Punjab and number less than 2
percent of India's population. Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Parsees, and Jews add further
richness to India's religious diversity, but their comparatively small numbers only accentuate the
overwhelming proportion of Hindus, with some 83 percent of the population.

The Hindus, although they share a common religious tradition, are themselves divided into a
myriad of sects and are socially segmented by thousands of castes and subcastes,
hierarchically ranked according to tradition and regionally organized. The geographic regions of
India are linguistically and culturally distinct. There are more than a dozen major languages,
grouped into those of Dravidian South India and Indo-European (or Aryan) North India; Hindi, an
Indo-European language spoken by 30 percent of all Indians, is recognized by the Constitution
of 1950 as the official language (along with English). In addition to the many Indo-European and
Dravidian languages and dialects, there are various tribal languages spoken by peoples across
India, most notably in southern Bihar and in the seven states of the Northeast.

In confronting this staggering diversity, the framers of India's Constitution sought to shape an
overarching Indian identity even as they acknowledged the reality of pluralism by guaranteeing
fundamental rights, in some cases through specific provisions for the protection of minorities.
These include freedom of religion (Articles 25-28); the right of any section of citizens to use and
conserve their "distinct language, script or culture" (Article 29); and the right of "all minorities,
whether based on religion or language," to establish and administer educational institutions of
their choice (Article 30). With respect to caste, the Constitution declared the practice of
"untouchability" unlawful (Article 17). To provide compensatory justice and open up opportunity,
a certain percentage of admissions to colleges and universities and places in government
employment were "reserved" for so-called Scheduled Castes (untouchables) and Scheduled
(aboriginal) Tribes (Article 335). Similarly, to ensure adequate political representation,
Scheduled Castes and Tribes were allotted reserved seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of
Parliament, and in state legislatures in proportion to their numbers (Article 330). These
reservations were to have ended in 1960, but they have been extended by constitutional
amendment at ten-year intervals.

4. Critically Examine the Basic Minimum Needs approach towards human development.
Answer- The assumption was that with economic growth people would be able to improve their
social consumption, i.e. they would be able to make use of various social services like better
housing, health care, drinking water, sanitation, education, communication, etc. This, however,
did not happen during the first two decades of planned development . While the availability of
food increased, access to various social services in rural areas, particularly for the poor, did not
improve. Many villages did not have schools, health facilities, safe drinking water, roads, etc.
which are essential to improve the social consumption of the people.

The concept of Minimum Needs pertained to improving the social consumption with increased
incomes of the poor on the one hand, and improving the availability and the quality of social
services to the people at affordable costs on the other. The approach paper for the Fifth Plan
(1974-79) stated that the alleviation of poverty required a multi-pronged attack and suggested a
separate National Programme for developing social services in relation to basic requirements. It
observed “Even with expanded employment opportunities, the poor will not be able to buy for
themselves all the essential goods and services which should figure in any reasonable concept
of a minimum standard of living. There is a need to supplement the measures for providing
greater employment opportunities and resultant increase in income of the poorer sections and
investment in social sectors like education, health, nutrition, drinking water, housing,
communications and electricity”.
The first step in the formulation of the Minimum Needs Programme (MNP) as stated in the Fifth
Five-year Plan (draft) was “to identify the priority areas of social consumption and to lay down
for each of these a minimum norm for attainment by the end of the Fifth Plan Period”. Giving the
rationale for MNP, it observed that social consumption needs had received low priority
particularly in the economically backward states. There was little integration or convergence of
services and facilities and budgetary constraints affected these programmes rather adversely.
The Fifth Plan therefore proposed MNP “with the objective of establishing a network of basic
services and facilities of social consumption in all areas up to nationally accepted norms within a
specified time frame. The programme was designed to assist in raising living standards and
reducing regional disparities in development”.

The ILO document on Employment, Growth and Basic Needs: a One World Problem (1977) put
forward the basic needs concept formally at the Tripartite World Conference on Employment,
Income Distribution and Social Progress (1976). The document stated that “The definition of a
set of basic needs, constituting a minimum standard of living, identification of the poorest groups
and provide concrete targets to help them and to measure progress”. The satisfaction of basic
needs was defined as consisting of the following two elements:
• Meeting the minimum requirements of a family for private consumption: food, shelter and
clothing are obviously included in this; also, some household equipment and furniture is
included; and
• Access to essential services such as safe drinking water, sanitation, public transport, health
and education, i.e. items of social consumption. Other elements emphasized in the document as
relevant to the basic needs strategy are:
• Participation of the people in decision making;
• Putting satisfaction of the absolute level of basic needs within the broader framework of
“fulfillment of basic human rights which are not only ends in themselves but also contribute to
the attainment of other goals”; and
• Fuller employment, rapid rate of economic growth, improvement in the quality of employment
and in conditions of work, and redistribution on considerations of social justice. The document
also stated that basic needs represent the “minimum objective of society, not the full range of
desirable attributes”. Further, the basic needs concept is of universal applicability, though the
importance and the relative weight of components will vary with the level of development, social
and cultural values, etc. One of the implications of the basic needs approach is that a person
seeking employment will have an adequately remunerated job with which he can meet the
needs of personal consumption and have access to and utilize essential social services.

SECTION-II
6. Write notes on the following in about 250 words each:
a) Gender and Development
Answer- Gender and development is an interdisciplinary field of research and applied study
that implements a feminist approach to understanding and addressing the disparate impact that
economic development and globalization have on people based upon their location, gender,
class background, and other socio-political identities. A strictly economic approach to
development views a country’s development in quantitative terms such as job creation, inflation
control, and high employment – all of which aim to improve the ‘economic wellbeing’ of a
country and the subsequent quality of life for its people. In terms of economic development,
quality of life is defined as access to necessary rights and resources including but not limited to
quality education, medical facilities, affordable housing, clean environments, and low crime rate.
Gender and development considers many of these same factors, however, gender and
development emphasizes efforts towards understanding how multifaceted these issues are in
the entangled context of culture, government, and globalization. Accounting for this need,
gender and development implements ethnographic research, research that studies a specific
culture or group of people by physically immersing the researcher into the environment and
daily routine of those being studied, in order to comprehensively understand how development
policy and practices affect the everyday life of targeted groups or areas.

The history of this field dates back to the 1950s, when studies of economic development first
brought women into its discourse, focusing on women only as subjects of welfare policies –
notably those centered on food aid and family planning. The focus of women in development
increased throughout the decade, and by 1962, the United Nations General Assembly called for
the Commission on the Status of Women to collaborate with the Secretary General and a
number of other UN sectors to develop a longstanding program dedicated to women’s
advancement in developing countries. A decade later, feminist economist Ester Boserup’s
pioneering book Women’s Role in Economic Development (1970) was published, radically
shifting perspectives of development and contributing to the birth of what eventually became the
gender and development field.

b) Judicial Review
Answer- Judicial Review is the power of the U.S. Supreme Court to review laws and actions
from Congress and the President to determine whether they are constitutional. This is part of
the checks and balances that the three branches of the federal government use in order to limit
each other and ensure a balance of power.

Key Takeaways: Judicial Review

● Judicial review is the power of the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether a law or
decision by the legislative or executive branches of federal government, or any court or
agency of the state governments is constitutional.

● Judicial review is a key to the doctrine of balance of power based on a system of “checks
and balances” between the three branches of the federal government.
 ● The power of judicial review was established in the 1803 Supreme Court case of
Marbury v. Madison.

● Judicial review is the fundamental principle of the US system of federal government that
all actions of the executive and legislative branches of government are subject to review
and possible invalidation by the judiciary branch. In applying the doctrine of judicial
review, the U.S. Supreme Court plays a role in ensuring that the other branches of
government abide by the U.S. Constitution. In this manner, judicial review is a vital
element in the separation of powers between the three branches of government.

● Judicial review was established in the landmark Supreme Court decision of Marbury v.
Madison, with the famous line from Chief Justice John Marshall: “It is emphatically the
duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to
particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret the rule. If two laws conflict
with each other, the Court must decide on the operation of each.”

7. Write notes on the following in about 250 words:

a) Characteristics of Migrants
Answer- People may move within a country between different states or between different
districts of the same state or they may move between different countries. Therefore, different
terms are used for internal and external migration. Internal migration refers to migration from
one place to another with a country, while external migration or international migration refers to
migration from one country to another.

There are some important characteristics of the migrants and migration. An important
characteristic is the age selectivity of the migrants. Generally, young people are more mobile.
Most migration studies, especially in developing countries, have found that rural-urban migrants
are predominantly young adults and relatively better educated than those who remain at the
place of origin. It is obvious that migration for employment takes place mostly at the young adult
ages. Also a major part of the female migration consequential to marriage occurs at the young
adult ages. Thus people have a tendency to move when they are between their teens and their
mid-thirties (15-35 years) than at other ages.

Another important characteristic is that the migrants have a tendency to move to those places
where they have contracts and where the previous migrants sere as links for the new migrants,
and this chain is thus formed in the process, and is usually called chain migration. Various
studies show that people do not blindly go to a new place. They usually have kinship chains and
networks of relatives and friends who help them in different ways. In some cases, the migrants
not only tend to have the same destination but also tend to have the same occupation. For
example, research reveals that in certain hotels in Jaipur almost all the workers belong to one
particular sub-region of Kumaon. The agricultural labourers in Punjab and Haryana are mainly
from Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh.

b) Principles of Sustainable Development

Answer- ​Principles/Premises of Sustainable Development - ​Some of the principles
premises underlying the concept of sustainable development include the following:
1) Sustainable development is an alternative design for development, which, by definition
should be environmentally benign and eco-friendly.
2) That the present generation should meet its needs without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their needs, i.e. to ensure that the productive assets available to future
generations are not unfairly diminished.
3) That those who enjoy the fruits of economic development today must not make future
generations worse-off by excessively degrading the Earth's exhaustible resources and polluting
its ecology and environment.
4) That there is a symbiotic relationship between consumerist human race and producer natural
systems.
5) That environment and development are not mutually exclusive - a healthy environment is
essential to sustainable development and healthy economy as well.
6 That economic development which erodes natural capital is often not successful.
7) That environmental mistakes of the past need not be repeated, as the past-patterns of
environmental degradation are not inevitable.
8) That development is not growth only, it should stand for broader goals of social
9) That sustainable development in the long run has to do with ecology, resources and people,
along with their service agencies, institutions and other aspects of their social organization.
10) That sustainable development has two major aspects - internally sustainable development
and externally sustainable development - without both, no real sustainable development would
exist.
11) That sustainable development is largely accountable to the poor, and hence, it should
ensure that the poor have adequate access to sustainable and secure livelihoods.

COMPARATIVE POLITICS: ISSUES AND TRENDS (MPS-004)

TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT
Course Code: MPS-004
Assignment Code: ASST/TMA/2019-20
Marks: 100
Answer five questions in all, selecting at least two questions from each section. Each
question is to be answered in about 500 words. Each question carries 20 marks.

SECTION- I

2. Explain the basic tenets of David Easton’s general system theory.

Answer- David Easton’s ‘systems theory’, though developed for ‘constructivist’ purposes and is
a conceptual framework for analysing politics, yet it is useful for constructing an empirical theory
of Political Science as well as using it in understanding actual forces operating in a political
system. The political actors and citizens can know ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ of political
operations, and take remedial actions. Third world countries can gain a lot from its study and
actual use, avoiding many risks, crises, and difficulties. Advanced countries already make use
of it in one form or other.

Easton presented his conceptual framework in his The Political System (1953). He elaborated it
further, in 1965, in his two books, A Framework for Political Analysis, and A Systems Analysis of
Political Life. In the first, he has presented an outline of the conceptual framework of systems
analysis. In the next, he has further developed it in detail, but its title is misleading as he has not
done therein any actual empirical analysis.

Besides, he has written a large number of articles, and edited many books. He is a proclaimed
spokesman of two academic revolutions – behavioural and post-behavioural. The centre of his
attention is in bringing about disci​plinary integration in Political Science through the evaluation
of a general theory. He believes that systems framework can serve his purpose. Later on, it has
come out in form of input-output analysis which has proved useful for empirical and practical
purposes.

Easton’s input-output analysis is also known as the ‘flow model’. It can be regarded as a form of
functionalist analysis. Young finds his framework as ‘the most inclusive systemic approach so
far constructed specifically for political analysis by a political scientist’. It is a product of an
original insight of a political scientist. It is neither borrowed nor smuggled from other disciplines.

Easton, according to Meehan, is the most consistent and systematic functionalist of Political
Science, though he may not agree to that categorisation. He attempts to provide a ‘general’
functional theory of politics. ‘System’ is the broad unit of his analysis. But his ‘system’ is inter-
meshed with many ‘inter’ and ‘intra’ systems.

In this matter, he comes closer to the general systems theory. But he is interested in the
‘constructivist’ aspect of the approach, as he does not make its use in conducting empirical
research. His concept of ‘system’ is conceptual, analytical, and abstract.
He wants to explicate a conceptual framework which may ultimately emerge as a general theory
of totality of political life. Thus, he is the Talcott Parson of Political Science. He is committed to
stability, order, and persistence of ‘systems’ but his perspective is political. The concept of
‘system’ takes on towards integration of various disciplines.

5. Evaluate the impact of globalization on nature and functioning of states.

Answer- Globalisation has been producing a subtle change in the functions of the State. Its
role in the ownership and production of goods has been getting reduced. However, this does not
in any way mean a return of the Laisses faire state.

In the era of globalisation, the functions of the State began undergoing a change. With the
increasing disinvestment of public sector, privatisation was encouraged. Public sector was
made to compete with the private sector, and as a whole open competition, free trade, market
economy and globalisation were practiced. State ownership of industries came to be rejected.
The role of state began emerging as that of a facilitator and coordinator. The exercise still
continues.

Globalisation has been producing a subtle change in the role of the State. Its role in the
ownership and production of goods has been getting reduced. However, this does not in any
way mean a return of the Laisses faire state.

Under Globalisation the state continues to be a welfare state. However, its economic activity is
getting confined to two main areas:

(i) Activities which are essentially needed for the operation of economy. It now acts as a
facilitator and coordinator and refrains from acting as an owner and regulator. It acts to ensure a
smooth and orderly functioning of the market. It tries to secure stability in the market through
macro-economic policies.

(ii) Activities aimed at providing essential social services such as education, healthcare, and
social security to the people.

The state continues to be a welfare state performing all the protection functions as well as
several socio-economic development functions. It continues to act as a regulator and
coordinator of economy. It continues to regulate the economy in the interest of social justice and
welfare of the people. . It has been, however, coming out of the field of production of goods.
Private sector has now started acting as the major owner of business and industry in each state.

In this era of Globalisation, several changes have been taking place in the functions of the
State:
1. Decreased Economic activities of State:

The process of liberalisation- privatisation has acted as a source of limitation on the role of the
state in the economic sphere. Public sector is getting privatized.

2. Decrease in the role of the State in International Economy:

The emergence of free trade, market competition, multinational corporations and international
economic organisations and trading blocs like European Union, NAFTA, APEC, ASEAN and
others, have limited the scope of the role of state in the sphere of international economy.

3. Limitations on External Sovereignty of State:

Increasing international inter-dependence has been compelling each state to accept limitations
on its external sovereignty. Each state now finds it essential to accept the rules of international
economic system, the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF.

4. Growing People’s Opposition to their Respective States:

Globalisation has encouraged and expanded people-to-people socio-economic-cultural relations

and cooperation in the world… IT revolution and development of fast means of transport and
communication have been together making the world a real Global Community.

The people of each state now deal with people of other states as members of the World
Community. The loyalty towards their respective states continues, but now the people do not
hesitate to oppose those state policies which are held to be not in tune with the demands of
globalization.

5. Reduced Importance of Military Power of the State:

The state continues to maintain its military power as an important dimension of its national
power. However, the strength being gained by movement for international peace and peaceful
coexistence as the way of life has tended to reduce the importance of military power of the
state.

6. Increasing Role of International Conventions and Treaties:

Several international conventions and treaties have placed some limitations upon all the states.
All the states are now finding it essential to follow the rules and norms laid down by such
conventions. The need to fight the menace of terrorism and rogue nuclear proliferation as well
as the shared responsibility for protecting the environment and human rights, have compelled all
the states to accept such rules and regulations as are considered essential for the securing of
these objectives. Thus, Globalisation and several other factors have been together responsible
for influencing a change in the role of State in contemporary times.

SECTION- II
Write a short note on

8. a) International organization and state sovereignty

Answer- A fundamental characteristic of an international organisation that emerges in the
context of multi-state system is its lack of legislative and executive power. The United Nations
did have a general responsibility to maintain peace and security, promote economic betterment
or protect human rights by any or all means. But this view can hardly be sustained considering
the interestedness of most of those who have advocated it. They use it when it suits their
particular interest and oppose the rationalisation with equal vigour when it cuts against them.
Furthermore international agencies are often directly prohibited interfering in matters which are
considered with the 'domestic jurisdiction' of a state. But these 'hands-off provisions' have
sometimes been loosened by interpretation to permit an international organisation to override
objections to its competence by affected states.

Even within their recognised jurisdiction, international agencies rarely have the authority or
means of compelling states to accept. They can recommend but cannot dictate to governments.
They study, discuss, plan and propose action, but do not legislate. The United Nations General
may approve unanimously a programme for technical assistance to under-developed areas or
for rendering relief and medical aid to children, but these efforts can be effective only to the
extent that each government individually agrees to support them. The ILO may propose
a convention limiting the work in dangerous industries, but it can have no effect unless it is
ratified and enforced by national governments.International organisation does not have the
power to tas, individuals or governments to meet its budget, though in the United Nations and
certain other bodies, failure to pay approved assessments may deprive a state of its vote in the
organisation.Generally, however, the international agency must rely either on the self-interest of
the states or the influence of public opinion to secure the execution of its recommendations.

Among the specialised agencies-the UPU has, in effect, made decisions binding on national
governments, for no country has been willing to incur the consequences of exclusion from the
Union for failure to carry out the prescribed regulations, however much it might dislike them.
Similarly the IMF and the World Bank also have a powerful sanction in the threat of denying the
benefits of the organisations to a state that will not carry out action demanded by them. The
result is that the nature of International Organisation is exclusively collaborative.It is aptly
expressed by the Charter of the United Nations as harmonising the actions of states in the
attainment of the common ends. Consultations and conferences are consequently,the dominant
activity of international agencies. Modem international agencies are perpetual process of
preparing for holding or reporting the result of world 'town meeting'. Depending as it does on
voluntary cooperation to accomplish its end, it must continuously seek through discussion and
debate the reconciliation of differing national points of view and the widest possible area of final
agreement among states.

b) Scramble of Africa
Answer- The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa or the Conquest of Africa,
was the occupation, division, and colonisation of African territory by European powers during
the period of time known to historians as the New Imperialism (between 1881 and 1914). In
1870, only 10 percent of Africa was under formal European control; by 1914 it had increased to
almost 90 percent of the continent, with only Ethiopia (Abyssinia), the Dervish state (a portion of
present-day Somalia) and Liberia still being independent. There were multiple motivations for
European colonizers, including desire for valuable resources available throughout the continent,
the quest for national prestige, tensions between pairs of European powers, religious missionary
zeal and internal African native politics.

The Berlin Conference of 1884, which regulated European colonisation and trade in Africa, is
usually referred to as the ultimate point of the Scramble for Africa. Consequent to the political
and economic rivalries among the European empires in the last quarter of the 19th century, the
partitioning, or splitting up of Africa was how the Europeans avoided warring amongst
themselves over Africa. The later years of the 19th century saw the transition from "informal
imperialism" by military influence and economic dominance, to direct rule, bringing about
colonial imperialism.

By 1840, European powers had established small trading posts along the coast, but they
seldom moved inland. In the middle decades of the 19th century, European explorers had
mapped areas of East Africa and Central Africa.

Even as late as the 1870s, Western European states controlled only ten percent of the African
continent, with all their territories located near the coast. The most important holdings were
Angola and Mozambique, held by Portugal; the Cape Colony, held by the United Kingdom; and
Algeria, held by France. By 1914, only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent of European
control.

Technological advances facilitated European expansion overseas. Industrialisation brought

about rapid advancements in transportation and communication, especially in the forms of
steamships, railways and telegraphs. Medical advances also played an important role,
especially medicines for tropical diseases. The development of quinine, an effective treatment
for malaria, made vast expanses of the tropics more accessible for Europeans.

9. a) Neo-Marxism
Answer- Neo-Marxism encompasses 20th-century approaches that amend or extend Marxism
and Marxist theory, typically by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions such as
critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism (in the case of Jean-Paul Sartre).

An example of syncretism in neo-Marxist theory is Erik Olin Wright's theory of contradictory

class locations which incorporates Weberian sociology, critical criminology and anarchism. As
with many uses of the prefix neo-, some theorists and groups designated as neo-Marxist have
attempted to supplement the perceived deficiencies of orthodox Marxism or dialectical
materialism. Many prominent neo-Marxists, such as Herbert Marcuse and other members of the
Frankfurt School, have historically been sociologists and psychologists.

Neo-Marxism comes under the broader framework of the New Left. In a sociological sense,
neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality such as status and
power to Marxist philosophy. Examples of neo-Marxism include critical theory, analytical
Marxism and French structural Marxism.

Neo-Marxism developed as a result of social and political problems that traditional Marxist
theory was unable to sufficiently address. This iteration of thinking tended toward peaceful
ideological dissemination, rather than the revolutionary and often violent methods of the past.
Economically, neo-Marxist thought leaders moved beyond the era of public outcry over class
warfare and attempted to design viable models to solve it. There are many different branches of
neo-Marxism often not in agreement with each other and their theories. Following World War I,
some neo-Marxists dissented and later formed the Frankfurt School. Toward the end of the 20th
century, neo-Marxism and other Marxist theories became anathema in democratic and
capitalistic Western cultures and the term attained negative connotations during the Red Scare.
For this reason, social theorists of the same ideology since that time have tended to
disassociate themselves from the term neo-Marxism. Examples of such thinkers include David
Harvey and Jacque Fresco, with some ambiguity surrounding Noam Chomsky, who has been
labelled a neo-Marxist by some, but who personally disagrees with such assessments. Some
consider libertarian socialism an example of rebranded neo-Marxism.

b) State building and nation building

Answer- State-building as a specific term in social sciences and humanities, refers to political
and historical processes of creation, institutional consolidation, stabilization and sustainable
development of states, from the earliest emergence of statehood up to the modern times. Within
historical and political sciences, there are several theoretical approaches to complex questions
related to role of various contributing factors (geopolitical, economic, social, cultural, ethnic,
religious, internal, external) in state-building processes.

Since the end of the 20th century, state-building has developed into becoming an integral part
and even a specific approach to peacebuilding by the international community. Observers
across the political and academic spectra have come to see the state-building approach as the
preferred strategy to peacebuilding in a number of high-profile conflicts, including the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and war-related conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, and
Afghanistan. According to the political scientist Anders Persson, internationally led state-building
is based on three dimensions: a security dimension, a political dimension and an economic
dimension. Of these three, security is almost always considered the first priority.

Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state.
Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically
stable and viable in the long run. According to Harris Mylonas, "Legitimate authority in modern
national states is connected to popular rule, to majorities. Nation-building is the process through
which these majorities are constructed."

Nation builders are those members of a state who take the initiative to develop the national
community through government programs, including military conscription and national content
mass schooling. Nation-building can involve the use of propaganda or major infrastructure
development to foster social harmony and economic growth. According to Columbia University
political scientist Andreas Wimmer, three factors tend to determine the success of
nation-building over the long-run: "the early development of civil-society organisations, the rise
of a state capable of providing public goods evenly across a territory, and the emergence of a
shared medium of communication."

10. a) Political economy approach in Comparative Politics

Answer- Political economy is basically involved in studying production and trade, and their
relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income
and affluence. Political economy instigated in moral philosophy. Political economy, the
intersection of economics and politics is the groundwork of the modern social sciences and the
focus of founding sociological theorists, most notably Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Friedrich
Engels. Debatably, with his extended concern for the division of labour, even Emile Durkheim
was deeply concerned with political economy. Although, this is not the case for economics and
political science, the meaning of political economy has been impartially consistent in sociology.
That is, the sociological inspection of political economy has retained a focus on the intersection
between the political and the economic. Theoretical prominences have moved in the course of
lively and extended debates over the state, markets, social class, culture, citizens, and
globalization. Nonetheless, the major focus of political economy has persisted, as has its
significance to sociological theory.

Political economy was advanced in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states, or
polities, therefore, the term political economy. In the end of 19th century, the phrase economics
came to replace political economy, concurring with the publication of an influential textbook by
Alfred Marshall in 1890. Earlier, William Stanley Jevons, an advocate of mathematical methods
applied to the subject, supported economics for briefness and with the hope of the term
becoming "the recognised name of a science."
In simple way, political Economy refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics,
political science, law, history, sociology and other disciplines in explaining the crucial role of
political factors in determining economic outcomes. Formerly, political economy meant the study
of the conditions under which production or consumption within limited parameters was
organized in nation-states. In that way, political economy extended the emphasis of economics,
which comes from the Greek oikos (meaning "home") and nomos (meaning "law" or "order").
Thus, political economy was meant to express the laws of production of wealth at the state
level, just as economics was the ordering of the home. The phrase economie politique first
originated in France in 1615 with the famous book by Antoine de Montchretien, Traite de
l'economie politique. The French physiocrats, along with Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, David
Ricardo, Henry George, and Karl Marx were some of the advocates of political economy. The
world's first professorship in political economy was established in 1754 at the University of
Naples Federico II in southern Italy. The Neapolitan philosopher Antonio Genovesi was the first
tenured professor. In 1763, Joseph von Sonnenfels was appointed a Political Economy chair at
the University of Vienna, Austria. Thomas Malthus, in 1805, became England's first professor of
political economy, at the East India Company College, Haileybury, Hertfordshire. Glasgow
University, where Adam Smith had been Professor of Logic and of Moral Philosophy, changed
the name of its Department of Political Economy to the Department of Economics (ostensibly to
avoid confusing prospective undergraduates), in the academic year 1997-98.

In its modern perspective, political economy denotes to different, but related, approaches to
studying economic and related behaviours that, range from the combination of economics with
other fields to the use of different, fundamental assumptions that challenge earlier economic
assumptions.

Political economy is generally elucidated as interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics,

sociology, and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment,
and the economic system, capitalist, socialist, or mixed that influence each other. The Journal of
Economic Literature classification codes associate political economy with three subareas:

The role of government and/or power relationships in resource allocation for each type of
economic system.

International political economy, which studies the economic impacts of international relations,
and economic models of political processes.

The last area, derived from public choice theory and dating from the 1960s, models voters,
politicians, and bureaucrats as behaving in mainly self-interested ways, in contrast to a view,
ascribed to earlier economists, of government officials trying to maximize individual utilities from
some kind of social welfare function. An early and continuing focus of that research program is
called constitutional political economy (Mueller, Dennis C., 2008).
Economists and political researchers often associate political economy with approaches using
rational-choice assumptions, especially in game theory, and in investigating phenomena beyond
economics' standard remit, such as government failure and complex decision making in which
context the term "positive political economy" is common (Alt, James E.; Shepsle, Kenneth,
1990). Other "traditional" themes include analysis of such public policy issues as economic
regulation, monopoly, rent-seeking, market protection, institutional corruption, and distributional
politics. Empirical analysis includes the influence of elections on the choice of economic policy,
determinants and forecasting models of electoral outcomes, the political business cycles,
central-bank independence, and the politics of excessive deficits (Buchanan, James M., 2008).

b) Role of civil society in democracy

Answer- Civil society contributes to good governance by being a Watchdog — against violation
of human rights and governance deficit, Advocate -- of the weaker sections’ point of view,
Agitator — on behalf of aggrieved citizens, Educator — of citizens on their rights, entitlements
and responsibilities and the government about the pulse of the people, Service provider — to
areas and people not reached by official efforts or as government’s agent, Mobiliser — of public
opinion for or against a programme or policy. Some of the stellar achievement of the civil society
includes -- Right to Information Act, Consumer Protection Act, Citizens Charters, Whistleblower
protection, e-governance, Democratic Decentralisation, Public Interest Litigation, etc.

Civil society groups may establish ties to political parties and the state, but they must retain
their independence, and they do not seek political power for themselves. The first and most
basic role of civil society is to limit and control the power of the state. Civil society actors should
watch how state officials use their powers. They should raise public concern about any abuse of
power. They should lobby for access to information, including freedom of information laws, and
rules and institutions to control corruption. They should expose the corrupt conduct of public
officials and lobby for good governance reforms. Even where anti-corruption laws and bodies
exist, they cannot function effectively without the active support and participation of civil society.
Civil society empowers the citizens about their rights and duties and the necessity of them. It
also encourages the traditionally excluded groups such as women, dalits and minorities to utilize
their rights and access to power.

One function of civil society is to promote political participation. NGOs can do this by educating
people about their rights and obligations as democratic citizens, and encouraging them to listen
to election campaigns and vote in elections. NGOs can also help develop citizens’ skills to work
with one another to solve common problems, to debate public issues, and express their views.
Civil society organizations can help to develop the other values of democratic life: tolerance,
moderation, compromise, and respect for opposing points of view. Without this deeper culture of
accommodation, democracy cannot be stable. These values have to be cultivated in young
people and adults through various programs that practice participation and debate. Civil society
also can help to develop programs for democratic civic education in the schools as well. Civil
society is an arena for the expression of diverse interests, and one role for civil society
organizations is to lobby for the needs and concerns of their members, as women, students,
farmers, environmentalists, trade unionists, lawyers, doctors, and so on. NGOs and interest
groups can present their views to parliament and provincial councils, by contacting individual
members and testifying before parliamentary committees. They can also establish a dialogue
with relevant government ministries and agencies to lobby for their interests and concerns. Civil
society can strengthen democracy is to provide new forms of interest and solidarity that cut
across old forms of tribal, linguistic, religious, and other identity ties. Democracy cannot be
stable if people only associate with others of the same religion or identity. When people of
different religions and ethnic identities come together on the basis of their common interests as
women, artists, doctors, students, workers, farmers, lawyers, human rights activists,
environmentalists, and so on, civic life becomes richer, more complex, and more tolerant. Civil
society can provide a training ground for future political leaders. NGOs and other groups can
help to identify and train new types of leaders who have dealt with important public issues and
can be recruited to run for political office at all levels and to serve in provincial and national
cabinets. Civil society can help to inform the public about important public issues. This is not
only the role of the mass media, but of NGOs which can provide forums for debating public
policies and disseminating information about issues before parliament that affect the interests of
different groups, or of society at large.