Political Science and International Relations

Qn. Rawls' theory of justice is both contractual and distributive. Examine. Rawls, in his A Theory of Justice (1971) , considered justice as purely procedural and the first virtue of both the Economic and Social systems. His first principle proposes a contractarian method , which states, "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberties , compatible with a similar liberty for others. Rawls hypothesized the ' original position ' where people in the tradition of the Social Contract  negotiate under a 'Veil of Ignorance'. The point of the metaphor of the veil is to indicate that the parties should remove bias and irrelevancy from their deliberations. The parties understand that they are deciding about principles of justice (principles for distributing certain primary goods - such goods are liberties, opportunities, income, and wealth - to individuals) and they will have to live, for their entire lives, under the principles they have ...

Qn. Examine the nature and meaning of Power. Power refers to the ' ability to do things ' and the capacity to produce effects within social interaction . Bertrand Russel defined power as, 'the production of intended effects'. Power often takes the character of 'authority' which also comprehends legitimacy i.e., the capacity to secure willing obedience. According to Talcott Parsons, a sociologist, possession of power enables the capacity to secure the performance of political obligation. The Nature of Power - Power ensures conformance and obedience to rules. Power controls society by generating consent on the other. Marxists perceive power as exploitation which occurs when the surplus produced by one section of the population is controlled by another section and is hidden from the participants by the language of the contract , in which every individual is equal. They perceive power as a coercive apparatus serving the interests of the ruling class. Max Weber di...

Qn. Comment on Foucault's concept of power. 2023 - 1d - 150 words - Paper 1A Foucault's concept of power operates through disciplinary norms rather than through a command-and-obedience relationship. He sees power as productive rather than as repressive , for, it produces identity and subjectivity . Identities produced by power are ways of controlling through naming, and this control is exercised in a variety of locations and not constrained at the level of Government in a narrow sense. The individual is perceived as the subject of the governance. The  construction of subjectivity  to an individual is by those who tell us the 'truth' about who we are - doctors, psychologists, the law - and at the same time we are subjected to the power they exercise. Foucault gives a concept of 'Governmentality' which operates through ' normalization ', by which Foucault means the processes through which every individual is made to conform to the dominant norm . Governm...