Political Science and International Relations

  Qn. Comment on Locke's Social Contract. Locke's two-stage contract is simply an affirmation that human nature is innately social and cooperative and state of nature is a state of peace. Locke emphasizes limited government and empowers the concept of natural rights by a constitutional mandate and he does not take note of contracting them away. Locke observes two stages of contract. The first is the social contract that is formed by the society by unanimous consent , and the second is the political contract , through which government is formed and which is only a fiduciary agreement and is to be formed by a majority decision . For Locke, a government is to be an agent and a trustee of society , a trustee of societal values. It is to be limited by the rights and liberties the citizen carries into the society. In Social contract, the members of society turn over to the government the right or power of executing the laws of nature that in their natural condition they were requi...

Qn. Individualism is inherent in Hobbes' absolutist ideology. Comment. According to Hobbes, individuals were creatures of desire, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Hobbes views individuals as  self-interested   rational  actors who enter into a social contract to secure their individual rights and protect themselves from the  state of nature . He underlines the  utilitarian  psychology of human beings behind accepting  absolute sovereign  as the precondition for the enjoyment of  individual liberty . According to Hobbes, life is the prerequisite for felicity , a state of continual prosperity. Since the ultimate object of people's will is felicity, an individual would have no choice but to contract out of the state of nature into civil society, for, their life is at least potentially pleasurable. People contract to "seek peace" to  avoid the pain of war , for, it enhanced the possibilities of preserving ourselves. State and Sovereign is...

  Qn. Discuss the Hobbesian notion of Political Obligation. Thomas Hobbes, a 17th-century political philosopher, presented a distinctive perspective on political obligation . According to Hobbes, individuals enter into a social contract, surrendering certain freedoms to a sovereign authority in exchange for protection and order . This creates a binding obligation on citizens to obey the sovereign's commands. Government is chosen by the will of people. So, the political obligation to obey the government itself is derived from the will of people. An absolute sovereign must be obeyed. The basis of the longterm stability of any government is the obligation its people feel to obey its laws. The Governmental absolutism logically follows from the desire for security. To have a right to something means simply to have the power to attain it. Unless all powers or rights are turned over, there can exist no common sovereign will by which to unite people who otherwise would remain in a state o...

  Qn. Comment on State of Nature as State of War. Hobbes' theory of human nature is revolutionary in character, which is developed by applying the first principles of Galilean physics to human behaviour i.e., the body and motion that governs the rest of the Universe. He abolishes the Socratic, or classical conception of freedom, a conception which is based upon the assumption of human choices. By observing human beings in the state of nature, Hobbes employs the resolutive-compositive method . Compositive method, to demonstrate that voluntary motions are ceaseless and people's quest for pleasure is insatiable, and that, as a consequence, human beings are innately self-interested power seekers. Resolutive method, to deduce the from the effects of people's behaviour their innate thirst for power, the ceaseless motion of the passions, and the underlying first principles of body and mind. In the state-of-nature , Desire and Aversion are the root cause of conflict. Everybody is ...

  Qn. Marx's concept of 'alienation' is an essential part of the reality of Capitalism. Explain. Marx in his ' The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts', argued that alienation is the chief characteristic of the capitalistic order. The class divisions generated by the existence of capitalist private property are the basic source of such alienation. The worker class is alienated from the fruit of labor which is expropriated by the capitalist as profit . This in turn again becomes the source of exploitation and domination by the Capitalist class.  More than this, the whole technological infrastructure of industry takes an alienated character. Rather than the machine being an extension of their human powers, workers become an appendage of the machine , they are incapable of employing technology for their own direct human benefit . All of these various forms of alienation achieve their highest and most tragic character in self-alienation . The natural human ability to...

Qn. Examine the Contemporary Relevance of Marxism. Karl Marx was an eminent philosopher, renowned economist, historian, journalist, political ideologue, revolutionary socialist, great intellectual, and multilingual expert. Marx studied in depth the condition of the working classes in the then-prevailing situation in Britain especially in the background of the Industrial Revolution. He has started forming trade unions in London. His materialistic conception of history is emphasized the practical side of human activity. Marx developed: Law of development of human history Law of Capitalist development Marx's analysis of Capitalism - Surplus Value, Unpaid labor, exploitation, Governmental action, Profit maximization, Capital accumulation Marx in his ' Das Kapitol' and ' Communist Manifesto' , disclosed the theory of ' surplus value ' and how capitalists appropriate wealth and explained how Capitalists dig their own graves.  He further elaborated on how develop...

Qn. Representative Democracy... means the people as a body must be able to control the general direction of government policy. (J. S. Mill). Comment. As Mill specified in his ' Considerations on Representative Government ', "One criterion of the g oodness of the government is the degree to which it tends to increase the sum of good qualities in the governed, collectively and individually". The only government that can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social state is one in which whole people participate. For Mill, the point of having a government was its performing two main functions: it must use the existing qualities and skills of the citizens ( Competence ) improve the moral, intellectual, and active qualities of these citizens ( Participation ) A judicial combination of these qualities i.e., Competence and Participation fulfils the protection and educates the citizens Mill regards representative democracy as necessary for progress, as it will  Provide citi...

  Qn. Discuss the Karl Marx's concept of Class. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", the opening sentences of ' Manifesto of Communist Party ', show the centrality of the concept of class for Marx. Classes are defined by Marx based on twin criteria of a person's place in the mode of production and an individual's relationships to the means of production . Since the class is based on ownership (or control) of means of production and ownership of property. The disappearance of class depends on the disappearance of property as the determining factor of status. Marx defined class in terms of class-in-itself and class-for-itself . For Marx, for a group to be called a 'class', it has to be both a Class-in-itself and a Class-for-itself .  C lass-in-itself means that members of a class have identical interests , whether they are conscious of them or not (the ruling class). Class-for-itself is a large number ...

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...