Political Science - State and Political Obligations
Semester 3 · 16 topics in 5 units
Unit I 2 topics
- Political obligation: meaning, nature, characteristics and kindsWhat political obligation means, why the question 'why should I obey the State?' is the central question of political theory, its characteristics, and the kinds of obligation the papers ask you to list.6 min
- Obligations of the State and of citizens: monarchy, individualism, socialism and the welfare StateWhat the State owes its people under ancient and medieval monarchy, the individualist, socialist and welfare State, and what citizens and other residents owe the State in return.6 min
Unit II 4 topics
- Law: meaning, nature, sources, kinds, and law and moralityAustin, Holland and Woodrow Wilson on what law is; the six sources of law; the kinds of law; and how law differs from and depends on morality.5 min
- Delegated legislation: meaning, need, growth, merits, limitations and safeguardsWhy legislatures hand rule-making power to the executive, the reasons for its growth, its advantages and dangers, and the parliamentary, judicial and procedural controls on it.4 min
- Liberty and equality: meaning, importance, kinds and their relationshipNegative and positive liberty, the kinds of liberty and of equality, why each matters, and the debate between those who see them as rivals and those who see them as complementary.6 min
- Justice: meaning, kinds, and ancient, medieval and modern interpretationsPlato and Aristotle on justice, the medieval Christian view, Rawls, Nozick and Sen, and the legal, political, social and economic kinds of justice.5 min
Unit III 3 topics
- Individualism: background, statement, merits and limitationsThe laissez-faire theory of the State: where it came from, what Locke, Adam Smith, Mill and Spencer said, the functions it allows the State, and why it gave way to the welfare State.4 min
- Utilitarianism: background, statement, merits, limitations, and Bentham and J. S. MillThe greatest happiness principle, Bentham's felicific calculus and four sanctions, Mill's revision with higher and lower pleasures, the utilitarian ground of obedience, and the standard criticisms.6 min
- Idealism: background, statement, merits and limitations; Kant, Hegel and T. H. GreenThe idealist theory of the State as the realisation of man's moral self, from Plato through Kant and Hegel to Green's 'will, not force', with its merits and the charge that it leads to State worship.6 min
Unit IV 3 topics
- Power: meaning, aspects, sources and kindsDefinitions of power from Weber, Russell, Lasswell and Dahl, its forms (force, coercion, influence, persuasion, manipulation), its sources, and its political, economic, ideological and military kinds.5 min
- Authority: meaning, power and authority, legitimacy, limits, and Weber's kinds of dominationAuthority as legitimate power, how power is legitimised, the limits on authority, and Max Weber's traditional, charismatic and legal-rational types.5 min
- Responsibility and accountability: meaning, relation to authority, and kindsWhy authority carries responsibility, personal, institutional and professional responsibility, and accountability as its enforcement: political, legal, administrative, financial and social, with Indian mechanisms.4 min
Unit V 4 topics
- Obedience to law: a legal duty, its need and importance, and why people obeyObedience as legal duty and moral obligation, why a State cannot function without it, and Bryce's five reasons people normally obey: indolence, deference, sympathy, fear and reason.4 min
- The problem of punishment: State force against citizens, kinds and theories of punishmentWhether and when the State may use force against its own citizens, the limits it must observe, the kinds of punishment under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and the deterrent, retributive, preventive, reformative and expiatory theories.5 min
- Can laws be disobeyed? Civil disobedience: meaning, features, conditions, limits, and revolutionWhen a citizen may break the law, what makes disobedience 'civil', the conditions and limits writers place on it, Thoreau's essay, and how civil disobedience differs from revolution.5 min
- Gandhi's civil disobedience: truth, ahimsa and satyagraha, Thoreau's influence, and the Neo-Gandhian movements of King and MandelaSatya, ahimsa and satyagraha, the influences of Thoreau, Tolstoy and Ruskin, the Indian civil disobedience campaigns from Champaran to Dandi, and how Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela carried the method abroad.6 min