UPHESC Assistant Professor Political Science 2025 PYQs

Concept: Liberal democracy combines civil liberties, competitive multi-party elections and a market economy with limited government.

1. Free speech, freedom to form parties and free elections under a neutral body (e.g. Election Commission) are its core features.
2. Centralised (command) planning belongs to socialist/communist (people's) democracies, where the state controls the economy.
3. Liberal democracy prefers market/decentralised decision-making.

Short trick: Liberal = liberty + market; Centralised planning = Soviet model.

Concept: Pluralists (Laski, MacIver, Barker, Figgis, Duguit, Krabbe) attacked Austin's monistic, absolute sovereignty.

1. They held that power is shared among many associations (church, trade unions, guilds), so the state is only one association among many.
2. Laski: 'It would be of lasting benefit to political science if the whole concept of sovereignty were surrendered.'
3. Idealism and Fascism glorify the sovereign state; Marxism wants the state itself to wither away, not just the concept.

Short trick: Laski = 'surrender the concept of sovereignty' = Pluralism.

Concept: In a presidential system (USA) the President is both head of state and head of government, has a fixed term and the three organs are separated.

1. Single executive – no distinction between head of state and government: feature.
2. Fixed tenure (4 years, removal only by impeachment): feature.
3. Separation of powers with checks and balances: feature.
4. The legislature is NOT weak – the US Congress is among the most powerful legislatures (controls budget, treaties, appointments).

Short trick: Presidential = strong, independent Congress, not a limited one.

Concept: The liberal (classical) theory treats democracy as government by consent of free individuals, so civil and political rights come first.

1. Rights to vote, contest, speak, associate and to change government peacefully are central to liberal democracy (Locke, Bentham, J. S. Mill).
2. Elitist theory stresses rule by a minority; pluralist theory stresses competition of groups.
3. Marxist theory gives priority to economic/social equality over formal political rights.

Short trick: Political rights first = Liberal; economic equality first = Marxist.

Concept: Reinhold Niebuhr (Moral Man and Immoral Society) is a founding classical realist – only code (A) begins with a – ii.

1. Fareed Zakaria (From Wealth to Power) works in the structural/neo-classical realist tradition that grew out of neo-realism → b – i.
2. Joseph Nye (with Keohane, Power and Interdependence; 'soft power') represents the liberal tradition → c – iv.
3. Stephen D. Krasner edited International Regimes (1983), the key text of regime theory associated with neo-liberal institutionalism → d – iii.

Short trick: Fix the sure pair first: Niebuhr = classical realism → code (A).

Concept: Alfred Zimmern treated nationality as subjective and psychological – 'a form of corporate sentiment', a way of thinking, feeling and living together.

1. J. S. Mill defined nationality through 'common sympathies' and the wish to be under the same government.
2. Lord Acton argued that multinational states are better (nationality as a threat to liberty).
3. Tagore was a critic of aggressive nationalism.

Short trick: Zimmern = 'corporate' (collective) sentiment.

Concept: Max Weber (Economy and Society): 'A nation is a community of sentiment which would adequately manifest itself in a state of its own; hence a nation is a community which normally tends to produce a state of its own.'

1. The stress on 'sentiment' + striving for its own state is Weber's.
2. Giddens linked the nation to the modern bureaucratic nation-state with defined borders; Deendayal Upadhyaya used the idea of 'chiti' (national soul).

Short trick: Weber: nation = sentiment seeking its own state.

Concept: Classic works and authors.

1. The Discourses (on Livy) – Machiavelli → ii.
2. De Corpore Politico (Elements of Law, 1640/1650) – Hobbes → iii.
3. A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) – Locke → iv.
4. Emile (1762) – Rousseau → i.

Short trick: M-H-L-R order: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau = ii, iii, iv, i.

Concept: Tilak's 'four-fold programme' (Calcutta 1906): Swaraj, Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education, with passive resistance/strikes.

1. So (A) is correct.
2. Ambedkar pursued social justice through constitutional means, education, organisation, legal safeguards and agitation (Mahad, Kalaram), not through Swadeshi-boycott; he even rejected 'methods of anarchy' like civil disobedience after independence.
3. Hence (R) is wrong.

Short trick: Tilak = Swadeshi-Boycott; Ambedkar = 'Educate, Agitate, Organise' + Constitution.

Concept: Ambedkar treated basic human rights as inherent in the dignity of every human being – rights that belong to a person as a person, prior to any caste or state.

1. This is the natural-rights premise behind his demand for Fundamental Rights and equal citizenship (Statement I).
2. Because they are inherent, he wanted them to be inalienable/indissoluble – not to be taken away by the majority or by social custom; hence Article 32 (constitutional remedies) as 'the heart and soul' of the Constitution (Statement II).
3. Both statements are true and consistent.

Short trick: Inherent rights → inalienable rights → Art. 32 guarantee.

Concept: For Locke, natural rights (life, liberty, property) flow from the law of nature and exist before any government.

1. Men enjoy these rights in the pre-political state of nature, which is peaceful but 'inconvenient' (no settled law, judge or enforcer).
2. To secure their rights they make a contract (by consent).
3. The contract creates civil (political) society and a limited, trustee government.
4. Contract can never come before the state of nature, and civil society cannot precede the contract – so B and C fail; A wrongly puts natural rights after civil society, whereas for Locke they are pre-political.

Short trick: Locke: Rights → Nature → Contract → Civil society (rights are pre-political).

Concept: Classical elitists: Pareto, Mosca, Michels; C. Wright Mills applied it to the USA.

1. The Power Elite (1956) – C. Wright Mills ✔.
2. Iron Law of Oligarchy (Political Parties, 1911) – Robert Michels ✔.
3. Governing and non-governing elite, circulation of elites – Vilfredo Pareto ✔.
4. 'Culture industry' is a Frankfurt School concept of Adorno and Horkheimer (Dialectic of Enlightenment); Mosca gave the 'ruling class/political class'.

Short trick: Mosca = ruling class; Culture industry = Adorno–Horkheimer.

Concept: Key concepts of the Marxist tradition.

1. Dictatorship of the proletariat – Karl Marx (Critique of the Gotha Programme) → II.
2. Communist Party as the vanguard of the proletariat – Lenin (What Is to Be Done?) → III.
3. Hegemony (rule by consent through civil society) – Antonio Gramsci (Prison Notebooks) → I.
4. New working class – discussed by Tom Bottomore (Classes in Modern Society) → IV.

Short trick: Marx–Lenin–Gramsci = dictatorship–party–hegemony.

Concept: Easton's 'intellectual foundation stones' of behaviouralism (8): regularities, verification, techniques, quantification, values, systematisation, pure science, integration.

1. Statement 1 is wrong because of 'only' – behaviouralism is not limited to verification, techniques and model building.
2. Statement 2 names four genuine elements – quantification, systematisation, integration, regularities.

Short trick: RVTQ-VSPI: Regularities, Verification, Techniques, Quantification, Values, Systematisation, Pure science, Integration.

Concept: The Civic Culture (1963) by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba surveyed five countries.

1. USA, Britain, West Germany, Italy and Mexico.
2. They classified political culture as parochial, subject and participant; the 'civic culture' is a mixed type, best seen in the UK and USA.

Short trick: Five nations: US-UK-Germany-Italy-Mexico ('UK GIM').

Concept: Forerunners of behaviouralism and their works.

1. Arthur Bentley – The Process of Government (1908) ✔.
2. Charles Merriam – New Aspects of Politics (1925) ✔.
3. Graham Wallas – Human Nature in Politics (1908) ✔.
4. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is by Thomas Kuhn (paradigm shift). Easton wrote The Political System (1953) and A Systems Analysis of Political Life (1965).

Short trick: Paradigm = Kuhn; Systems = Easton.

Concept: A. F. K. Organski, The Stages of Political Development (1965), gave four stages.

1. 1. Politics of primitive unification (integration).
2. 2. Politics of industrialisation.
3. 3. Politics of national welfare.
4. 4. Politics of abundance (automation).

Short trick: U-I-W-A: Unification, Industrialisation, Welfare, Abundance → 1, 2, 4, 3.

Concept: Almond described three properties of a (political) system.

1. Comprehensiveness – it includes all interactions, inputs and outputs.
2. Interdependence – a change in one part affects the others.
3. Existence of boundaries – it starts and ends somewhere, separating it from its environment.
4. 'Availability of resources' is not one of these properties.

Short trick: C-I-B: Comprehensiveness, Interdependence, Boundaries.

Concept: Books on realism and their authors/editors.

1. Neorealism and Its Critics (1986) – edited by Robert O. Keohane → III.
2. Roots of Realism (1996) – edited by Benjamin Frankel → IV.
3. Man, the State and War (1959) – Kenneth N. Waltz (three images) → II.
4. Arthashastra – Kautilya → I.

Short trick: Waltz = 'three images' (Man, State, War).

Concept: Daniel J. Elazar (Exploring Federalism, 1987) defined federalism as 'self-rule plus shared rule'.

1. Self-rule: constituent units govern themselves in their own sphere.
2. Shared rule: they share in governing the whole through common institutions.
3. The option prints the name as 'Flazar'; it refers to Elazar.

Short trick: Elazar: Federalism = Self-rule + Shared rule.