UPHESC Assistant Professor Political Science 2025 PYQs

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.

Concept: Political development theorists of the SSRC Committee on Comparative Politics: Almond, Pye, Coleman, La Palombara, Verba, Weiner, Binder.

1. Lucian Pye – 'development syndrome' (equality, capacity, differentiation).
2. Joseph La Palombara – Bureaucracy and Political Development.
3. James Coleman – The Politics of the Developing Areas (with Almond).
4. Arend Lijphart is known for consociational and consensus democracy, not political development.

Short trick: Lijphart = consociationalism.

Concept: Article 19(1) lists the freedoms in clauses (a) to (g) ((f) property was deleted in 1978).

1. (a) speech and expression; (b) assemble peaceably and without arms → 4.
2. (c) form associations or unions or co-operative societies → 2.
3. (d) move freely; (e) reside and settle in any part of India → 3.
4. (g) practise any profession, occupation, trade or business → 1.

Short trick: S-A-A-M-R-P: Speech, Assembly, Association, Movement, Residence, Profession.

Concept: Federal features: dual polity, written constitution, division of powers, supremacy and rigidity of the constitution, independent judiciary, bicameralism.

1. Division of power between Union and States (Seventh Schedule) – federal ✔.
2. Independent judiciary to settle Centre–State disputes (Art. 131) – federal ✔.
3. Written Constitution – federal ✔.
4. Separation of powers concerns organs of government (horizontal), and PM's leadership is a parliamentary, not a federal, feature.

Short trick: Federalism = vertical division; separation of powers = horizontal.

Concept: Under Article 111 the Indian President has three vetoes.

1. Absolute veto – withholding assent (e.g. private members' bills, bills after a cabinet falls).
2. Suspensive veto – returning a non-money bill for reconsideration; it can be overridden by a simple majority.
3. Pocket veto – no time limit to act (Zail Singh, Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill, 1986).
4. Qualified veto (override only by special majority) is with the US President, not the Indian President.

Short trick: India: Absolute + Suspensive + Pocket; USA: Qualified + Pocket.

Concept: Landmark cases on Parliament's power to amend Fundamental Rights.

1. Sajjan Singh v. State of Rajasthan – 1965 (upheld 17th Amendment).
2. I. C. Golaknath v. State of Punjab – 1967 (Parliament cannot amend FRs).
3. Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala – 1973 (basic structure doctrine).
4. Minerva Mills v. Union of India – 1980 (limited amending power is part of basic structure).

Short trick: S-G-K-M: 65, 67, 73, 80.

Concept: The Union Budget passes through six stages: presentation → general discussion → scrutiny by departmental committees → voting on demands for grants → Appropriation Bill → Finance Bill.

1. Statements 1 and 2 are correct – stages, beginning with presentation.
2. Statement 3 is wrong – the budget is NOT passed after general discussion; at that stage no cut motion or vote is taken.
3. Statement 4 is correct – the Appropriation Bill is an integral stage of the general budget.
4. Since 3 is wrong, options A, C and D drop out; only B (1, 2, 4) remains.

Short trick: General discussion = no voting; money is voted later (demands → appropriation).

Concept: Planned economic development began in the USSR (first Five Year Plan 1928).

1. 1 ✘ – planning was a Soviet, not British, idea. 2 ✔ – India borrowed five-year planning from the USSR.
2. 3 ✔ – Nehru, first chairman of the Planning Commission (1950), was its chief architect.
3. 4 ✘ – India had only 12 Five Year Plans (last 2012–17).
4. 5 ✔ – NITI Aayog (1 Jan 2015) replaced the Planning Commission as the main planning/policy body.

Short trick: 12 plans, not 15; Soviet idea; NITI Aayog since 2015.

Concept: Article numbers decide the order.

1. Art. 39A – equal justice and free legal aid (42nd Amendment) → I.
2. Art. 40 – organisation of village panchayats → III.
3. Art. 43 – living wage etc. for workers → IV.
4. Art. 50 – separation of judiciary from executive → II.

Short trick: 39A → 40 → 43 → 50.

Concept: State funding of elections in India has been examined by several bodies.

1. c ✔ – Indrajit Gupta Committee (1998) endorsed (partial, in-kind) state funding of elections.
2. b ✔ – the Law Commission under Justice B. P. Jeevan Reddy (170th Report, 1999) did not favour it immediately: total state funding only after internal party democracy and accounting reforms are in place.
3. a ✔ – electoral reform remains a pressing need.
4. d ✘ – comprehensive electoral reforms (including state funding) have not been enacted by Parliament; every option containing d is wrong.

Short trick: Indrajit Gupta = yes to state funding; d is false → choose the only option without d.

Concept: Committees on Panchayati Raj after Balwant Rai Mehta (1957).

1. Ashok Mehta Committee – 1977–78 (two-tier system).
2. G. V. K. Rao Committee – 1985 (block development, district as basic unit).
3. L. M. Singhvi Committee – 1986 (constitutional status for PRIs).
4. P. K. Thungon Committee – 1988 (constitutional recognition, 5-year term).

Short trick: A-G-S-T: 77, 85, 86, 88.