Political Theory: An Introduction

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Political Science Class XI (Political Theory), Chapter 1.

Can you opt out of politics?

A friend says, "I am not interested in politics." Fair enough, but notice what is already political in your day. Who decided your school timings? Why does a bus route reach your neighbourhood and not the next one? Who decided that a 17-year-old cannot vote? Each of these was decided by people with different views about what is fair, who then had to settle on one answer for everybody. This chapter asks two things. What exactly is politics, and why would anyone need a theory of it? Get these right and every later chapter of the book (freedom, equality, justice, rights) becomes easier, because they all use the toolkit introduced here.

Where political theory starts: reason and language

Humans are unique in two ways. We can reason and reflect on what we do, and we can use language to share our thoughts. Put the two together and you can ask "Is this the right thing to do?" and argue about it with someone else. Political theory grows out of exactly this habit.

It asks questions such as: How should society be organised? Why do we need a government? Does a law limit our freedom or protect it? What does the state owe its citizens, and what do citizens owe each other? Political theory looks at the values behind political life, mainly freedom, equality and justice, and its objective is to train citizens to think rationally about political questions and to assess the political events of their time.

What is politics?

Most people carry one of two images of politics. One is public service. The other is manipulation, defection, false promises and scams. The cartoon of a parent telling a politician to retire because his behaviour is a bad influence on a child captures the second image. Disillusionment of this kind is why many people say they have no interest in politics.

Gandhi's answer was blunt: politics envelops us like the coils of a snake, and the only way out is to wrestle with it. The reason is simple. Humans live in groups, and every group needs rules and a way of settling disputes. Families, tribes, economic associations and, above all, governments exist so that people can meet their needs and live together while accepting duties toward each other.

Politics is also wider than what governments do. Economic policy, foreign policy and education policy change citizens' lives, so citizens form associations, run campaigns, protest and debate. That is why the working definition is not about politicians at all.

Why it matters. The definition to memorise: politics arises from the fact that we hold different visions of what is just and desirable for ourselves and our society, and it involves the multiple negotiations through which collective decisions are made.

Pause and predict: your class must choose between a museum trip and a beach picnic. Half want one, half want the other. Is settling this "politics" in the textbook's sense?

Check your answer: Yes. Different visions of what is desirable, followed by negotiation, ending in one collective decision: that is the whole definition. Nothing in it needs a government or a party.

Two views. For the exam: politics is the multiple negotiations by which a society takes collective decisions, so it reaches far beyond government. Another reading: a narrower, state-centred tradition in political science treats politics mainly as the activity of governments, parties and elections. Both are recognised in the discipline; the chapter takes the wider view, and so must your answer.

What do we study in political theory?

Political theory is old. As far back as the fifth century B.C., Plato and Aristotle debated whether monarchy or democracy was the better system of government. Modern thinkers added new questions. The table gives the exact link between each thinker, the idea and the place it later appears in India.

Political theory does more than list names. It clarifies the meanings of freedom, equality, justice, democracy and secularism, and it examines principles such as the rule of law, separation of powers and judicial review by weighing the arguments thinkers give for them.

Cause and effect: why the subject never finishes. Three things keep it alive after Independence. First, equal rights on paper do not erase unequal conditions, so caste and poverty still produce discrimination in the social and economic spheres. Second, rights get reinterpreted as circumstances change, which is how the right to life came to be read by the courts as including the right to livelihood, and how the right to information came about through a new law. Third, the world keeps producing new questions: the internet helps activists organise but also helps terrorists coordinate, online trade raises privacy worries, and netizens (citizens of the internet) argue about who should regulate what and whether governments may read private e-mails to track threats.

Why does one idea have many definitions?

In mathematics a triangle has one definition. In politics, equality or freedom has many, because these ideas describe relationships between human beings, and human beings hold different opinions that have to be understood and brought into harmony through reasoned debate.

Equality shows how this works. In daily life it can mean three different things: equal opportunity (nobody jumps a queue), fairness (people who cannot afford basic needs must not be exploited) and special provisions (separate counters for the old and the disabled, midday meals for poor children). The same word, three working meanings, and the right one depends on the context.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: political concepts have many definitions, unlike mathematical ones. In reality: this is why political theorists argue in terms of competing conceptions of one idea, for example conceptions of equality that stress opportunity versus those that stress outcomes. The disagreement is not a flaw in the subject; it is the subject. Why it matters: an answer that gives only one definition without saying whose definition it is will lose marks in a descriptive paper.

The Socratic method: how an idea is tested

The chapter shows reasoning at work through extracts from Plato's Republic. Socrates, the wisest man of Athens, was condemned to death for questioning popular beliefs. He left no books; Plato recorded the conversations. In them Socrates takes a popular definition of justice and tests it against a counter-example until it breaks.

The method in one line: popular definition → counter-example → revised definition → new counter-example → a deeper idea of the concept.

Pause and predict: Cephalus says justice is "paying your debts". Name one situation where paying a debt would not be just.

Check your answer: Returning a borrowed weapon to its owner who has lost his senses and may hurt someone. This is the very counter-example Socrates uses.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: Socrates was the wisest man of Athens and Plato wrote The Republic. In reality: Socrates wrote nothing himself, so what we know of his views comes mainly through Plato's dialogues, where it is often hard to separate the real Socrates from Plato's own development of his ideas. Why it matters: it explains why the exam treats the Republic as Plato's text and Socrates as its main speaker.

Why should we study political theory?

The chapter gives four reasons, and exams love the full list.

Notice what is not on the list: winning elections or gaining office.

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Next: Freedom takes up the first of the core values this chapter introduces and asks which constraints on freedom are justified.
• Then: Equality, Social Justice and Rights develop the other ideas named here.
• Constitution link: The Philosophy of the Constitution shows how freedom, equality and the Gandhian vision shaped the Preamble and the Directive Principles.