.png)
📑 Politics & Power – UGC-NET Quick Revision
Definitions → Dimensions → Key Thinkers → PYQ Hotspots. Optimized for fast, last-minute recall.
Quick Jump
1 Politics – Key Definitions
- Otto von Bismarck → “Politics is the art of the possible.”
- Harold Lasswell → “Who gets what, when, and how.”
- Hannah Arendt → Politics as capacity of acting in concert.
- David Easton → Authoritative allocation of values.
- Aristotle → Politics as ethical activity creating a just society & the good life.
- Kate Millett → Politics as power-structured relationships (one group controls another).
- Michael Oakeshott → Politics as arrangements of a people brought by chance or choice.
- Harold Laski → Politics concerns life of men in relation to the organized state.
- R. G. Gettel → “Study of the state in past, present, and future.”
- Garner → “Political science begins and ends with the state.”
2 Dimensions of Politics (Andrew Heywood)
- State-centric → Politics as that which concerns the state.
- Public life → Politics as conduct of public life.
- Resolution → Politics as conflict resolution in public domain.
- Conflict → Politics as conflict itself among competing interests.
3 Power – Key Definitions
- Robert Dahl → A has power over B if A gets B to do what B wouldn’t otherwise do (1st dimension).
- Talcott Parsons → Power is to politics what money is to economy (power as currency).
- Hannah Arendt → Power as collective action in the public realm.
- Lord Acton → “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
- Michel Foucault → Knowledge–power nexus; normalization; subjectification.
- Antonio Gramsci → Cultural hegemony.
- Louis Althusser → Ideological State Apparatus maintains power.
- Hans Morgenthau → National interest defined in terms of power.
- Joseph Nye → Soft Power; “Power in IR is like the weather…”
- C. B. MacPherson → Extractive (power over others) vs Developmental (power to achieve goals).
4 Faces / Dimensions of Power
- First Face → Decision-making (Robert Dahl).
- Second Face → Agenda-setting / Non-decision (Bachrach & Baratz).
- Third Face → Shaping perceptions & preferences (Steven Lukes – radical view).
5 PYQ Hotspots (UGC-NET)
- “Who gets what, when, how” → Lasswell
- “Authoritative allocation of values” → Easton
- Study of influence & influential → Lasswell
- Power as currency → Parsons
- Knowledge–Power nexus → Foucault
- Third dimension of power → Lukes
- “Power tends to corrupt …” → Lord Acton
- National interest in terms of power → Morgenthau
- “Power in IR is like weather …” → Nye
- Offensive Neorealism = Maximisation of power → Mearsheimer
Tip: Memorize Thinker → Signature phrase → PYQ tag. Many NET questions lift exact wording.