Political theory, democracy and justice
This domain tests canonical answers to "why obey the state?" and "what makes a decision legitimate?" ; and your ability to use them as analytic tools rather than as name-dropping. Tasks often pair a classical excerpt with a present-day controversy such as inheritance tax, digital surveillance or climate policy.
Contract theories
Hobbes derives absolute sovereignty from individuals' security interest in escaping the state of nature; Locke limits government to protecting life, liberty and property and permits resistance; Rousseau grounds legitimacy in popular sovereignty and the volonté générale, which is not the sum of private wills. Montesquieu supplies the separation of powers; Kant links republican government to perpetual peace; Mill defends liberty of thought and the harm principle.
Liberty and justice
Isaiah Berlin distinguishes negative liberty (non-interference) from positive liberty (self-mastery), warning that the latter can justify coercion. Rawls constructs justice as fairness: behind the veil of ignorance, rational parties choose equal basic liberties followed by fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle. In this ordering, inequalities must work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, subject to the prior liberties and opportunity requirements. Nozick's entitlement theory rejects patterned redistribution as violating self-ownership; Habermas's discourse theory locates legitimacy in uncoerced deliberation and the co-originality of private and public autonomy.
Models of democracy
Schumpeter's competitive-elitist model reduces democracy to elite competition for votes; Dahl's polyarchy lists participation, contestation and civil liberties; deliberative and participatory models demand more than mere aggregation of preferences. Use these as criteria for judging institutions, not as decoration.
Worked example
"Should high inheritances be taxed more heavily?" Reasoning with Rawls: behind the veil you might be the heir or the disinherited, so you choose the arrangement benefiting the worst-off ; a case for taxation if the revenue improves fair equality of opportunity. Nozick's counter: the justice of a transfer depends on just acquisition, just transfer and rectification of injustice, rather than merely on whether its recipient inherited it. An entitlement argument challenges patterned redistribution but does not establish that every existing holding is just. A strong answer states both, applies a criterion (worst-off position, self-ownership) and concludes with reasons.
Traps
Attributing the veil of ignorance to Locke or Hobbes; reading positive liberty as simply "more freedom"; treating the social contract as one single doctrine; presenting Rawls and Nozick as saying the same thing; naming a theorist without applying the concept to the case.