Foundations of Political Science and the State
This domain tests whether you can define the state precisely, separate it from government, nation and society, and apply the classic elements to unfamiliar cases. BIEAP questions often ask which element is missing or which thinker stands behind a definition.
Core concepts
- State: a politically organised society with four elements - population, territory, government and sovereignty (Garner; Oppenheim stresses sovereignty). Sovereignty has an internal face (supreme over associations) and an external face (independence).
- Government is the machinery of the state; it changes while the state persists. Nation is a cultural-psychological community; India is a state with many nations. Society is wider than the state.
- Theories of origin: divine right, social contract (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), evolutionary, force and Marxist. The social contract is a normative device, not recorded history.
- Political science studies power, institutions and behaviour; politics is the activity itself.
Worked example
Kosovo has population, territory, a parliament and police, but Serbia and several UN members do not recognise it. Is it a state? Reasoning: the material elements are present; the contested element is external sovereignty. Under the declaratory theory, recognition merely acknowledges statehood; under the constitutive theory, recognition creates it. For an exam answer, show both theories and conclude that sovereignty is present but contested - recognition is evidence, not the whole test.
Traps
- Writing “government is the state”; government is only one element.
- Confusing nation with state, or society with state.
- Treating the social contract as historical fact.
- Assuming sovereignty can be divided in classical theory.
- Ignoring that a state may be multinational.
Key points
- Four elements: population, territory, government, sovereignty.
- Sovereignty is the decisive, indivisible element in classical theory.
- Government is temporary; the state is permanent.
- Social contract thinkers: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau.
- Declaratory versus constitutive theories of recognition.