Political Theory and Concepts: Defining, Distinguishing and Applying
Political theory asks two kinds of questions: what the state and its institutions actually are (empirical), and what they ought to be (normative). The Second Year paper tests whether you can define a concept precisely, distinguish it from its neighbours, and apply it to a concrete case - not merely recite a definition.
Core concepts to define and contrast
- Liberty: negative liberty (Isaiah Berlin) is non-interference - the absence of external restraint. Positive liberty is self-mastery, the capacity to act on your own reasoned will.
- Equality: formal equality treats likes alike; substantive equality corrects starting-point disadvantage through reservations, welfare or differential treatment.
- Justice: distributive (fair shares; Rawls' difference principle), procedural (fair process), retributive (punishment) and restorative.
- Rights: a claim recognised and enforceable; civil-political versus socio-economic; every right entails a correlative duty.
- Sovereignty: supreme and final authority. Monists (Austin) locate it in a determinate body; pluralists (Laski, Dahl) argue it is shared among associations.
- Power, authority, legitimacy: power is the capacity to affect behaviour; authority is power accepted as rightful; legitimacy is the belief that justifies it - Weber's traditional, charismatic and legal-rational types.
Worked example
'A law bans smoking in public places. Whose liberty is at stake?' Reasoning: the smoker's negative liberty is restricted by coercion. The non-smoker's positive liberty - to breathe clean air and live healthily - is expanded. Because rights are correlative, the restriction is justified where harm to others outweighs it. Answer on both dimensions, not one.
Traps that cost marks
Confusing liberty with licence (unlimited freedom); treating equality as always identical treatment; calling every exercise of force 'authority'; claiming that in a federation no unit retains any sovereignty. Define the term before applying it, and name a thinker only when that thinker's formulation is what you are actually using.