Definition, nature and significance of political theory

Introduction

Political theory is the branch of the study of politics that asks what principles ought to govern collective life and what they mean. The question requires a definition, an account of the nature of the subject and an assessment of its significance.

What political theory is

Political theory is the systematic study of the ideas and principles on which political life rests: the values that shape constitutions, governments and everyday social life, and the arguments by which thinkers defend or criticise them. Its work has three sides. It is constructive, proposing how institutions and policies ought to change to become more democratic; critical, testing whether the institutions we actually deal with live up to the values they profess; and conceptual, clarifying what values such as freedom, equality and justice mean and why they matter. Underneath all three lie the basic questions of collective life: what government is for, how a society should be arranged, and what rulers and citizens owe each other.

It is not the same as the everyday activity called politics. Politics, in its wide sense, is the continuing negotiation by which a society reaches collective decisions in the face of different visions of what is just and desirable; political theory is the reflection on that activity and on the principles that ought to guide it. The DU syllabus places exactly this question at its opening: what is political theory and what is its relevance.

Nature and scope

1. It is concept-centred. Its core subject-matter is a set of ideas of two kinds: values and ideals (rights, democracy and secularism as well as liberty, equality and justice), and constitutional principles such as judicial review, the separation of powers and the rule of law.
2. It is argument-based. Its method is to examine the reasoning of thinkers (from Plato and Aristotle to Rousseau, Marx, Gandhi and Ambedkar, in the NCERT list) rather than to collect opinions.
3. It is normative as well as analytical. Political theory does not only describe how institutions work; it asks what ought to be done and which arrangements can be justified by reasons. The syllabus itself names the aim as to analyse political arguments and debates normatively and critically.
4. It is historical, empirical and evaluative at once. The syllabus asks for a historical, normative and empirical understanding of the subject: ideas must be placed in their time, tested against facts about how institutions work, and judged against values.
5. It is practical. It asks how far ideals such as freedom or equality are present, or absent, in the institutions people meet every day: a ward office that answers some callers and ignores others, or a college admissions desk that treats applicants unevenly, is a question for political theory.

Significance

The significance of political theory can be put in four ways.

1. For understanding. It explains the meaning and importance of concepts such as freedom, equality and justice and sharpens our definitions of them, so that political argument is not carried on with vague words.
2. For judging institutions. It supplies the standards by which constitutions, governments and policies are assessed, and asks how they should be changed to become more democratic.
3. For living constitutions. Constitutional rights do not stay fixed: they are read afresh, widened and added to as new problems arise. Deciding, for example, what freedom to work means for a delivery rider whose hours and routes are set by an app calls for reasoned principles, not just the text.
4. For citizens. It trains citizens to think rationally about political questions and to judge political events, and it helps us notice that a changing world opens new dimensions of freedom and brings new threats to it, as when a housing society installs face-recognition cameras at its gate.

Conclusion

Political theory defines the questions on which political life depends and gives reasoned ways of answering them. Its significance is that it makes citizens and rulers accountable to arguments, not only to power.