BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 Political Science 2 Solved Question Papers with Answers 2017 to 2026 - Mumbai University | munotes

Political Science 2 is political theory taught to people who will practise law, and the syllabus behind it is unusually small. Across all fifteen papers solved here the same handful of topics comes round: power, authority and legitimacy after Max Weber; political obligation through Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, T.H. Green and D.D. Raphael; the theories of punishment; liberalism and its shift from the negative to the positive form; utilitarianism through Bentham and Mill; Marxism; Gandhism and Sarvodaya; the elite theorists Pareto, Mosca, Michels and C. Wright Mills; and Indian democracy, meaning political parties, regional parties, panchayats and the challenges to the system. Nearly every one of those appears in fourteen of the fifteen papers. The reading is finite in a way that most law subjects are not.

The third section is where the marks are decided, and it works quite differently from the rest of the paper. It gives you a set of facts and does not tell you what they are about. The Mandate of Heaven in ancient China, the accession of King Charles III, the death of the Thai monarch Bhumibol, a film star elected on the strength of the honest policeman he played, a recommendation issued by TRAI on merger approvals, a criminal fine, an offender sent to a rehabilitation centre rather than to prison, community service in place of a sentence, a theory that treats crime as a disease, a theory of tit for tat, and the sentence "whatever is useful, is good". You are asked to identify the concept and then explain it. Almost every one of those answers is a Weber authority type, a theory of punishment, or an ism, and once you know that, the section stops being unpredictable.

The second habit worth preparing for is that this paper asks you to attach an Article to a theory. Mill's harm principle is set with the provision of the Constitution that reflects it. Socialism is set with the socialist provisions. Sarvodaya and Gram Swaraj are set with Article 40 and the 73rd and 74th Amendments. Liberalism is set with the liberal features of the Constitution. Several papers go further and ask about Article 21, Article 14, Article 19, the amendment procedure or the basic structure doctrine on their own. A candidate who revises the theory and not the constitutional half of each pairing will leave marks on the table in both Section 3 and Section 4.

One question in this subject is worth settling before the exam rather than in it. D.D. Raphael's grounds of political obligation are asked as a numbered set, "five main views", and the five are the social contract, consent, the general will, justice, and the general interest or common good. The list of grounds you will find in a general textbook chapter on political obligation runs longer than that and includes force, divine right and prescription, so working the answer out from the textbook list on the day will give you the wrong five.

Two facts about the papers themselves, both of which will save you time. The 2024-25 paper and the 2024-25 ATKT 75:25 paper are the same paper: the University set one paper for both cohorts, its own heading reads Regular / ATKT, and the two files are identical, so solving one is solving both. And the scan of the 2022-23 paper on record is page 1 of 4 imaged twice, so Q3(c) and (d) and the whole of Q4 are missing from it. Sixteen questions of that paper are answered here and the rest are not, because they are not in the source.

The patterns changed twice and the codes tell you which one you are holding. Up to 2019-20 this was a 100 mark paper written in three hours, with short notes at 5 marks and four long answers of 12. The 2021-22 sitting was an online examination in two halves, twenty multiple choice questions worth 30 marks and ten short descriptive questions worth another 30, with no time allowance printed on it. Since 2022-23 the subject has run as two papers: code 66831, 75 marks in two and a half hours ending with three long answers of 13 marks, and codes 68111 and 68101, 60 marks in two hours with ten short questions instead of eight and long answers of 12.

These are model answers prepared by munotes. They are a study aid and not official University answer keys, which the University of Mumbai does not publish.