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POWER 50 is fifty capsules across fifty days: the whole PSIR syllabus revised once, in the order the syllabus is actually built, one topic a day. The discipline is simple and it works only if you keep to it — read the capsule, write the same day, don’t break the chain. Running alongside are PSIR Dynamics 2026 and the PYQ Vault: 560 previous-year questions spread across the fifty days, roughly eleven a day, so your revision and your writing practice move together.
Day 31 — Approaches to the Study of International Relations
Day 31 is the theory core of Paper II. The capsule opens with the discipline itself — where the word “international” comes from, Quincy Wright on IR as a condition versus IR as a discipline, and the phases of world politics from Westphalia to the present. From there it works through the great debates and the four families of theory: realism, from Morgenthau’s classical realism to Waltz’s neo-realism, the offensive–defensive split, and the neoclassical and subaltern variants; liberalism and the idealist school, taking in functionalism, democratic peace, complex interdependence and the neo-neo synthesis; the Marxist approaches, including dependency and world-systems theory and the Gramsci–Cox critical strand; and the other approaches — the English School, constructivism, feminism, postcolonialism and Kaplan’s systems models. Every school, scholar and debate from the Foundation and OGP class, compressed for fast recall. Between 2016 and 2025, this unit carried eight 10-markers, six 15-markers and one 20-marker.
Write before the evening:
- Is the Realist approach the best method to understand International Relations? Examine this in the context of Classical Realism. (UPSC 2017, 20m)
- What do you mean by offensive and defensive realism? (UPSC 2023, 15m)
- “Neo-liberalism lightened neo-realism’s dark view of international politics.” Comment. (UPSC 2025, 10m)
If you go blank on any point above, it is set out in full in your Foundation and OGP class notes and handouts — revise it, then write.
