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POWER 50 is fifty capsules across fifty days — the entire PSIR syllabus revised once, in the order the syllabus is actually built, one topic a day. The discipline is simple: read the capsule, write the same day, don’t break the chain. Running alongside: PSIR Dynamics 2026 for deep conceptual grounding, and the PYQ Vault — 560 previous-year questions released over 50 days, roughly 11 per day.
Day 7 — Power, Hegemony, Ideology & Legitimacy
Power is the foundational concept of Political Science — what money is to economics, power is to politics. Day 7 brings together the full conceptual architecture of this unit: the meaning and bases of power (Russell to Weber to Lukes), the major theoretical perspectives (Liberal, Marxist, Feminist, Elitist, Pluralist, Postmodern), Gramsci’s hegemony and its extension into IR through Robert W. Cox and Susan Strange, the concept of ideology from Marx to Althusser to Foucault, and finally authority, legitimacy, and Habermas’s legitimation crisis. Between 2016 and 2025, this unit carried 11 questions — 6 × 10-markers, 3 × 15-markers, and 2 × 20-markers — making it one of the highest-yield single units in Paper I.
Write before the evening:
- Comment on the bases of power in about 150 words. (UPSC 2022, 10m)
- Write on the linkage between power and hegemony in 150 words. (UPSC 2024, 10m)
- Explain C. B. Macpherson’s view on power. (UPSC 2025, 10m)
If you go blank on a point — Lukes’ three dimensions, the Gramscian distinction between war of position and war of manoeuvre, Macpherson’s extractive vs developmental power — it is covered in full in your Foundation and OGP class notes and handouts. Revise it, then write.
