PSIR Power 50 – Day 7 Capsule: Power + Practice Qs

Hello Aspirants

Here, I give you the summarized version of everything that I taught you in this topic in PSIR Optional Foundation classes. If you are not able to recall the concept or scholar, then go back to class notes and handouts. PSIR Topics

UPSC has asked 4 ten-mark questions, 5 fifteen-mark questions, and 2 twenty-mark question from this topic in last 12 years.

1. Concept & Definitions

• Power = capacity to effect outcomes in social interaction (Nivedita Menon).
• Robert A. Dahl: “A has power over B when A gets B to do what B would not otherwise do.” → implies power is individual and domination—both later disputed.

2. Contemporary Re-frames

• Hannah Arendt: power is “power to”—an enabling force that appears when people act collectively.
• Talcott Parsons: political power, like money, circulates as a facilitative currency securing obligations.
• Debate shifts from individual domination to collective capacity & structural influence.

3. Steven Lukes – Three Dimensions

1. Decision-making: overt contest of interests.
2. Agenda-setting: exclusion of issues from debate.
3. Thought control: shaping perceptions and preferences.

4. Competing Macro-Perspectives

• Liberal: sovereignty of the people; state serves public interest.
• Marxist: bourgeois domination over proletariat.
• Pluralist (Robert Dahl): democracy as polyarchy—multiple groups share influence.
• Elitist: power always concentrated in a minority.

5. Classic Elite Theorists

6. Ideology, Hegemony & Legitimacy Links

• Elite dominance persists by manufacturing legitimacy (norm acceptance) and hegemony (consent via ideas, per later neo-Gramscian readings).
• Media, law, and institutions help entrench elite narratives, rendering domination less visible.

7. Pluralist Theory of Power – Robert A. Dahl

• Who Governs? (New Haven study): U.S. not an oligarchy; power dispersed among competing interest groups.
• Polyarchy: high participation + contestation; multiple centres of influence.
• Deformed polyarchy (with Charles E. Lindblom): corporate actors tilt the field—power unevenly dispersed.

8.Gramscian Lens –

• Power sustained by hegemony(not just domination and coercion  but also consent) in civil society; ideology absorbs shocks, keeps elite dominance intact.

9. Feminist Re-readings of Power

10. Authority, Legitimacy & Types – Max Weber

• Legitimate power = authority (consented power).
• Traditional (custom), Charismatic (personal magnetism), Rational-legal (rule-bound bureaucracy).
• De jure vs de facto authority: legal right vs actual control (e.g., military coup).

11. Post-Modern Conception – Michel Foucault

• From state-centred repression to productive, networked power.
• Power/Knowledge nexus creates regimes of truth.
• Discursive formations shift meanings over eras (e.g., madness).
• Bio-power: governance of life (health, reproduction, death).
• Governmentality: self-regulation through normalized norms.

12. Panopticon & Institutions

• Borrowing Jeremy Bentham’s design, Foucault shows prisons, schools, hospitals as sites of self-surveillance; power omnipresent yet always facing potential resistance.

Scholars Index:

Hannah Arendt | Jeremy Bentham | Simone de Beauvoir | Kimberlé Crenshaw | Robert A. Dahl | Michel Foucault | Antonio Gramsci | Sandra Harding | bell hooks | Charles E. Lindblom | Steven Lukes | Nivedita Menon | Robert Michels | Charles Wright Mills | Gaetano Mosca | Talcott Parsons | Carole Pateman | Vilfredo Pareto | Gayle Rubin | Max Weber | Mary Wollstonecraft | Virginia Woolf

 (Cohort 1 of PSIR O-AWFG & ATS programmes, starting 11 June, will track these shifts through and my evaluation will be looking for the contextual mentioning of these scholars in your copies)

Practice Questions (Write before 4 p.m.)

Question 1. Write on the Bases of Power. [2022 / 10 m]

Question 2. Discuss the ‘crisis of legitimacy’ in capitalist societies. (Habermas). [2015/20m]

Question 3. – Examine the liberal theory of State in contemporary politics. (UPSC 2022, 20 m)

 📌 Model answers drop this evening on the Telegram channel: https://t.me/psirbyamitpratap – keep notifications on.

See you tomorrow on Day 8. Keep practicing!

—Amit Pratap Singh & Team

A quick note on submissions of copies and mentorship

• 2025 Mains writers: Cohort 1 of O-AWFG kicks off 11 June and ATS on 15 June. The above practice set will serve as your revision tool for Test 1, just do not miss booking your mentorship sessions for personalised feedback especially for starting tests. Come with your evaluated test copies.
• 2026  Mains writers – keep uploading through your usual dashboard. This topic is in test 4 of PSIR-AWFG and ATS 1
• Alternate between mini-tests (O-AWFG) and full mocks (ATS) has been designed to tackle speed, content depth, and structured revision—line-by-line evaluation pinpoints your weaknesses and errors. Follow your PSIR O-AWFG & ATS schedule and use the model answers to enrich your content, as rankers recommended based on their own success.