PYQ Vault · Paper 2 · State in Comparative Perspective
Do you subscribe to the view that the modern constructs of the state and politics are pre-eminently Euro-Centric and not indigenous and appropriate for the analysis of non-western societies?
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes
R1 qualified yes → modern state a European, Westphalian creation → imported onto a pre-modern base R2 state and politics as Western categories → misfire outside the West → but reworked, not junked
Body flow
European state: sovereignty, monopoly of violence, Westphalia → imported institution / Alavi’s overdeveloped state, no indigenous bourgeoisie → modernization theory charged with Eurocentrism → borrowed categories fail locally / Riggs's prismatic society: form vs practice → West on rule of law, developing societies on identity → Pye’s communal, loyalty-based process → Kothari: caste as the axis of mobilisation
Counter-view
the same scholarship reworks the categories rather than discarding them → Chandhoke against universal models, for the specificity of colonial history → vocabulary can travel once adjusted
Conclusion routes
rk) Euro-centric in origin, misleading if applied mechanically fie 22 serviceable once indigenised, not to be abandoned
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
