CSS Political Science: Western and Muslim political thinkers

These notes cover the political thinkers in the FPSC CSS Competitive Examination, Political Science Paper I (optional subject, 100 marks). The syllabus puts them in two lists. Western Political Thought: Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Bentham, J.S. Mill, Hegel and Marx. Muslim Political Thought: Al-Farabi, Al-Mawardi, Ibn Rushd, Imam Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyyah, Nizam-ul-Mulk Tusi, Ibn Khaldun, Shah Waliullah, Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Jamal-ud-Din Afghani and Rashid Rida. Each thinker gets a short biography, main works, core ideas, influence and the main criticisms. Jean Bodin appears only as background, because he helps explain Hobbes. After the thinkers come comparison tables, model answer outlines, attribution MCQs, a glossary and a quick self-test. Where scholars disagree about how to read a thinker, the notes name the school or scholar behind each view.

How to use these notes. CSS examiners look for three things. The first is correct attribution of works and ideas. The second is analysis rather than biography. The third is relevance to the present day, often to Pakistan. For each thinker, learn the sequence works → concepts → influence → criticism. End every long answer with a critical evaluation and a short conclusion.

1. Western political thought: the classical Greeks

Plato (c. 427–347 BC)

Life: An Athenian aristocrat and a pupil of Socrates. He founded the Academy in Athens around 387 BC.

Main works: The Republic, The Statesman, The Laws. All three are dialogues, each led by a different speaker. Socrates leads the Republic and the Eleatic Stranger leads the Statesman. The Athenian Stranger leads the Laws, in which Socrates does not appear.

Core ideas:

• Justice: For Plato, justice is harmony. Each part of the soul, and each class in the state, does its own proper work and does not interfere with the others.
• Tripartite soul and state: The soul has three parts: reason, spirit and appetite. These match three classes in the state: rulers (guardians), auxiliaries (soldiers) and producers. The matching virtues are wisdom, courage and temperance.
• Philosopher-king: Evils will not end until philosophers rule, or rulers become philosophers, because only the philosopher knows the Form of the Good.
• Communism: The guardian classes have no private property and no private family life. The aim is to keep rulers free of greed and of loyalty to their own kin. It is not an economic programme for the whole society.
• Education: Education is controlled by the state and graded by stage. It runs from music and gymnastics through mathematics to dialectic, and it is how philosopher-rulers are selected and trained.
• Decline of states: The ideal aristocracy decays in stages: timocracy, then oligarchy, then democracy, then tyranny.
• Second-best state: In The Laws, Plato accepts the rule of law and a mixed constitution as the practical alternative to the rule of wisdom.

Influence: Plato founded idealist political philosophy. His ideas shaped Al-Farabi's virtuous city, Christian Neoplatonism (including Augustine) and later utopian writing, from More's Utopia onward.

Criticisms: Aristotle objected that holding property and families in common goes against human nature and destroys proper affection. Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), called Plato's ideal state a forerunner of totalitarianism. Liberal critics add that it leaves no room for individual liberty and treats the producers as passive. Plato has defenders too. Julia Annas reads the Republic mainly as a work of ethics about the just soul, not as a blueprint for a state. Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom read the ideal city as ironic, a demonstration of the limits of politics.

Aristotle (384–322 BC)

Life: Born at Stagira. He studied at Plato's Academy for about twenty years, tutored Alexander of Macedon and founded the Lyceum.

Main works: Politics and Nicomachean Ethics. His school collected about 158 constitutions, and the Athenian Constitution is the only one that survives.

Core ideas:

• Man is by nature a political animal: The polis is natural. It grows out of the household and the village. It comes into being for the sake of life and continues for the sake of the good life.
• Method: Aristotle works inductively and empirically by comparing constitutions. This is why he is often called the "father of political science".
• Classification of constitutions: He uses two tests. The first is how many rule. The second is whether they rule for the common good (true forms) or for themselves (perverted forms). See the table below.
• Polity: The best practicable state mixes oligarchy and democracy and rests on a large middle class. This follows his doctrine of the golden mean.
• Citizenship: A citizen is someone who shares in judicial and deliberative office.
• Revolution (Book V): The general cause is a sense of inequality or injustice. Particular causes include the desire for profit and honour, insolence, fear, contempt and the disproportionate growth of one part of the state. Remedies include respect for law, moderation, preventing any one person from gaining too much power, and education in the spirit of the constitution.
• Slavery and property: He defended "natural" slavery and private property, but held that property should be used in common.

Number ruling	True form (common good)	Perverted form (self-interest)
One	Monarchy	Tyranny
Few	Aristocracy	Oligarchy
Many	Polity	Democracy (rule of the poor)

Influence: William of Moerbeke translated the Politics into Latin around 1260. Through that translation and through Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle shaped medieval Christian political thought. In the Islamic world the Politics was not the channel. His Ethics, logic and wider philosophy influenced al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd instead. His comparative method underlies modern comparative politics.

Criticisms: He justified slavery and excluded women and manual workers from citizenship. His city-state framework could not account for the empires of his own day. Critics on the left, including Marxist readers, find him conservative, more interested in stability than in reform.

Point	Plato	Aristotle
Method	Deductive, idealist	Inductive, empirical
Best rule	Rule of wisdom (philosopher-king)	Rule of law; polity as the best practicable form
Property and family	Held in common by the guardians	Private property in common use; family defended
Unity of state	Maximum unity	Too much unity destroys the plurality a state needs

2. Medieval Christian thought: Augustine and Aquinas

St Augustine (354–430)

Life: Born at Thagaste in Roman North Africa. He taught rhetoric, converted to Christianity in 386 and became Bishop of Hippo.

Main works: Confessions and The City of God (413–426). He wrote The City of God after the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, to answer pagans who blamed Christianity for the disaster.

Core ideas:

• The two cities: "Two loves have made two cities." The earthly city is built on love of self to the point of contempt for God. The heavenly city (civitas Dei) is built on love of God to the point of contempt for self. The two are mixed together in this world and are separated only at the Last Judgement. Neither is the same thing as the state or the Church.
• The state as a remedy for sin: God did not intend rational beings to rule one another, only to rule the beasts. Coercive government exists because of the Fall. It is both a punishment for sin and a remedy for it, because it restrains the wicked.
• Peace: Peace is "the tranquillity of order". The earthly peace the state secures is useful to members of both cities, so Christians should obey and support it.
• Justice: "Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but great robberies?" (Book IV). True justice exists only where God is given his due.
• Just war: War may be waged by legitimate authority to punish wrongs and restore peace. Later just-war theory, including Aquinas, builds on this.

Influence: Medieval popes and writers used his ideas to argue that rulers should serve the Church. The historian H.-X. Arquillière called this "political Augustinianism", and it was a use of Augustine rather than his own doctrine. His view of politics also shaped Luther and the 20th-century "Christian realism" of Reinhold Niebuhr.

Criticisms: Some critics find his view of politics so pessimistic that it offers little positive theory of the state. He also approved the use of state force against the Donatist heretics, reading "compel them to come in" (Luke 14:23) that way. Pierre Bayle attacked this reading in 1686 as a charter for persecution.

St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)

Life: An Italian Dominican friar who taught theology at the University of Paris.

Main works: Summa Theologiae (1265–1274), Summa contra Gentiles, De Regno (On Kingship, addressed to the King of Cyprus and left unfinished), and an unfinished commentary on Aristotle's Politics.

Core ideas:

• Aristotle and Christianity combined: "Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it." Aquinas accepted Aristotle's view that man is naturally a social and political animal. The state is therefore natural and good in itself, not only a remedy for sin as Augustine held.
• Definition of law: Law is "an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by whoever has care of the community, and promulgated".
• Four kinds of law: Eternal law is God's rational plan for the universe. Natural law is human reason's share in eternal law. Human law applies natural law to particular circumstances. Divine law is revealed in scripture and guides people to their supernatural end.
• Unjust law: A human law that conflicts with natural law is "not a law but a corruption of law".
• Best government: In De Regno he prefers monarchy. In the Summa he favours a mixed constitution that combines monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.
• Tyranny: A mild tyranny should be tolerated. Action against a severe tyrant belongs to public authority, not to private individuals.
• Church and state: Temporal rulers are supreme in their own sphere. In matters that concern salvation, however, they are subject to the spiritual power.
• Just war: A war is just only with three conditions: legitimate authority, a just cause and right intention.

Influence: Aquinas is the founder of Thomism and of the Catholic natural-law tradition. His ideas pass through Richard Hooker and Grotius to Catholic social teaching and, via Jacques Maritain, to modern human-rights thinking.

Criticisms: Marsilius of Padua, in Defensor Pacis (1324), rejected any claim of the clergy to authority over rulers. Aquinas also held that obstinate heretics could be put to death, and liberal critics cite this against him. Legal positivists such as Austin and H.L.A. Hart reject the claim that an unjust law is not law.

Point	Augustine	Aquinas
Origin of the state	A result of sin; remedy and punishment	Natural (from Aristotle); perfected by grace
Main source	Plato and Neoplatonism, scripture	Aristotle, scripture
Key concept	Two cities	Four kinds of law
View of politics	Pessimistic: earthly peace at best	More positive: the state serves the common good

3. Early modern thought: Machiavelli (with Bodin as background)

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)

Life: A Florentine diplomat and secretary to the Second Chancery of the republic. He was dismissed from office when the Medici returned in 1512. In 1513 he was briefly imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of conspiracy. He then retired to his estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina near Florence, where he wrote The Prince.

Main works: The Prince (written 1513, published 1532), Discourses on Livy, The Art of War.

Core ideas:

• Politics separated from ethics and religion: Machiavelli judges political action by whether it succeeds in founding and keeping the state, not by Christian morality.
• Human nature: People are ungrateful, fickle and self-seeking, and a ruler must plan on that basis.
• Virtù and fortuna: Virtù is energy, skill and boldness. It can master fortuna (chance) about half the time.
• Lion and fox: A prince needs force (the lion) and cunning (the fox). If he cannot be both loved and feared, it is safer to be feared, as long as he avoids being hated.
• Citizen armies: Mercenaries are useless and dangerous.
• Republicanism: In the Discourses he praises the Roman republic, mixed government and civic virtue.
• Italian unity: The last chapter of The Prince calls for a redeemer to free Italy from foreign "barbarians".

Influence: He is often called the father of modern political thought and is widely regarded as a founder of political realism. He is also seen as the first thinker of what was later called raison d'état, a term popularised by Giovanni Botero's Della ragion di stato (1589).

Criticisms and interpretations: Leo Strauss called him a "teacher of evil". Isaiah Berlin argued that Machiavelli did not reject morality. Instead he set pagan civic values beside Christian ones, which exposes a pluralism of values. The Cambridge School historian Quentin Skinner reads him mainly as a republican. Critics also point out that The Prince offers no systematic theory of the state and neglects law and institutions.

Jean Bodin (1530–1596): background

Bodin is included because examiners expect you to trace the idea of sovereignty from Bodin to Hobbes and Austin. Check whether your syllabus year names him.

Life: A French jurist who wrote during the Wars of Religion.

Main work: Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576).

• Sovereignty: He gave the first systematic theory of sovereignty, defined as the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth.
• Mark of sovereignty: Its main mark is the power to make law for everyone without the consent of those subject to it.
• Indivisibility: Sovereignty cannot be shared among different bodies.
• Limits: The sovereign remains bound by divine and natural law and must respect his subjects' property.

Influence: Bodin prepared the way for Hobbes and for Austin's legal theory of sovereignty. Criticism: Critics find it contradictory to call power "absolute" and then limit it by natural law and property.

4. The social contract theorists: Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

Life: An English philosopher whose thought was shaped by fear of the English Civil War (1642–1651).

Main works: De Cive (1642), Leviathan (1651), Behemoth.

Core ideas:

• Human nature: Hobbes takes a mechanistic, materialist view. People are driven by appetites and aversions, and above all by fear of violent death. They are roughly equal, and that equality breeds competition, diffidence (mistrust) and a desire for glory.
• State of nature: It is a war of all against all. There is no industry, culture or justice, and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
• Laws of nature: These are rational rules for survival. The first is to seek peace. The second is to give up one's right to all things, provided others do the same.
• Contract: Individuals covenant with each other to hand all power to a sovereign, which may be one person or an assembly. The sovereign is not a party to the contract and so cannot break it.
• Sovereignty: It is absolute, indivisible and inalienable, and it controls religion and opinion. Hobbes gave the most systematic defence of absolute power based on consent and individual self-interest, not on divine right.
• Limit: The right of self-preservation can never be given up. A subject may resist being killed, and the duty of obedience ends when the sovereign can no longer protect.

Influence: Hobbes founded modern individualism and the positivist theory of sovereignty (Austin). He is also the starting point of realist theory in international relations.

Criticisms: Critics find his view of human nature one-sided. Absolutism leaves subjects no protection against the sovereign itself. Locke makes this point in the Second Treatise (§93), in an image usually read as aimed at Hobbesian absolutism: people guard against polecats and foxes, only to be devoured by lions. The argument is also logically strained, because it has wholly selfish people keeping a contract. C.B. Macpherson (The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 1962) read Hobbes as expressing the assumptions of an emerging market society.

John Locke (1632–1704)

Life: An English physician and philosopher associated with the Whig Earl of Shaftesbury and linked with the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Main works: Two Treatises of Government (1689), A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689/90).

Core ideas:

• State of nature: It is governed by the law of nature (reason). It is peaceful but "inconvenient", because it lacks three things: an established, known law; an impartial judge; and a power to enforce judgments.
• Natural rights: Life, liberty and estate, which together Locke calls "property". Property arises when a person mixes his labour with nature.
• Contract: Individuals consent to form a civil society. The community then entrusts power to a government as a trust, not a surrender.
• Limited government: The legislature is supreme but limited. It cannot take property without consent, and it must govern by standing laws. Locke separates legislative, executive and federative (foreign-affairs) power.
• Right of resistance: When a government breaks the trust, power returns to the people.
• Toleration: Church and state have different ends, and belief cannot be forced.

Influence: Locke is the father of liberalism and constitutionalism. The American Declaration of Independence (1776) echoes him: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" recalls his list of rights.

Criticisms: His idea of consent, whether tacit or express, is vague. Macpherson reads his theory of property as a defence of the propertied classes. His toleration excluded atheists and Catholics. Majority rule may threaten minorities.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

Life: A Genevan-born philosopher who belonged to the French Enlightenment and was also one of its critics.

Main works: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1750), Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755), The Social Contract (1762), Emile (1762).

Core ideas:

• State of nature: Natural man is solitary, free and self-sufficient, moved by self-love (amour de soi) and pity. The phrase "noble savage" is often attached to Rousseau, but he did not use it.
• Corruption: The Discourse on Inequality argues that private property, society and comparison with others (amour-propre) produce inequality and dependence. This is the background to the famous opening line of The Social Contract (1762, Book I, ch. 1): "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."
• Contract: Each person gives himself wholly to the community and receives back equal membership. By obeying the whole, he obeys only himself.
• General will: The will of the community directed at the common good. It differs from the will of all, which is merely the sum of private interests.
• Popular sovereignty: Sovereignty is inalienable and indivisible, and it cannot be represented. Government is only an agent. Rousseau preferred direct democracy in small states.
• "Forced to be free": Anyone who refuses to obey the general will may be compelled to obey it.

Influence: Rousseau inspired the French Revolution (the Jacobins), democratic theory, Kant, Hegel and romanticism.

Criticisms: The general will is vague, and it is unclear who decides what it is. J.L. Talmon (The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, 1952) linked Rousseau to totalitarian democracy. Direct democracy is impractical in large modern states, and the phrase "forced to be free" appears paradoxical. Defenders read the general will as a standard for judging legitimacy, not a licence for coercion.

Social contract: definition to learn. Social contract theory holds that political authority is legitimate because free and equal individuals would agree, or did agree, to set up a common power. The state is therefore an artificial creation based on consent, not a natural or divinely ordained institution.

Point	Hobbes	Locke	Rousseau
Human nature	Selfish, fearful, power-seeking	Rational, sociable, moral	Good, free, compassionate; corrupted by society
State of nature	War of all against all	Peaceful under natural law, but inconvenient	Idyllic at first; declines with property
Parties to contract	Individuals with each other; sovereign outside the contract	Individuals form society; government holds power in trust	Each with all; the community becomes sovereign
Rights surrendered	All except self-preservation	Only the right to enforce natural law	All, to the community, and received back as civil rights
Sovereign	Absolute monarch or assembly	The people; limited legislature	The people, through the general will
Right of revolution	Practically none	Yes, when the trust is broken	The sovereign people can change the government at will
Legacy	Absolutism, realism	Liberalism, constitutionalism	Popular sovereignty, radical democracy

5. Montesquieu, Bentham and J.S. Mill

Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, 1689–1755)

Life: A French aristocrat and magistrate (président of the Bordeaux parlement).

Main works: Persian Letters (1721), The Spirit of the Laws (1748).

Core ideas:

• Relativity of laws: Laws must suit each people's climate, soil, religion, commerce and customs. This "general spirit" makes him an early comparative and sociological thinker.
• Types of government and their principles: A republic rests on virtue, a monarchy on honour and a despotism on fear.
• Separation of powers: Drawing on his reading of the English constitution (Book XI), Montesquieu argued that liberty is safe only when legislative, executive and judicial powers are in different hands. Power must check power.

Influence: The framers of the United States Constitution drew on his idea of checks and balances; Madison cites him in Federalist No. 47. In Pakistan the doctrine appears mainly as the independence of the judiciary. Article 175(3) of the 1973 Constitution requires the judiciary to be separated from the executive. There is no strict separation of executive and legislature, because a parliamentary system fuses them.

Criticisms: His picture of the English constitution was inaccurate, because cabinet government fuses executive and legislature. Rigid separation can cause deadlock. His climate theory is determinist and was later used to support stereotypes.

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

Life: An English jurist and legal reformer, and the founder of classical utilitarianism.

Main works: A Fragment on Government (1776), An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).

Core ideas:

• Psychological hedonism: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure."
• Principle of utility: The right action is the one that produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
• Felicific calculus: Pleasures are measured on seven dimensions: intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity (nearness), fecundity, purity and extent. Pleasures differ only in quantity, a view usually summed up as "pushpin is as good as poetry".
• Against natural rights: He called natural rights "nonsense upon stilts". Rights are created by law.
• Reform: He supported codification of the law, prison reform (the Panopticon design) and, later, representative democracy with a wide suffrage.

Influence: His ideas shaped the Philosophic Radicals, the era of the Reform Act 1832 and modern cost–benefit analysis in policy.

Criticisms: Happiness cannot be measured in units. Adding up happiness can justify sacrificing minorities. Carlyle called his equal treatment of all pleasures "pig philosophy", and Mill later revised it.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

Life: An English philosopher and the son of James Mill, who gave him a famously rigorous education. He worked for the East India Company for 35 years and was a Member of Parliament from 1865 to 1868.

Main works: On Liberty (1859), Considerations on Representative Government (1861), Utilitarianism (1861/63), The Subjection of Women (1869).

Core ideas:

• Qualitative utilitarianism: Higher (intellectual and moral) pleasures are better than lower ones: "better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied".
• Harm principle: Power may rightly be used over a member of a civilised community against his will for one purpose only: to prevent harm to others.
• Self-regarding and other-regarding actions: Only other-regarding actions may be regulated.
• Freedom of thought and discussion: At the end of Chapter 2 of On Liberty, Mill sums up four grounds. (1) The silenced opinion may be true, and to deny this is to assume infallibility. (2) It may contain part of the truth. (3) Even a wholly true opinion, if never contested, is held as mere prejudice. (4) Its meaning is then lost, and it becomes "dead dogma".
• Tyranny of the majority: Social conformity can oppress more than law does. Mill took the phrase from Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which he reviewed.
• Representative government: Mill held it to be the ideally best form of government. He supported proportional representation (Thomas Hare's scheme), extra votes for the educated, an educational qualification for voting, and votes for women.

Influence: Mill is the classic source of liberal arguments for free speech, feminism and individual rights.

Criticisms: James Fitzjames Stephen, in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873), argued that almost every act affects others, so the line between self- and other-regarding acts cannot be drawn. Later communitarians repeated the objection. T.H. Green's quarrel with Mill was different: he argued for a positive conception of freedom. F.H. Bradley argued that admitting qualitative pleasures abandons Bentham's single measure. Democratic critics call plural voting elitist. Uday Singh Mehta (Liberalism and Empire, 1999) argues that Mill's restriction of liberty to "civilised" nations excused colonial rule.

Point	Bentham	J.S. Mill
Pleasure	Quantity only	Quality too: higher and lower
Individual	A unit of calculation	Self-development (individuality) as an end in itself
Liberty	A means to happiness	A central value; harm principle
Democracy	Majority rule, wide suffrage	Representative government with safeguards against majority tyranny

6. Hegel and Marx

G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)

Life: A German idealist philosopher who was a professor at Berlin from 1818.

Main works: Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Science of Logic, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820, dated 1821), Lectures on the Philosophy of History.

Core ideas:

• Dialectic: Reality and history develop through contradiction and its resolution (Aufhebung, "sublation"). The formula "thesis–antithesis–synthesis" is a later simplification, associated more with Fichte, and Hegel himself rarely used it.
• Geist (Spirit): History is the progress of Spirit towards the consciousness of freedom. In the East one person is free; in the Greek and Roman world some are free; in the Germanic-Christian world all are free.
• Ethical life (Sittlichkeit): It has three moments: the family, civil society (the sphere of needs and markets) and the state, which is the highest.
• The state: It is "the actuality of the ethical idea". A much-quoted line is usually translated as "the march of God in the world, that is what the state is". It comes from an addition (Zusatz) to §258 that was compiled from students' lecture notes, not from Hegel's own text. Walter Kaufmann gives a closer translation: "it is the way of God in the world that there should be a state". Liberal scholars use this to rebut the charge that Hegel worshipped the state.
• "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk": Philosophy understands an age only after it has matured.

Influence: Hegel influenced Marx (through the "Young Hegelians"), British idealists such as Green and Bosanquet, and theories of nationalism and of the organic state.

Criticisms: Popper and Hobhouse accused him of a state worship that fed Prussian authoritarianism and fascism. Liberal Hegel scholars such as Shlomo Avineri reply that Hegel's state is a constitutional state that protects rights and civil society. His writing is notoriously obscure, and his history is Eurocentric.

Karl Marx (1818–1883)

Life: A German philosopher and revolutionary who lived in exile in London from 1849 and worked closely with Friedrich Engels.

Main works: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844), The German Ideology (with Engels), The Communist Manifesto (with Engels, 1848), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Capital Vol. I (1867), Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875).

Core ideas:

• Historical materialism: The economic base (the forces and relations of production) shapes the superstructure (law, politics, religion and ideology).
• Class struggle: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." In the 1888 English edition, Engels added a footnote limiting this to written history. The standard textbook sequence runs through primitive communism and the ancient (slave), feudal and capitalist modes of production. Then come a lower and a higher phase of communism, and Lenin later called the lower phase "socialism". Marx's own list in the 1859 Preface is the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production.
• Dialectical method: Marx took Hegel's dialectic and, in his own words, turned it "right side up", from ideas to material conditions.
• Surplus value and exploitation: Workers produce more value than they receive in wages, and the capitalist keeps the surplus.
• Alienation: Under capitalism, workers are estranged from the product of their labour, from the process of labour, from their human essence and from one another.
• Theory of the state: The state is an instrument of class rule. The Manifesto calls the executive of the modern state "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie".
• Revolution: The proletariat seizes power and establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat, and eventually the state "withers away". That phrase is Engels's, from Anti-Dühring. Under full communism the principle is: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Influence: Marx inspired the Russian (1917) and Chinese (1949) revolutions, socialist parties, dependency and world-systems theory, and critical theory.

Criticisms: Bernstein's "revisionism" pointed out that the predicted revolutions in advanced capitalist countries did not happen and that the middle class grew instead. Popper criticised Marx's "historicism" as unfalsifiable. Communist states produced bureaucratic dictatorship instead of a withering away of the state. Economic determinism underrates religion, nationalism and ideas, and both Weber and Gramsci's concept of hegemony qualify it.

7. Muslim political thought: the classical period

Al-Farabi (c. 870–950)

Life: Of Central Asian origin, he worked in Baghdad and died in Damascus. He was called the "Second Teacher" (al-Mu'allim al-Thani), second after Aristotle.

Main works: Ara Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila (Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City), al-Siyasa al-Madaniyya (The Political Regime), Tahsil al-Sa'ada (Attainment of Happiness), Fusul al-Madani.

Core ideas:

• Purpose of the state: The state exists to achieve true happiness (sa'ada), which no one can reach alone.
• Organic analogy: The virtuous city is like a healthy body, with the ruler as its heart.
• First ruler: He unites philosophy and prophecy, receives truth through the Active Intellect and has a long list of natural qualities. If no single person has them all, two or more people can share rule.
• Imperfect cities: He distinguishes four: the ignorant (jahiliyya), the wicked or immoral (fasiqa), the changed (mubaddila) and the erring (dalla). The ignorant city has several sub-types: the city of necessity, of wealth, of pleasure, of honour, of domination, and the "democratic" city.

Influence: Al-Farabi founded Islamic political philosophy (falsafa). Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd built on his work, and it reached Maimonides and the Latin West.

Criticisms: His virtuous city is modelled on Plato's. E.I.J. Rosenthal (Political Thought in Medieval Islam, 1958) and other modern readers point out how far it stands from the actual caliphate and from the institutions of the Shariah. Traditional jurists regarded his fusion of prophet and philosopher with suspicion. Leo Strauss and Muhsin Mahdi read him as writing with deliberate caution for a religious audience.

Al-Mawardi (974–1058)

Life: A Shafi'i jurist from Basra. He served as chief qadi and as an envoy of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad at a time when Buyid amirs held real power.

Main works: Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya (The Ordinances of Government), Adab al-Dunya wa'l-Din, Nasihat al-Muluk.

Core ideas:

• Necessity of the imamate: The imamate (caliphate) is obligatory by revelation (Shariah), not merely by reason. Its purpose is to succeed the Prophet ﷺ in protecting religion and governing worldly affairs.
• Qualifications of the imam (seven): justice; knowledge sufficient for ijtihad; sound hearing, sight and speech; sound limbs; judgement in public affairs; courage to defend the territory and fight enemies; and descent from Quraysh.
• Methods of appointment: Election by the electors (ahl al-hall wa'l-'aqd), or nomination by the previous imam. He reports that jurists differed on how many electors are needed, and some accepted as few as one.
• Duties of the imam: He lists ten. They include guarding the faith, enforcing justice, keeping order, applying the hudud, defending the frontiers, jihad, collecting zakat and taxes, and appointing trustworthy officials.
• Delegation: The vizierate is of two kinds, delegation (tafwid) and execution (tanfidh). He also recognises the amirate by seizure (imarat al-istila): a governor who has seized power may be recognised if he acknowledges the caliph and upholds the Shariah.

Influence: His book is the classic Sunni constitutional treatise. Later writers followed it, including Abu Ya'la, whose Hanbali work has the same title.

Criticisms: H.A.R. Gibb and others argue that he wrote the book to defend the Abbasid caliph's position against the Buyids, so it legitimised existing practice. Accepting a single elector, nomination and usurpation weakens the principle of consent. He gives no institutional way to remove an unjust imam.

Nizam al-Mulk (Nizam-ul-Mulk Tusi, 1018–1092)

Life: A Persian from Tus who was vizier to the Seljuk sultans Alp Arslan and Malik Shah. He was assassinated in 1092, and the killing is commonly attributed to the Nizari Ismailis.

Main work: Siyasatnama (also called Siyar al-Muluk), a "mirror for princes".

Core ideas:

• Kingship from God: God chooses the king in every age, and his authority rests on justice. An unjust king loses God's favour and brings disorder.
• Justice and grievances: The ruler should hear the complaints of his subjects in person and check the abuses of tax collectors and land-grant holders (iqta').
• Surveillance: The ruler controls officials through spies and postal agents.
• Orthodoxy and security: Heretical groups, especially the Ismailis, are a threat to the state and must be kept out of office.
• Army and administration: The army should be ethnically mixed so that no group dominates. Government should follow Persian traditions of statecraft.
• Education: He founded the Nizamiyya madrasas to train Sunni scholars and administrators.

Influence: The Siyasatnama became a model for later mirrors for princes. The Nizamiyya network, where Ghazali taught, shaped Sunni learning and administration.

Criticisms: The book gives practical advice, not systematic theory. It is firmly monarchical, relies on surveillance and treats religious dissenters as enemies of the state.

Imam al-Ghazali (1058–1111)

Life: Born at Tus in Khurasan. He taught at the Nizamiyya in Baghdad, went through a spiritual crisis in 1095 and turned to Sufism.

Main works: Ihya Ulum al-Din, Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), al-Iqtisad fi'l-I'tiqad, Fada'ih al-Batiniyya (also called the Mustazhiri), and Nasihat al-Muluk, whose second part may not be his.

Core ideas:

• Religion and state: "Religion is the foundation and the ruler is its guardian." What has no foundation collapses, and what has no guard is lost.
• Caliphate and sultanate: He accepts the reality of Seljuk power. The caliph provides legitimacy and the sultan provides force (shawka). The caliph's appointment becomes valid through the sultan's oath of allegiance.
• Relaxed qualifications: A caliph who cannot perform ijtihad can rely on the ulama.
• Order before justice: Obedience is due even to an oppressive but effective ruler, because civil strife (fitna) would destroy religious life altogether. Ghazali presents this as a necessity, not an ideal.
• Ethics of rulers: Rulers should practise justice, fear being held to account in the Hereafter and take advice from the ulama.

Influence: He made Sunni theology dominant in political matters and legitimised the working partnership of caliph, sultan and ulama.

Criticisms: Critics such as Ann Lambton and Erwin Rosenthal see in his work a doctrine of necessity that makes resistance to tyranny almost impossible. Some claim that his attack on philosophy weakened rational inquiry. The claim is controversial, and historians such as George Saliba dispute this "decline" thesis.

Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198)

Life: An Andalusian philosopher, physician and qadi, born in Cordoba, who served the Almohad caliphs. In 1195 he fell from favour: he was banished to Lucena and some of his books were burned. He was restored shortly before his death in Marrakesh.

Main works: A commentary on Plato's Republic, written because Aristotle's Politics was not available to him. Also Fasl al-Maqal (The Decisive Treatise) and Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), his reply to Ghazali.

Core ideas:

• Harmony of philosophy and revelation: The Shariah itself commands rational study. Truth does not contradict truth, and apparent conflicts are resolved by interpretation (ta'wil).
• Three classes of people: He distinguishes the demonstrative (philosophers), the dialectical (theologians) and the rhetorical (the general public). Each should be addressed at its own level.
• The ideal state: He accepts the virtuous state of the Republic ruled by the wise, and identifies its ruler with the qualities of the lawgiver and imam.
• Critique of existing regimes: He used Plato's degenerate regimes (timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny) to analyse Muslim history, including the decline of Almohad rule.
• Women: He argued that women could share in public roles, including war and possibly rule, and that keeping them confined impoverished society.

Influence: Latin "Averroism" and the rise of Aristotelian philosophy in medieval Europe. In the Muslim world he became a symbol of rationalism for 19th- and 20th-century reformers.

Criticisms: In his own lifetime the Almohad authorities condemned him in 1195. In Latin Europe, critics accused "Averroists" of a "double truth" doctrine, meaning that something could be true in philosophy and false in faith. Modern scholars reject the charge as an account of Ibn Rushd's own view. His elitist division of people into classes also limits the political reach of his rationalism.

Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328)

Life: A Hanbali jurist and theologian from Harran who worked in Damascus during the Mongol invasions. He was imprisoned several times and died in the Damascus citadel.

Main works: al-Siyasa al-Shar'iyya fi Islah al-Ra'i wa'l-Ra'iyya, Minhaj al-Sunna, al-Hisba fi'l-Islam, and many fatwas (collected in Majmu' al-Fatawa).

Core ideas:

• Shariah over form: He cared less about the caliphate as an office, and held that the rightly guided caliphate proper lasted thirty years. What matters is government by the Shariah (siyasa shar'iyya).
• Trust and justice: Government rests on two principles drawn from Qur'an 4:58–59: giving trusts (offices) to those fit for them, and judging with justice.
• Two wings of authority: Ulu'l-amr (those in authority) are both the rulers (umara) and the scholars (ulama).
• Consultation and hisba: He stresses shura and the duty of enjoining good and forbidding evil.
• Necessity of government: Humans cannot meet their religious and worldly needs without authority. Justice is the foundation of lasting rule. A saying attributed to him sums this up: God upholds a just state even if it is unbelieving.
• Anti-Mongol fatwas: Rulers who professed Islam but did not govern by the Shariah could be fought.

Influence: His writing shaped Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the Salafi reformers (including Rashid Rida) and modern Islamist movements.

Criticisms: Opponents in his own time accused him of anthropomorphism in theology. Scholars such as Yahya Michot and Jon Hoover warn that modern militants often take his fatwas out of context. Critics also say he offers no institutional check on rulers beyond moral advice.

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406)

Life: Born in Tunis to an Andalusian family. He served North African rulers and later became a Maliki qadi in Cairo. He met Timur outside Damascus in 1401 and died in Cairo.

Main work: The Muqaddimah (completed 1377), the introduction to his universal history, Kitab al-'Ibar.

Core ideas:

• Science of society ('ilm al-'umran): History should be critical and grounded in the nature of social organisation, not built on uncritical reports.
• Asabiyyah: Group feeling or social solidarity. It is rooted in kinship and shared hardship and strengthened by religion, and it is the force that founds dynasties.
• Badawa and hadara: Desert or rural life (badawa) breeds courage and cohesion. Urban civilisation (hadara) brings luxury, which erodes asabiyyah.
• Cycle of dynasties (three generations): A dynasty usually lasts three generations of about 40 years each, roughly 120 years. The first generation keeps its desert qualities, its shared glory and a strong asabiyyah. The second generation lives a settled life, and royal authority passes to one man who claims the glory for himself. Its asabiyyah weakens but survives through memory of the first generation. The third generation forgets desert life, sinks into luxury and loses asabiyyah, and the dynasty comes to depend on outside protection until it is overthrown. He also describes five stages, from conquest to waste and collapse.
• Prestige (four generations): This is a separate theory. The prestige (hasab) of a family lasts at most four generations: the builder, the one who had personal contact with the builder, the imitator who relies on tradition, and the destroyer.
• Types of rule: There are three. Natural royal authority (mulk tabi'i) rests on force and desire. Rational political rule (siyasa 'aqliyya) makes laws for worldly interest. The caliphate, rule by the Shariah for this world and the next, is the best.
• Economics: He argued that high taxes reduce revenue, because low rates encourage enterprise. Arthur Laffer later credited him with this insight.

Influence: He is often called a forerunner of sociology, historiography and economics. Arnold Toynbee praised the Muqaddimah, and Ernest Gellner used his model to analyse Muslim societies.

Criticisms: Aziz al-Azmeh (Ibn Khaldun: An Essay in Reinterpretation, 1982) warns against reading him as a modern sociologist, because he worked within medieval categories. Yves Lacoste ties his model closely to the history of the Maghreb, which limits how far it can be generalised. Some readers call the cycle fatalist. Ibn Khaldun himself presents it as what happens "as a rule", not as an iron law.

Point	Al-Mawardi	Al-Ghazali	Ibn Taymiyyah	Ibn Khaldun
Basis of authority	Shariah; caliphate obligatory	Shariah plus necessity	Government by the Shariah; trust and justice	Asabiyyah (sociological)
Caliph and power holders	Accepts the amirate by seizure	Caliph gives legitimacy, sultan gives force	Form matters less than the Shariah	Caliphate turned into mulk
Unjust ruler	Obeyed; no clear way to remove him	Obeyed to avoid fitna	Obeyed in good, not in sin; advised	Explained as dynastic decay
Method	Juristic	Theological and ethical	Juristic and reformist	Empirical and historical

8. Muslim political thought: South Asia and the modern period

Shah Waliullah (1703–1762)

Life: A Delhi scholar who wrote as Mughal power declined after Aurangzeb (d. 1707).

Main works: Hujjat Allah al-Baligha, Izalat al-Khafa 'an Khilafat al-Khulafa, al-Budur al-Bazigha, Fath al-Rahman (a Persian translation of the Qur'an).

Core ideas:

• Irtifaqat (stages of social development): (1) the primitive stage of basic needs; (2) household and economic organisation; (3) the city-state with government; (4) the international order or universal caliphate, which settles disputes between states.
• Caliphate: He distinguishes an outward caliphate (khilafat-e-zahira, political) from an inward one (khilafat-e-batina, spiritual).
• Economic justice: He traced Mughal decline to heavy taxes on peasants and traders, idle courtiers draining the treasury, and luxury. His remedies were fair taxation and productive work.
• Religious reform: He revived the study of the Qur'an and Hadith, reconciled the legal schools and sought unity among Sunni groups.
• Political action: He wrote to Ahmad Shah Abdali and others asking them to check the Marathas, which is linked to the Third Battle of Panipat (1761).

Influence: His successors included Shah Abdul Aziz, the movement of Syed Ahmad Barelvi, Deoband and, in part, Aligarh. He is often called a source of Muslim revivalism in South Asia.

Criticisms: His letter to a foreign invader is controversial. Indian nationalist historiography condemns it. Pakistani and Muslim revivalist historiography presents it as a defence of Muslim power against the Marathas.

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838/39–1897)

Life: He called himself "Afghani", but Nikki Keddie argues that he was born at Asadabad near Hamadan in Iran and was Shi'a by birth. On her reading, he hid this to present himself as a Sunni Afghan. He was active in Afghanistan, India, Egypt (expelled 1879), Paris, London, Iran and Russia, and died in Istanbul in 1897.

Main works: al-'Urwa al-Wuthqa (The Firmest Bond), a journal published with Muhammad Abduh in Paris in 1884. The Refutation of the Materialists (written in Persian in India, translated into Arabic by Abduh), and his reply to Ernest Renan on Islam and science (1883).

Core ideas:

• Pan-Islamism: Muslims across states and sects should unite, because only unity can resist European power.
• Anti-imperialism: Europe, and above all Britain, is the main threat to the Muslim world.
• Reason and science: Islam is compatible with reason and modern science. Muslims declined because they abandoned rational inquiry, not because of their faith.
• Constitutionalism: Despotic rulers who collaborate with foreign powers should be checked by constitutions and consultation.
• Activism: Reform needs political action and journalism, not scholarship alone.

Influence: He shaped Muhammad Abduh and, through Abduh, Rashid Rida and Islamic modernism. His circle in Egypt fed into the nationalist Urabi movement (1879–1882). His letter to the leading Shi'a cleric Mirza Shirazi helped trigger the Iranian Tobacco Protest (1891–92). Iqbal praised him in the Javid Nama.

Criticisms: Nikki Keddie notes that his positions shifted with his patrons and audiences, often opportunistically. Elie Kedourie (Afghani and 'Abduh, 1966) argued that he was privately a religious sceptic who used Islam as a political tool. His work also offers slogans more than a systematic theory of the state.

Rashid Rida (1865–1935)

Life: Born in al-Qalamun near Tripoli in Ottoman Syria (now Lebanon). He moved to Cairo in 1897 to work with Muhammad Abduh, and he edited the journal al-Manar from 1898 until his death in 1935.

Main works: al-Manar (journal), Tafsir al-Manar (a Qur'an commentary begun from Abduh's lectures), and al-Khilafa aw al-Imama al-'Uzma (1922–23). He wrote the last after Turkey separated the caliphate from the sultanate in 1922, and before it abolished the caliphate in 1924.

Core ideas:

• Ideal caliphate and caliphate of necessity: The true caliph must be a just mujtahid of Quraysh, freely chosen. Where no such person exists, a "caliphate of necessity" may be accepted for a time to avoid chaos, as the Ottoman caliphate had been.
• Ahl al-hall wa'l-'aqd as a representative body: He reinterpreted the classical electors as a representative assembly, close to a modern parliament, that elects the caliph and holds him to account through shura.
• The ijtihad caliph: The caliph should be qualified for ijtihad and should revive Islamic law. Rida proposed a college to train such candidates.
• Arab caliphate: Insisting on Qurashi descent pointed to an Arab caliph and away from the Turks.
• Salafi reform: Return to the Qur'an, the Sunnah and the practice of the early generations (salaf), drawing on Ibn Taymiyyah. In later life he moved closer to Wahhabism and supported Ibn Saud.

Influence: He passed Abduh's reformism to the next generation in a more conservative, Salafi form. Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (1928), read al-Manar and continued it briefly after Rida's death. His caliphate treatise underlies modern ideas of an "Islamic state".

Criticisms: The plan was utopian, because no qualified caliph existed and the caliphate was abolished in 1924. Ali Abd al-Raziq, in al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm (1925), argued against him that the caliphate is not a religious obligation at all. Critics also see a tension between his parliament-like electors and his demand for a Qurashi mujtahid caliph.

Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938)

Life: A poet-philosopher from Sialkot. He studied at Cambridge and completed a doctorate at Munich (1907). He is Pakistan's national poet.

Main works: Asrar-i-Khudi (1915), Rumuz-i-Bekhudi (1918), Bang-i-Dara, Bal-i-Jibril, Zarb-i-Kalim, and The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (lectures published 1930; enlarged Oxford edition 1934). Also the Allahabad Address (29 December 1930) and his letters to Jinnah (1936–37).

Core ideas:

• Khudi (selfhood): The individual ego is developed through love, effort and obedience to divine law, leading towards niyabat-e-ilahi (vicegerency).
• Bekhudi (community): The individual finds fulfilment within the millat, whose basis is spiritual, not territorial or racial. Iqbal criticised European territorial nationalism.
• Ijtihad: He called it the "principle of movement in the structure of Islam". He proposed that the power of ijtihad pass from individual jurists to a Muslim legislative assembly, as a form of ijma. He also praised the Turkish view that the caliphate could be vested in an elected assembly.
• Spiritual democracy: Islam's ideal combines equality and freedom under divine law. He criticised Western secular democracy for counting heads instead of weighing them.
• Muslim state in North-West India: At Allahabad he called for a consolidated Muslim state within or outside the British Empire. In his letters he urged Jinnah to consider a separate federation of Muslim provinces.
• Critique of capitalism and communism: He was drawn to Marx's critique of exploitation but rejected its atheism.

Influence: Iqbal gave the Pakistan Movement its ideological basis and influenced Islamic modernism and the debate on ijtihad and parliament. Article 227 of Pakistan's Constitution and the Council of Islamic Ideology reflect a similar approach.

Criticisms: In a letter to Edward Thompson (4 March 1934), Iqbal denied that he had proposed a separate state. Historians therefore debate whether the Allahabad Address meant full sovereignty or a unit within an Indian federation. Traditional ulama objected to giving ijtihad to elected legislators. His poetry can be quoted in support of contradictory positions.

Point	Shah Waliullah	Afghani	Rashid Rida	Iqbal
Main concern	Mughal decline; Muslim revival	European imperialism; despotic rulers	Restoring the caliphate after 1922–24	Muslim identity and future in colonial India
Basis of community	Shariah, with the legal schools reconciled	Pan-Islamic unity across states and sects	Shariah and a Salafi return to the sources	Spiritual millat, not territory or race
Political form	Universal caliphate over states (fourth irtifaq)	Constitutional limits on rulers	Mujtahid caliph elected by ahl al-hall wa'l-'aqd	Muslim state in North-West India; ijtihad by legislature
Method	Scholarship and letters to rulers	Activism and journalism	Journalism (al-Manar) and juristic writing	Philosophy, poetry, political address

9. Model answer outlines: CSS-style questions

Paper format: Paper I carries 100 marks. It normally has a compulsory MCQ part worth 20 marks, then a subjective part in which you answer four questions, each worth 20 marks, from a choice of about seven. Subjective questions are sometimes split into parts, for example 10 + 10. Check this against the latest FPSC paper. A good long answer has an introduction with a thesis, 5–7 analytical headings, evidence from works and concepts, a critical evaluation, and a conclusion linked to the present day. The questions below are modelled on recurring past-paper themes and reworded for practice.

Q1. "Plato's ideal state is a blueprint for totalitarianism." Critically examine. [20]

1. Introduction: the Republic, its search for justice, and Popper's charge (1945).
2. Case for the charge: rule by an unaccountable elite, censorship of poets, state control of education, abolition of the family for guardians, the "noble lie".
3. Case against: the aim is harmony of the soul (Annas); common ownership applies only to rulers; rulers serve the good of all; the Laws accepts the rule of law; Strauss and Bloom read the ideal city as ironic.
4. Context: Athenian democracy executed Socrates, and Athens lost the Peloponnesian War.
5. Evaluation: the charge is anachronistic, because totalitarianism needs a modern mass state. It is still a valid warning about rule by experts without accountability.
6. Conclusion: the warning still applies to technocracy today.

Q2. Evaluate Aristotle's theory of revolution. Is it relevant to modern states such as Pakistan? [20]

1. Introduction: Book V of the Politics. Revolution means a change of constitution or of the people who hold power.
2. General cause: disputes about equality and justice.
3. Particular causes: profit, honour, insolence, fear, contempt, disproportionate growth, election intrigues, neglect of small changes.
4. Causes in each type of government: democracies fall through demagogues; oligarchies fall when rulers mistreat the people or quarrel among themselves.
5. Remedies: rule of law, moderation, a middle class, education in the spirit of the constitution, limited terms of office.
6. Relevance: inequality, capture of the state by elites and civil–military imbalance as sources of instability; the middle class and the rule of law as stabilisers.
7. Criticism: the theory is built for the city-state, ignores economic class in Marx's sense, and aims at stability rather than justice. Conclusion.

Q3. "The social contract tradition moves from security to liberty to equality." Discuss with reference to Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. [20]

1. Introduction: the contract as a basis of legitimacy by consent; the different contexts of the three theorists.
2. Human nature and the state of nature compared (use the comparison table).
3. Hobbes and security: the terms of the contract and absolute sovereignty.
4. Locke and liberty: trust, limited government and the right of resistance.
5. Rousseau and equality: the general will and popular sovereignty.
6. Evaluation of the quotation: Hobbes also preserves self-preservation, Locke's "property" protects unequal holdings, and Rousseau's equality risks coercion (Talmon). Shared weaknesses: the contract is historically fictitious, and its individualism is abstract.
7. Conclusion: each thinker's legacy (absolutism, liberalism, democracy) and the modern reworking of the contract in Rawls.

Q4. "Machiavelli separated politics from ethics." Discuss, with reference to The Prince and the Discourses. [20]

1. Introduction: the Italian Renaissance, a fragmented Italy, and Machiavelli's dismissal in 1512.
2. Evidence: judging actions by their results (Prince ch. 18: "one looks to the outcome"); the lion and the fox; being feared rather than loved; religion used as a tool. "The end justifies the means" is a later paraphrase, not his words.
3. Qualification: a "double standard" (a different morality for rulers), not an absence of morality; Berlin's pluralism.
4. The republican Machiavelli of the Discourses: civic virtue, liberty and mixed government (Skinner).
5. Influence: realism and the idea later named raison d'état (Botero, 1589); modern examples in foreign policy.
6. Criticism: Strauss's "teacher of evil"; the danger of cynicism.
7. Conclusion: he freed politics as a subject of study, though not necessarily from all values.

Q5. How did J.S. Mill modify Bentham's utilitarianism? Assess Mill's defence of liberty. [20]

1. Introduction: Bentham's greatest happiness principle and the felicific calculus.
2. Mill's changes: quality of pleasures, individuality, the dignity of the person, secondary moral rules.
3. The harm principle; self-regarding and other-regarding acts.
4. Liberty of thought and discussion: his four grounds (possible truth and infallibility, partial truth, prejudice, dead dogma).
5. Representative government and safeguards against the tyranny of the majority (a phrase taken from Tocqueville).
6. Criticism: Fitzjames Stephen on the unclear boundary of harm; Bradley on the qualitative standard contradicting hedonism; Green on positive freedom; Mehta on liberty limited to "civilised" peoples.
7. Conclusion: relevance to debates on free speech and blasphemy, and to regulating social media.

Q6. (a) Explain Al-Mawardi's qualifications for the imam and his methods of appointment. [10]
(b) "A theory written to rescue a weak caliph." Assess this view of Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya. [10]

1. (a) Context: the Abbasid caliph weak under Buyid control. The imamate is necessary by Shariah.
2. (a) The seven qualifications, listed and briefly explained.
3. (a) Appointment by election (ahl al-hall wa'l-'aqd) or by nomination; the debate over the number of electors.
4. (b) For the view: Gibb's reading; the amirate by seizure and the acceptance of a single elector fit Buyid realities.
5. (b) Against or qualifying it: the ten duties and the two kinds of vizierate set out a real constitutional framework, and the treatise kept the caliphate alive in theory.
6. (b) Evaluation: a realist compromise that weakened consent and gave no way to remove a ruler. Its legacy for Sunni constitutional theory and modern debates on an Islamic state.

Q7. Discuss Ibn Khaldun's concept of asabiyyah and his theory of the rise and fall of dynasties. [20]

1. Introduction: the Muqaddimah (1377) and the new "science of culture".
2. Asabiyyah: its sources (kinship, hardship, religion) and its function.
3. Badawa and hadara; the corrupting effect of luxury.
4. The three generations of a dynasty (desert vigour; one-man rule with weakened asabiyyah; luxury and loss) and the five stages. Keep these separate from the four-generation theory of prestige.
5. The three types of rule, and the caliphate's change into mulk.
6. Assessment: a forerunner of sociology (Toynbee, Gellner); al-Azmeh warns against modernising him; Lacoste ties the model to the Maghreb.
7. Conclusion: application to party cohesion, dynastic politics and state decline today.

Q8. Explain Allama Iqbal's political thought with special reference to ijtihad, nationalism and the Muslim state. [20]

1. Introduction: Iqbal as poet-philosopher, in the context of colonial India.
2. Khudi and bekhudi: the individual and the millat.
3. Critique of territorial nationalism; the spiritual basis of the community.
4. Ijtihad and the legislative assembly (Reconstruction, lecture on "The Principle of Movement").
5. Spiritual democracy; critique of Western democracy, capitalism and communism.
6. The Allahabad Address (1930) and the letters to Jinnah: the path to Pakistan. Contrast his 1934 letter to Edward Thompson.
7. Evaluation: debates over what he meant; relevance to the Objectives Resolution, Article 227 and the Council of Islamic Ideology. Conclusion.

Q9. (a) Outline Rashid Rida's theory of the caliphate. [10]
(b) How far did Jamal al-Din al-Afghani's pan-Islamism shape modern Muslim political thought? [10]

1. (a) Context: the separation of caliphate and sultanate in 1922 and the treatise of 1922–23.
2. (a) The ideal mujtahid caliph of Quraysh versus the caliphate of necessity; ahl al-hall wa'l-'aqd as a representative body; the Arab caliphate idea.
3. (a) Criticism: the plan was utopian after 1924; Ali Abd al-Raziq's counter-thesis (1925).
4. (b) Afghani's ideas: pan-Islamism, anti-imperialism, reason and science, constitutionalism.
5. (b) Influence: Abduh and Rida, the Urabi movement, the Tobacco Protest, Iqbal.
6. (b) Limits: Keddie on his opportunism, Kedourie on instrumental religion, and the lack of a systematic theory. Conclusion.

Q10. Compare Augustine's and Aquinas's views on the origin and purpose of the state. [20]

1. Introduction: the sack of Rome (410) and The City of God; the recovery of Aristotle in the 13th century and the Summa.
2. Augustine: the two cities; the state as a result of and remedy for sin; peace as "the tranquillity of order".
3. Aquinas: the state as natural (Aristotle); grace perfects nature; law as an ordinance of reason for the common good.
4. The four kinds of law and the status of an unjust law.
5. Church and state in each thinker; "political Augustinianism" as a later use of Augustine.
6. Criticism: Augustine's pessimism and his approval of coercing heretics; Aquinas's theological basis for natural law, rejected by legal positivists.
7. Conclusion: both ideas survive, in Christian realism (Niebuhr) and in natural law and human rights.

Attribution MCQs

Choose one answer for each. Answers follow the list.

1. "Nonsense upon stilts" was said of natural rights by: (a) Burke (b) Hume (c) Bentham (d) J.S. Mill
2. "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk" is from: (a) Kant (b) Hegel (c) Marx (d) Rousseau
3. The term ahl al-hall wa'l-'aqd for the electors of the imam is set out in Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya by: (a) Al-Mawardi (b) Al-Farabi (c) Ibn Khaldun (d) Nizam al-Mulk
4. Irtifaqat, the stages of social development, is a concept of: (a) Iqbal (b) Ibn Taymiyyah (c) Al-Ghazali (d) Shah Waliullah
5. The Siyasatnama was written by: (a) Al-Ghazali (b) Nizam al-Mulk (c) Al-Mawardi (d) Ibn Rushd
6. Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576) is by: (a) Bodin (b) Machiavelli (c) Hobbes (d) Grotius
7. The journal al-'Urwa al-Wuthqa (Paris, 1884) was published by Muhammad Abduh and: (a) Rashid Rida (b) Hasan al-Banna (c) Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d) Ali Abd al-Raziq
8. The journal al-Manar (1898–1935) was edited by: (a) Rashid Rida (b) Afghani (c) Iqbal (d) Shah Waliullah
9. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" opens: (a) Emile (b) the Discourse on Inequality (c) Leviathan (d) The Social Contract
10. Madison's Federalist No. 47 appeals to the authority of: (a) Locke (b) Montesquieu (c) Hobbes (d) Rousseau
11. The idea of "two cities" formed by two loves is from: (a) Aquinas (b) Plato (c) Augustine (d) Al-Farabi
12. The title "Second Teacher" (al-Mu'allim al-Thani) was given to: (a) Ibn Sina (b) Al-Farabi (c) Ibn Rushd (d) Al-Kindi
13. Ijtihad as "the principle of movement in the structure of Islam" is the phrase of: (a) Iqbal (b) Afghani (c) Rashid Rida (d) Shah Waliullah
14. Mill took the phrase "tyranny of the majority" from: (a) Bentham (b) Burke (c) Tocqueville (d) Montesquieu
15. The term raison d'état was popularised by Della ragion di stato (1589), written by: (a) Machiavelli (b) Guicciardini (c) Bodin (d) Botero

1 (c), 2 (b), 3 (a), 4 (d), 5 (b), 6 (a), 7 (c), 8 (a), 9 (d), 10 (b), 11 (c), 12 (b), 13 (a), 14 (c), 15 (d).

Key terms

Term	Definition
Philosopher-king	Plato's ideal ruler, whose knowledge of the Good entitles him to rule.
Polity	Aristotle's mixed constitution of oligarchy and democracy, resting on the middle class.
Two cities	Augustine's earthly city (love of self) and heavenly city (love of God), mixed together in this world.
Natural law	For Aquinas, human reason's share in God's eternal law; the standard every human law must meet.
Virtù	Machiavelli's term for the ruler's energy, skill and boldness in mastering fortune.
Raison d'état	"Reason of state": the view that the survival and interest of the state can justify actions ordinary morality forbids. The term was popularised by Botero (1589).
Sovereignty	Supreme legal authority; for Bodin, the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth.
State of nature	The hypothetical condition of humankind before political authority.
General will	Rousseau's will of the community aimed at the common good, as distinct from the sum of private wills.
Separation of powers	Dividing legislative, executive and judicial power among separate organs to protect liberty.
Principle of utility	The greatest happiness of the greatest number as the test of right action.
Harm principle	Mill's rule that power may be used over individuals against their will only to prevent harm to others.
Dialectic	Development through contradiction and its resolution; idealist in Hegel, materialist in Marx.
Historical materialism	Marx's theory that the mode of production shapes social, political and intellectual life.
Surplus value	The value workers produce in excess of their wages, kept by the capitalist.
Al-madina al-fadila	Al-Farabi's virtuous city, organised to help its citizens reach true happiness.
Ahl al-hall wa'l-'aqd	"Those who loose and bind": the electors or notables who choose the imam and pledge allegiance to him. Rashid Rida recast them as a representative assembly.
Imarat al-istila	Al-Mawardi's "amirate by seizure": recognition of a usurping governor who acknowledges the caliph.
Siyasa shar'iyya	Governance in line with the Shariah; the theme of Ibn Taymiyyah's treatise of that title.
Asabiyyah	Ibn Khaldun's group feeling or social solidarity that drives the rise of dynasties.
Irtifaqat	Shah Waliullah's four stages of social development, from basic needs to an international order.
Pan-Islamism	The call for political unity of Muslims across states and sects against European imperialism, associated above all with Afghani.
Caliphate of necessity	Rashid Rida's term for an imperfect caliphate accepted for a time, when no qualified mujtahid caliph is available, to avoid chaos.
Khudi	Iqbal's concept of the self or ego, strengthened through action and love.
Ijtihad	Independent juristic reasoning; for Iqbal, the principle of movement in Islam.

Quick check

1. Name the author of The Spirit of the Laws and state the year it was published.
2. State Aristotle's three true forms of government.
3. Identify the three parts of the soul in Plato's Republic.
4. Name the seven dimensions of Bentham's felicific calculus.
5. Define the "amirate by seizure".
6. Distinguish between the general will and the will of all.
7. Explain why the Hobbesian sovereign cannot break the social contract.
8. Outline Ibn Khaldun's three-generation theory.
9. Explain how Iqbal proposed to modernise ijtihad.
10. Name Aquinas's four kinds of law.
11. Explain Rashid Rida's distinction between the ideal caliphate and the caliphate of necessity.
12. Compare Al-Ghazali's and Ibn Taymiyyah's views on the caliphate.
13. Assess Marx's claim that the state is an instrument of class rule.
14. "Locke's liberalism is a defence of property owners." Evaluate this view.

1. Montesquieu, 1748.
2. Monarchy, aristocracy and polity.
3. Reason, spirit and appetite.
4. Intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity and extent.
5. Al-Mawardi's doctrine that a governor who has taken power by force may be recognised as legitimate if he acknowledges the caliph and upholds the Shariah.
6. The general will aims at the common good and is always directed towards it. The will of all is the sum of particular, private wills and may be mistaken.
7. The covenant is made among the subjects themselves. The sovereign is not a party to it, so he owes no contractual obligation that could be broken.
8. A dynasty lasts about three generations of about 40 years each, roughly 120 years. The first generation keeps its desert qualities and strong asabiyyah. The second, in settled life, lets royal authority pass to one man; its asabiyyah weakens but survives through memory of the first. The third forgets desert life, sinks into luxury and loses asabiyyah, and the dynasty decays. (The builder, contact, imitator and destroyer sequence belongs to his separate four-generation theory of prestige.)
9. He proposed transferring the power of ijtihad from individual jurists to an elected Muslim legislative assembly acting as a form of ijma, with ulama advising it.
10. Eternal law, natural law, human law and divine law.
11. The ideal caliph is a just mujtahid of Quraysh freely chosen by ahl al-hall wa'l-'aqd. When no such person is available, a less qualified caliph may be accepted for a time out of necessity to avoid chaos, while Muslims work to restore the ideal.
12. Ghazali kept the caliphate as the source of legitimacy but relied on the sultan's power, and he accepted even oppressive rule to avoid fitna. Ibn Taymiyyah moved attention away from the caliphal office to government by the Shariah, trust and justice; for him rulers and ulama together are ulu'l-amr. Both put order and the Shariah before formal procedure, but Ibn Taymiyyah gives the caliphate itself far less weight.
13. For: the state protects property relations, and law and ideology often serve dominant classes. Against: the state has relative autonomy (Engels on Bonapartism, Poulantzas); welfare states and democratic reforms benefit workers; nationalism and religion are independent forces. Conclusion: valuable as a partial explanation, too deterministic as a general law.
14. For (Macpherson): the labour theory of property, tacit consent to unlimited accumulation once money exists, and legislatures of property holders. Against: property includes life and liberty; the "enough and as good" proviso; a right of resistance that belongs to all; religious toleration. Conclusion: Locke's theory has a class bias but also contains universal principles of limited government.