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(Study Material) Political Science Study Material: Glossary

Submitted by IASguru on Thu, 2010-03-18 14:14

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Political Science Study Material: Glossary

Abdication
If a King or a ruler voluntarily surrenders his throne or seat of the power to his successors, it is called an act of abdication.

Adjournment Motion
The Legislature carries on its business according to the given agenda, but a matter of urgent public importance can be brought before the Legislature and discussed through Adjournment Motion by interrupting its regular business. An Adjournment Motion should be supported by not less than 50 members of the House for being accepted. If accepted, it results in the holding the ongoing business of the House and discussing the matter raised in the Adjournment Motion. The basic idea behind this motion is to give an opportunity to the House to discuss a matter of urgent public importance. The matter should be of definite nature and should have factual basis. The discussion on the matter takes place at 1600 hours and continues for two and half hours. At the end of the discussion, voting takes place. Since voting exposes the Government's strength in the House, the ruling party tries not to allow the acceptance of the Adjournment Motion in the House.

Administrative Law
Administrative law is the legal code, or set of rules and precedents, governing relations between the individual citizen and the state. Many such interactions, for example a contractual dispute between the administration and a company supplying it service, naturally fall within ordinary civil law but even in cases like this there may be special rules that would not apply in a conflict between two private companies. The extent to which administrative law is distinct from national civil law, and the mechanisms for handling disputes vary widely. It is important to distinguish between administrative law and constitutional law because the former never deals with the legitimacy of legislation per se, but with that of administrative acts carried out under legislation.

Adult Franchise
In democratic countries, all the adult citizens of certain age without any distinctions of caste, creed, colour, religion or sex are given the right to vote. This is called an adult franchise. The prescribed minimum age for the citizens to avail the voting right may differ from country to country. For example, it is 18 years in the USA and Russia. The minimum age has been reduced in India from 21 years to 18 years by the 61st Constitutional Amendment. The assumption behind prescribing the minimum age is that after this age a person gets discretionary capacity to exercise his/her vote in a prudent manner. In a way the adult franchise is also a universal franchise as there is no distinction with respect to giving the voting rights to all the adult citizens.

Amnesty
Amnesty refers to a condition when the Government grants pardon, in general way, to criminals and imprisoned and they are absolved of criminal accusations. In most of the cases, Amnesty is granted to the political prisoners. Anarchism
There are political thinkers who advocate the view that the State, the Government, law or any organized authority stifles the individual liberty and thus are obstacles in the free development of the individual and the society. Thus, they support a view of society where there will be no State, no Government or no organized authority at all. The emerging situation is similar to anarchy. This set of ideas is referred to as Anarchism. The Anarchism is of two types. First in which the future society is established through violent means and the second in which only peaceful means are accepted to establish such society. Mahatma Gandhi is known as a 'Philosophical Anarchist'.

Anarchy
In literal terms, this refers to a situation where there is no Government worth the name or there is not the rule of law. Consequently, lawlessness, disorder or anarchy prevails. In the society, might becomes right and the weak suffers. Apartheid
Apartheid was the official doctrine of the South African government, and the ruling National Party, between 1948 and 1991. Meaning 'separateness', it was in practice nothing more than an excuse for domination by the white minority population of blacks and 'coloureds'. The word 'coloured' is used here in the South African legal sense as someone who cannot be classified as black, but is not 'purely' white. Apartheid consisted of a set of legal inequalities.

Arbitration
Arbitration is a method of conflict resolution which, with more or less formalized mechanisms, occurs in many political and legal spheres. There are two main characteristics to arbitration. The first is that it is a voluntary process under which two parties in conflict agree between themselves to be bound by the judgement of a third party which has no other authority over them; the judgement, however, is not legally binding. The second is that there is usually no clear body of law or set of rules that must apply; the arbitrator is free, subject to any prior agreement with the conflicting parties, to decide on whatever basis of justice is deemed suitable.

Armistice
Armistice refers to a situation of agreement between two or more nations who were at war. In armistice, two parties which are in the condition of hostility or war arrive at an agreement to end the hostility to engage in mutual exchange of ideas and viewpoint. The term 'ceasefire' differs from armistice in the sense that the former is temporary and includes only the end of military hostilities following war or aggression, whereas the latter is a peace agreement between the two nations.

Authority
Authority means the right to give an order, which will be obeyed with no question as to that right, or, if not an order, the right to evoke legitimate power in support of a decision. Thus someone may have the authority to instruct soldiers to fire on a crowd, the authority to sign a binding legal document, or the authority to pass a security perimeter or frontier.

Autonomy
Autonomy is a status of a unit or a province in relation to the whole or the central authority, where the unit enjoys the scope and authority to the extent that it can manage its internal affairs on its own without any outside interference.

Ballot
Ballots are votes cast in an election contested by two or more individuals or parties. By extension the ballot box is the box into which the votes are put, and to ballot denotes the process of voting. There are many different kinds of voting procedure. In modern democracies ballots must be cast in secret and an effective and impartial machinery must be established to prevent any tampering with the ballot.

Bamboo Curtain
Bamboo curtain refers to those restrictions and prohibition imposed by the Chinese Government and the Communist party over the Chinese people, which isolate them from the rest of the world. Because of the Bamboo Curtain, the outside world remains unaware of the Chinese affairs and so also the Chinese people do not come into contact with the outside world.

Bandh
This is a pressure technique to highlight some issues, in which a political party or a pressure group gives call for the closure of shops, Government offices, schools and other activities for a certain period. Bandh is organized to protest against the policies and programmes of the Government.

Bi-cameral Legislature
Bi-cameral Legislature means a Legislature which consists of two Houses, the Upper House and the Lower House. The Lower House is also called a popular house as its members are elected directly by the people. In modern times, most of the Legislatures are Bi-cameral Legislatures. The concept of Bi-cameral Legislature originated and developed in the Great Britain.

Bilateral Agreement
The agreement or the understanding arrived at between only two parties is called bilateral agreement. Similarly if such agreement is made among more than two parties, it is called multilateral agreement. Also, when some announcement or declaration is made by single party without the reference of other party or group, it is called a unilateral declaration.

Bill of Rights
Many constitutions have bills of rights, often under different names, protecting certain vital civil liberties. The most imitated bills of rights are the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which has survived into the constitution of the Fifth Republic, and the first ten amendments to the US Constitution ratified in 1791, although the English bill of rights, enacted in 1689 to establish parliament's sovereignty in relation to the monarchy, is earlier. A typical bill of rights will contain provisions guaranteeing the basic natural rights, such as the freedoms of speech, religion and assembly and the right to own property. It will usually also contain a set of more legalistic civil rights, including, for example, the right to a fair trial, perhaps by jury and with representation, prohibitions on cruel and excessive punishment and protection against double jeopardy.

Bolshevism
Bolshevism comes from a Russian word 'Bolshevik', which literally means 'majority'. The Russian Revolution of 1917 is called the Bolshevik Revolution because it was supported by the majority of the people. Bolshevism, thus stands for the ideals and principles of the communist revolution as propagated by the revolutionaries in Russia.

Boot Legging
This refers to an illegal practice of manufacturing and sale of alcohol and wine without a Government license to do so.

Bourgeoise
Bourgeoise means a rising middle class consisting of the the businessmen, industrialists, etc. which replaces the the feudal class and becomes instrumental in the development of capitalism. Karl Marx popularized the concept of bourgeoise to refer to a class which controls the means of production and distribution and exploits the working class called proletariat.

Boycott
The declaration of non-participation in the affairs or meeting of a the group or individuals is called Boycott. It signifies that the person or group making declaration of Boycott do not agree with the activities of the groups of the persons which are boycotted.

Brain Drain
Brain Drain is a situation in which the qualified and trained human resources such as technicians and scientists migrate to other countries in search of better opportunities and careers. Thus, the country which has invested heavy amount in development of these human resources suffers and its development is undermined.

Brain Washing
Brain washing means those activities which are employed by a group of Government officials to wield undue influence over the minds of the people. The result is that the people become void of their own ideas and come under the sway of influencing ideas and principles and thus, their brains are washed off.

Buffer state
Buffer State is that State which is located in between two States which are not on good terms. Buffer State tries to play a neutral role in the situation of hostilities between the two States. The location of a buffer state becomes useful in preventing armed hostilities between the two States. For example, Nepal happens to be a buffer State between India and China.

Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy, in its most general sense, describes a way of organizing the activities of any institution so that it functions efficiently and impersonally. The major theorist of bureaucracy was Max Weber, and most subsequent research and theorizing has closely followed his analysis. For Weber, and most subsequent writers, bureaucracy is characterized by a set of basic organizational principles.

By-election
By-election is a mid-term election to fill up one or few constituencies which have become vacant due to resignation, death or otherwise before the completion of the full term of the representatives.