Optional — Political Science & IR for UPSC CSE

PSIR is really four papers, not two — political theory, Indian government, IR theory and foreign policy — and each rewards a different kind of writing. The theory half is where the candidate pool thins and where scores separate; almost everyone can write competently on Indian federalism, and far fewer can state Rawls's principles in lexical order or set neorealism against neoliberal institutionalism on a specific question. Prepare Paper II Section A before Paper I Section B, write theory at the level of derivation and objection rather than attribution, and anchor every IR answer to a theoretical frame in its opening paragraph.