International Relations for Exams — Glossary

Act East is India's foreign policy doctrine, formalised in 2014, that upgrades its earlier Look East Policy from economic engagement to strategic, security and connectivity partnership with Southeast Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific.

The Al-Qaeda/Taliban sanctions regime is the UN Security Council's targeted counter-terrorism measure imposing asset freezes, travel bans, and arms embargoes on listed individuals and entities.

Alexander Wendt is a German-American international relations theorist whose 1992 article and 1999 book established social constructivism as a major school of IR theory.

Alliances are formal or informal agreements between sovereign states to coordinate security policy, typically promising mutual military assistance against a common adversary.

Allison's models are three analytical lenses—Rational Actor, Organizational Process, and Governmental Politics—proposed by Graham T. Allison to explain foreign-policy decision-making.

The Analytical Engine was Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, designed from 1837, that anticipated the stored-program architecture of modern digital computers.

Analytical scaffolding is a structured set of conceptual frameworks and reasoning templates that candidates internalise to organise evidence and argument under examination conditions.

Bretton Woods refers to the 1944 conference and resulting monetary system that fixed exchange rates to the gold-convertible US dollar and created the IMF and World Bank.

Communication is the structured transfer of information, ideas, or instructions between a sender and a receiver through a channel, enabling shared understanding and coordinated action.

Compellence is a coercive strategy that uses threats or limited force to make an adversary actively do something or undo an action already taken.

The constitutive theory holds that a state becomes a subject of international law only when it is recognised as such by existing states.

In world-systems analysis, the "core" denotes the group of economically dominant, capital-intensive states that appropriate surplus value from the global periphery.

Current affairs is the body of recent national and international events, policies, and developments that competitive examinations test to assess a candidate's awareness of contemporary governance and global trends.

The declaratory theory holds that statehood and recognition exist independently, so a new state acquires legal personality once it satisfies factual criteria, regardless of recognition by others.

Definitional MCQs are multiple-choice questions that test a candidate's command of the precise meaning, scope, or technical attributes of a defined term, concept, or institution.

Geneva is the Swiss city that serves as the principal European headquarters of the United Nations and the hub of multilateral diplomacy, humanitarian law, and global health governance.

A government is the institutional machinery through which a state formulates, enforces, and adjudicates its laws and exercises sovereign authority over a defined territory and population.

Hans Morgenthau was a German-American scholar whose 1948 work Politics Among Nations founded modern classical realism in international relations theory.

High-yield facts to retain are the compact, recurring, high-frequency data points—dates, articles, treaties, ratios, and named authorities—that disproportionately influence scores in competitive civil-service and diplomatic examinations.

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) was an American sociologist who founded World-Systems Theory, analyzing the capitalist world-economy as a single core-periphery hierarchy.

India is a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic in South Asia, governed by the Constitution of 1950, and the world's most populous nation.

The INF Treaty was a 1987 US–Soviet arms-control accord that eliminated all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometres.

Intensity denotes the degree of concentration, magnitude, or strength of a measured phenomenon per unit of reference, distinguishing qualitative force from mere quantitative scale.

In international relations, interests are the material and ideational ends—such as security, wealth, and prestige—that states and other actors pursue through foreign policy.

The International Day of Yoga is a United Nations–designated observance held annually on 21 June, recognising yoga as a holistic practice for physical and mental wellbeing.

Irving Janis (1918–1990) was an American research psychologist at Yale University who coined and theorised "groupthink," the defective decision-making mode of cohesive groups.

Robert Jervis (1940–2021) was an American political scientist whose work on perception, misperception, and the security dilemma shaped defensive realism in international relations theory.

John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist who founded offensive realism, arguing that great powers inevitably seek regional hegemony in an anarchic international system.

Kenneth Waltz (1924–2013) was an American political scientist who founded neorealism, locating the causes of international conflict in the anarchic structure of the state system.

Keohane and Nye are American international-relations theorists whose concept of "complex interdependence" challenged realism by stressing multiple channels, absent hierarchy of issues, and the declining utility of military force.

National interest is the totality of a state's vital strategic, economic, and security goals that its government pursues to ensure survival, sovereignty, and prosperity.

Neighbourhood First is India's foreign-policy doctrine prioritising deepened political, economic, security and connectivity ties with its immediate South Asian neighbours.

Pakistan is a South Asian federal parliamentary republic created on 14 August 1947 by the Partition of British India as a homeland for the subcontinent's Muslims.

Panchsheel are the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence governing inter-state conduct, first codified in the preamble to the 1954 India-China Tibet Agreement.

Realism is a theory of international relations holding that sovereign states, driven by national interest and power, are the principal actors in an anarchic, self-help system.

Robert Jervis (1940–2021) was an American political scientist whose work on perception, misperception, and the security dilemma shaped defensive realism and international-relations theory.

Self-help is the realist principle that, in an anarchic international system lacking a central enforcing authority, each state must rely on its own capabilities to ensure its survival and security.

A state is a political community possessing a defined territory, a permanent population, an effective government, and the capacity to enter relations with other states.

Article 2 of the UN Charter (1945) sets out the seven foundational principles governing the conduct of the Organization and its member states.

Uniting for Consensus is a bloc of states, led by Italy and Pakistan, that opposes the addition of new permanent members to the UN Security Council.