Diplomacy & Politics Glossary

The 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh is the supreme law of the People's Republic…

The Évian Accords were a March 1962 ceasefire treaty between France and the…

A. K. Fazlul Huq (1873–1962) was a Bengali statesman, the "Sher-e-Bangla," who…

The ABC tripartite model holds that every attitude comprises three interlinked…

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act) ended the…

In diplomacy and constitutional law, "absolute" denotes a power, right, or…

Acceptance is the active, clear-eyed recognition of reality as a basis for…

Accommodation rather than assimilation is the principle by which the Indian…

Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861–1944) was an Indian chemist, nationalist…

The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 was a U.S.-Spain agreement ceding Florida to the…

ADM Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla (1976) was the Supreme Court ruling that during…

Administrative and political unification denotes the British colonial…

Administrative theory is the body of scholarship that systematically explains…

The African Union became a permanent member of the G20 in 2023, securing the…

The Age of Consent Act, 1891 was a colonial Indian law that raised the minimum…

Age-and-term norms are informal Chinese Communist Party rules capping the…

Ageing refers to the rising share and absolute number of elderly persons…

The Agrarian Reform Law promulgated on 30 June 1950 was the People's Republic…

The Agreement on Agriculture is a WTO treaty, effective 1995, that disciplines…

Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855 CE) was a Baghdad-born traditionist and jurist,…

China's Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law is the principal statute…

The All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968 are statutory rules framed under…

Verses 275–279 of Sūrat al-Baqarah are the principal Qur'anic passage…

The All-India Services are civil services common to the Union and the States…

The Allahabad High Court is the High Court of the Indian state of Uttar…

Alliances are formal or informal agreements between sovereign states to…

"Always close with significance" is an answer-writing maxim instructing…

"Always conclude forward" is an answer-writing maxim directing candidates to…

An analytical essay is an examination answer that decomposes a proposition into…

Answers with no discernible structure are examination responses that lack a…

Anti-defection is the constitutional law that disqualifies legislators from the…

The Anti-Hindi agitations were a series of mass protests in the Madras…

The anti-Sikh riots of 1984 were organised massacres of Sikhs across India,…

Anushilan Samiti was an early-twentieth-century Bengali revolutionary secret…

The Appellate Body is the standing seven-member tribunal of the World Trade…

An applied essay (申论, shēnlùn) is a Chinese civil-service examination component…

An applied scenario is an examination question that presents a hypothetical…

Appropriation is the legislative act of authorizing the withdrawal and…

Archipelagic sea lanes passage is the right of continuous, expeditious, and…

"Arguments for and against" is an answer-writing structure requiring candidates…

Arid and desert soils are sandy, saline, low-humus soils formed under dry…

Arid or desert soil is a sandy, saline, alkaline soil with low organic content…

An Arrangement on Return is a bilateral or multilateral instrument under which…

ARSIWA Article 2 establishes that an internationally wrongful act of a State…

Articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution guarantee equality before the law…

Articles 228 to 231 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973, establish the…

ASEAN-led summits are the annual diplomatic forums centred on the Association…

The Aspirational Districts Programme is a NITI Aayog-led initiative launched in…

The Assam Accord was a 1985 memorandum of settlement ending the six-year Assam…

The Atacama Desert is a hyper-arid coastal desert in northern Chile, widely…

The Atal Innovation Mission is the Government of India's flagship initiative…

The Atomic Energy Commission is India's apex policy-making body for nuclear…

Attraction and persuasion are the non-coercive instruments of statecraft by…

Article 151 of the Indian Constitution requires the Comptroller and…

Authority is the legitimate, institutionally recognised right to issue…

Autonomous sanctions are coercive economic or political measures imposed…

Secretary, Ministry of Defence v. Babita Puniya (2020) is the Supreme Court…

Back-channel diplomacy is secret, unofficial negotiation conducted through…

A bar chart is a graphical display that represents categorical data using…

Base-rate and per-capita normalization are statistical adjustments that express…

The basic structure doctrine holds that Parliament's amending power under…

The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern arm of the Indian Ocean, the world's…

The BBC World Service is the British Broadcasting Corporation's international…

The Belt and Road Initiative is China's transcontinental infrastructure, trade,…

Bengal is the historic eastern region of the Indian subcontinent, now divided…

The Bengaluru–Chennai corridor is a planned high-density industrial and…

Bilateral defence agreements are treaties between two states establishing…

The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution,…

A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region with at least 1,500 endemic…

The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 is an Indian statute enacted to conserve…

Biology is the natural science concerned with the study of life and living…

A biosphere reserve is a large protected area combining core, buffer, and…

Block grants are federal funds disbursed to U.S. state and local governments…

A Board of Governors is the supreme plenary organ of an international financial…

The Brahmaputra is a major transboundary river that rises in Tibet as the…

Bretton Woods refers to the 1944 conference and resulting monetary system that…

BRICS and the SCO are two non-Western multilateral groupings—one an…

The BUILD Act of 2018 is a U.S. statute that created the Development Finance…

The Bureau of Economic Analysis is a U.S. federal statistical agency within the…

The Cabinet Mission Plan was a 1946 British proposal for a united, federal…

A cadre is a trained official or core member of a political party or state…

Cadre evaluation is the institutionalised Chinese Communist Party system of…

Cadre rotation is the periodic, planned transfer of Chinese Communist Party and…

Catalogues (mulu) are binding administrative lists issued by Chinese state…

Causation and linkage is the historical method of distinguishing immediate…

Causation essays are analytical historical answers that explain why an event…

Causation over chronology is the analytical principle of organising historical…

CEDAW is the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of…

A Census Town is a settlement that satisfies India's statutory demographic…

The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) is India's national…

CGTN (China Global Television Network) is the People's Republic of China's…

A Chairperson is the presiding officer who heads a constitutional body,…

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) was a Bengali Vaishnava saint and reformer who…

The Charter Act of 1813 renewed the East India Company's charter for twenty…

The Charter of the United Nations is the founding treaty of the UN, signed in…

Charter-based bodies are UN human rights organs established directly by the…

The China-UN Peace and Development Fund is a US$200 million Chinese trust fund,…

The Civil Code of the PRC is China's first codified compendium of private law,…

Civil liberties are constitutionally guaranteed freedoms protecting individuals…

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a U.S. federal statute outlawing discrimination…

The Civil Servant Law is China's foundational statute, enacted in 2005 and…

The CMC chairman responsibility system is the principle that the Chairman of…

Coffee is a tropical plantation beverage crop grown from the seeds of the…

In China's party-state, commissions are high-ranking decision-making or…

The Common Programme was the 1949 interim constitution of the People's Republic…

The Communist International (Comintern) was a Moscow-led organisation founded…

Compacts are formal, legally binding agreements between two or more U.S.…

Comparative and thematic refers to an analytical approach in world history that…

The Composite Water Management Index is a NITI Aayog tool launched in 2018 that…

A Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) is a wide-ranging…

Conceptual short-answer and essay questions test a candidate's ability to…

Conciliation is a voluntary dispute-settlement method in which a neutral third…

The Concurrent Legislative List enumerates subjects on which both the federal…

Confucius Institutes are Chinese government-funded centres, hosted within…

A consensus decision rule adopts a measure only when no participating member…

The 2018 amendment to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China was…

The Constitution drafted in Philadelphia is the United States Constitution,…

A constitutional or legal anchor is the specific Article, statute, treaty…

A constitutional doctrine is a judicially developed principle of interpretation…

The Consumer Price Index measures the average change over time in prices paid…

COP28 was the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, held in Dubai, UAE,…

COP28 was the 28th UN Climate Change Conference, held in Dubai in 2023, which…

In world-systems analysis, the "core" denotes the group of economically…

The Corruption Perceptions Index is Transparency International's annual ranking…

The CPC Constitution is the supreme internal charter of the Communist Party of…

Critical minerals are metals and non-metals deemed essential to economic and…

Current affairs is the body of recent national and international events,…

Current-affairs application is the examination skill of linking dated…

The Damodar is a river of eastern India, rising in the Chota Nagpur plateau and…

The Dandi March was Mahatma Gandhi's 24-day, 240-mile walk from Sabarmati…

Data governance is the framework of laws, institutions, and policies that…

Data localization is a legal requirement that data on a country's citizens or…

A "dated instance" is a specific, time-stamped historical event cited as…

De-dollarisation is the deliberate reduction of reliance on the US dollar for…

The Deccan Plateau is a large triangular volcanic and crystalline upland…

The Decision on Comprehensively Deepening Reforms is the landmark policy…

To "decode" a question is to systematically parse its directive verb, scope,…

The Decree on Land was the second decree of the Bolshevik government, passed on…

The Decree on Peace was a proclamation adopted by the Second All-Russian…

Democratization of international relations is the principle that global affairs…

The demographic dividend is the accelerated economic growth a country can…

Deontology is a normative ethical theory holding that the moral worth of an…

The Department of State is the executive department of the United States…

Digital diplomacy is the use of internet technologies, social media, and…

Digital India is a 2015 Government of India flagship programme to transform the…

Direct Benefit Transfer is the Government of India's scheme to credit subsidies…

A directive map is an answer-writing technique whereby a candidate first…

Directive Principles of State Policy are non-justiciable constitutional…

Disinvestment is the sale or liquidation by the government of its equity…

The DNA double helix is the two-stranded, antiparallel spiral structure of…

Douglas McGregor was an American management theorist who formulated Theory X…

The Drone Rules, 2021 are Indian regulations notified under the Aircraft Act,…

Dyarchy was a system of double government in the provinces of British India,…

Ecological Civilization (生态文明) is the Chinese Communist Party's official…

The eight Zakah recipients are the categories of beneficiaries enumerated in…

The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India lists the scheduled languages…

The Eka (Unity) Movement was a 1921–22 peasant uprising in the Awadh region of…

The Eleventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists 29 subjects that may be…

The Emancipation Proclamation was President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 executive…

The Enabling Clause is a 1979 GATT decision that permits developed countries to…

The Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act, 2022 amends India's Energy…

The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 is an umbrella Indian statute empowering…

An Executive Board is the resident decision-making body of an international…

Factual recall is the cognitive ability to retrieve specific, discrete pieces…

The Fall of Dien Bien Phu on 7 May 1954 was the decisive Viet Minh victory over…

The Farakka Barrage is an Indian diversion structure on the Ganga in West…

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent U.S. regulatory agency,…

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is an independent U.S. agency created…

The Federal Shariat Court is a constitutional court in Pakistan empowered to…

Financial inclusion is the process of ensuring affordable, timely access to…

A First Five-Year Plan is a state's inaugural medium-term economic blueprint…

Fiscal deficit is the excess of a government's total expenditure over its total…

A five-year period is the standard fixed term for the Lok Sabha, State…

The Food Corporation of India is a statutory public-sector body created under…

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) was an American mechanical engineer who…

Fundamental Duties are the moral and civic obligations of Indian citizens…

Fundamental Rights are justiciable basic freedoms guaranteed to individuals…

The G20 Leaders' Summit is the annual meeting of heads of state and government…

The Gang of Four was a radical Maoist faction led by Jiang Qing that dominated…

GATT Article I enshrines the most-favoured-nation principle, requiring every…

GATT Article XXIV is the provision permitting WTO members to form customs…

The Gender Development Index measures gender inequality in human development by…

The Gender Inequality Index is a composite UNDP measure of gender-based…

The Generalized System of Preferences is a non-reciprocal, non-discriminatory…

The Global Hunger Index is an annual tool that measures and tracks hunger…

A Governing Council is the apex deliberative and policy-directing body of an…

Grameen Bank is a Bangladeshi microfinance institution that extends small…

Gross National Product is the total market value of all final goods and…

A group exercise is an assessment-centre task in which several candidates…

The GST Council is a constitutional federal body created by Article 279A that…

A high-yield retention list is a curated set of frequently-tested, high-return…

The Hota Committee was a 2004 civil-services reform body, chaired by P.C. Hota,…

The Hundred Flowers Campaign was a 1956–57 Chinese Communist Party initiative…

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a 1966 UN…

India is a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic in South Asia,…

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations is an autonomous body under India's…

The Indus Waters Treaty is a 1960 water-distribution agreement between India…

The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) is a measure that…

The INF Treaty was a 1987 US–Soviet arms-control accord that eliminated all…

An institutional body is a formally constituted organ vested with defined…

An Instrument of Accession was the legal document by which the ruler of a…

Intensity denotes the degree of concentration, magnitude, or strength of a…

The Inter-State Council is a constitutional advisory body established under…

International affairs is the study and conduct of political, economic, legal,…

The International Solar Alliance is a treaty-based intergovernmental…

The International Visitor Leadership Program is the U.S. State Department's…

Jahangir was the fourth Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1605 to 1627,…

Jammu and Kashmir is a Himalayan region acceded to India in 1947, granted…

Japan is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy in East Asia,…

The Jatiya Sangsad is the unicameral national legislature of Bangladesh,…

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) was independent India's first and longest-serving…

A jet stream is a narrow band of fast-flowing, geostrophic wind in the upper…

John Locke (1632–1704) was an English philosopher whose theories of natural…

The JVP Committee was a 1948 panel comprising Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai…

Kathakali is a classical dance-drama of Kerala that enacts stories from the…

The Lakdawala Committee was a 1993 expert group that recommended estimating…

Liuzhi (留置) is a Chinese legal detention measure allowing the National…

The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 is the Indian statute that established the…

Lord Dalhousie was Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856, remembered for…

Madhva (1238–1317 CE) was a Kannada philosopher-saint who founded Dvaita…

The Mahdist state was the Islamic theocratic regime that ruled most of Sudan…

Make in India is the Government of India's 2014 flagship initiative to…

The Mandal Commission was India's Second Backward Classes Commission (1979)…

Marbury v. Madison (1803) is the U.S. Supreme Court decision that established…

The Minamata Convention on Mercury is a 2013 global treaty that controls…

Minimum Support Price is the government-announced floor price at which state…

Mīrābāī was a sixteenth-century Rajput princess and Bhakti poet-saint who…

The Model Code of Conduct is a set of guidelines issued by the Election…

The Monetary Policy Committee is the statutory six-member body that fixes…

Montesquieu (1689–1755) was a French Enlightenment political philosopher whose…

Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist, Nobel laureate, and pioneer of…

The Multidimensional Poverty Index is a composite measure that identifies…

The National Assembly is the directly elected lower house of Pakistan's…

The National Biodiversity Authority is the statutory body established under…

The National Food Security Act, 2013 is an Indian statute that gives a legal…

The National Green Tribunal is a specialised statutory body established under…

The National Security Act of 1947 is the U.S. statute that reorganized the…

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission is one of India's eight missions…

Negative consensus is a decision rule under which a proposal is adopted…

The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is India's large-scale, multi-round…

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1920,…

NIST is the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal…

The Nolan Principles are seven ethical standards — selflessness, integrity,…

The Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-1922) was Gandhi's first nationwide mass…

A right or provision is non-justiciable when it cannot be enforced through a…

India's Northeast is a region of eight states linked to the mainland by the…

November 2026 is the eleventh month of the Gregorian year 2026, a calendar…

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a 1968 multilateral treaty that seeks…

The Objectives Resolution is the 1949 foundational document of Pakistan's…

Over-urbanization is a condition in which a region's level of urbanization…

The Padma Bridge is a 6.15-kilometre multipurpose road-rail bridge over the…

Pakistan Affairs is a compulsory CSS examination subject covering Pakistan's…

Panchamrit is the set of five climate commitments announced by India at the…

The People's Republic of China is the socialist state founded by the Chinese…

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was the U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld…

The Periodic Labour Force Survey is India's official household survey, launched…

PM-KUSUM is a Government of India scheme launched in 2019 to promote solar…

The political-theory (政治理论) paper is a core written subject in China's national…

Popular sovereignty is the doctrine that legitimate political authority derives…

The precautionary principle holds that where an activity threatens serious or…

The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 is the principal Indian statute…

Probity in governance is the practice of strict adherence to ethical, moral,…

The Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) is an Indian government scheme that…

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is ISRO's four-stage expendable…

The Punchhi Commission was the Commission on Centre-State Relations,…

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was a Bengali polymath, poet and Nobel laureate…

The Radcliffe Line is the boundary demarcating India and Pakistan, drawn in…

The ready-made garments (RMG) sector is Bangladesh's export-oriented apparel…

The Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) is the permanent counter-terrorism…

The repo rate is the interest rate at which the Reserve Bank of India lends…

The Revolt of 1857 was a widespread armed uprising against British East India…

The Right to Information is the legally enforceable entitlement of citizens to…

The Right to Information Act, 2005 is an Indian statute that empowers any…

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was a Genevan Enlightenment philosopher whose…

The Rowlatt Act of 1919 was a repressive British law empowering arrest without…

The Right to Information Act, 2005 is an Indian statute empowering any citizen…

Russia is a transcontinental Eurasian state, successor to the Soviet Union and…

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is an eight-member…

The Sangeet Natak Akademi is India's national academy for music, dance and…

The Sarkaria Commission was a three-member body constituted by the Government…

The SDG India Index is NITI Aayog's composite tool that scores and ranks Indian…

The Securities and Exchange Board of India is the statutory regulator of the…

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, passed in 1974, declared…

The Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61) was India's industrialisation-focused plan…

The Seven Principles of Public Life are the ethical standards—selflessness,…

The Seven-Year Strategy is NITI Aayog's medium-term planning document released…

The Seventeenth Amendment refers to two distinct constitutional measures: the…

Sevottam is an Indian framework and quality-management model for assessing and…

The Shanghai Communiqué is the 1972 joint statement issued by the United States…

Single citizenship is the constitutional principle whereby every person in…

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) was a Muslim reformer, educationist and founder…

The Six Assurances are six policy commitments the United States conveyed to…

"Six months" is a recurring constitutional time-limit in Indian polity…

The Smithsonian Agreement was a December 1971 accord among the Group of Ten…

The socialist market economy is China's official economic model combining…

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the December 1979 military intervention…

Space is the physical expanse beyond Earth's atmosphere, governed…

Stability is the capacity of a political system to maintain orderly governance,…

A state is a political community possessing a defined territory, a permanent…

The States Reorganisation Commission was a three-member body appointed in 1953…

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were two rounds of US–Soviet…

The Supreme Court is the highest appellate and constitutional court of a state,…

Sustainable development is development that meets present needs without…

The Swadeshi movement was an Indian nationalist campaign, launched in 1905…

The Tehran Conference was the first wartime meeting of the Allied "Big…

The Thirteenth Amendment is a constitutional amendment, distinct in each…

A "three consecutive quarters" trend refers to data measured over three…

Trade is the voluntary exchange of goods, services, and capital across national…

"Treaty of Paris" denotes several distinct peace treaties signed in Paris, most…

The Twelfth Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists eighteen functional items…

The Two-Nation Theory holds that Muslims and Hindus of the Indian subcontinent…

A two-thirds majority is a supermajority threshold requiring at least 66.67…

Article 2 of the UN Charter (1945) sets out the seven foundational principles…

The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1945 to…

United States v. Lopez (1995) is the Supreme Court decision that struck down a…

United States v. Nixon (1974) is the U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that…

The Uruguay Round was the eighth and most ambitious round of multilateral trade…

The USD 100 billion per year is the climate finance pledge by which developed…

Value-addition is the answer-writing technique of enriching a response with…

The Voice of America is the official external broadcasting service of the…

Water is the constitutionally and administratively regulated natural resource…

The Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014 is an Indian statute that establishes…

The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 is the central Indian statute that…

The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 is the central Indian statute that protects…

The Zila Parishad is the apex (third) tier of the Panchayati Raj system at the…