Which of the following statements are not correct? 1. In world politics, 'hard power' can be exercised by both States and other actors involving use of threat or coercion. 2. Globalisation is necessarily economic, not cultural. 3. The term 'Washington Consensus' refers to a policy that seeks intervention in the market. 4. 'Autarky' is generally understood as economic 'self-sufficiency'. Select the correct answer using the code given below.
- (a)1 and 4 only
- (b)2 and 3 only
- (c)2, 3 and 4 only
- (d)1, 2, 3 and 4
Correct — B, 2 and 3 only. Statement 2 is wrong because globalisation is not confined to the movement of goods, capital and labour; it has cultural, political, technological and ecological dimensions as well, and the spread of media, language, food, music and ideas across borders is as much a part of it as trade. Statement 3 is wrong in the opposite direction: the Washington Consensus is a market-liberalising prescription, not an interventionist one — the ten reforms John Williamson gathered under that name in 1989 were fiscal discipline, tax reform, liberalised interest and exchange rates, trade and foreign-investment liberalisation, privatisation, deregulation and secure property rights, all of which pull the state back from the market rather than push it in. Statements 1 and 4 are both correct: hard power means getting outcomes through military or economic threat and coercion, and it is wielded by non-state actors as well as by states, while 'autarky' does mean economic self-sufficiency.
- (a)1 and 4 only — These are the two statements that are correct, so naming them as the incorrect pair reverses the question. Hard power really is coercive power, and autarky really does mean self-sufficiency.
- (c)2, 3 and 4 only — It correctly spots statements 2 and 3 but adds statement 4, which is accurate — 'autarky' comes from the Greek autarkeia, self-sufficiency, and is used in exactly that sense in economics.
- (d)1, 2, 3 and 4 — Statements 1 and 4 are both accurate, so they cannot be counted among the incorrect ones.
Three separate vocabulary items of international relations are being tested at once. Hard power, in Joseph Nye's distinction, is the ability to get what you want by coercion and payment — armies, sanctions, threats — as against soft power, the ability to get it by attraction, which Nye named in 1990. Globalisation is the deepening of cross-border flows of every kind, not only of trade and capital. The Washington Consensus is the label John Williamson gave in 1989 to the set of policy reforms that Washington-based institutions — the IMF, the World Bank and the US Treasury — then agreed were right for Latin America. Autarky is the condition of an economy that meets its own needs without imports.
Items that ask which statements are 'not correct' are answered fastest by marking each statement true or false first and only then reading the codes, because it is very easy to answer the opposite question by accident. Statements 1 and 4 are definitional and survive. Statement 2 fails on the word 'necessarily' — one counter-example, and the sweeping claim is gone. Statement 3 fails because it states the opposite of what the Washington Consensus prescribes. As of the 2024 exam that description of the Washington Consensus was already historical rather than current policy orthodoxy; since the financial crisis, and more sharply since the pandemic and the recent turn to industrial policy in the United States and Europe, its prescriptions have been widely questioned by the very institutions once associated with them.
- Hard power rests on military and economic coercion and inducement; soft power, a term Joseph Nye introduced in 1990, rests on attraction and legitimacy.
- Globalisation has cultural, political, technological and ecological dimensions alongside the economic one.
- John Williamson coined 'Washington Consensus' in 1989 for a set of ten market-oriented reforms including trade liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation.
- Autarky, from the Greek autarkeia, means economic self-sufficiency — an economy that does without imports.
Statements 2 and 3 are the incorrect ones, which gives the code 'b'.
- Answering the opposite question — the stem asks which statements are NOT correct.
- Assuming 'Washington Consensus' must mean government direction because Washington is a government capital; it names a consensus of the Washington-based financial institutions in favour of markets.
- Reading 'autarky' as 'autocracy' — one is an economic condition, the other a form of rule.
Asked as a four-statement 'not correct' code item mixing international relations vocabulary; each statement stands or falls on a single definition.
Which one of the following is correct regarding stabilization and structural adjustment as two components of the new economic policy adopted in India?
- (a) Stabilization is a gradual, multi-step process while structural adjustment is a quick adaptation process
- (b) Structural adjustment is a gradual, multi-step process, while stabilization is a quick adaptation process
- (c) Stabilization and structural adjustment are very similar and complementary policies. It is difficult to separate one from the other
- (d) Stabilization mainly deals with a set of policies which are to be implemented by the Central Government while structural adjustment is to be set in motion by the State Governments
Answer(b) Structural adjustment is a gradual, multi-step process, while stabilization is a quick adaptation process — stabilisation corrects short-term imbalances, structural adjustment reforms trade, industry and finance over time.
Stabilisation and structural adjustment are the package the Washington Consensus prescribed, seen through India's 1991 reforms rather than through the label.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The term 'soft power' in international relations is most closely associated with which one of the following?
- (a)The threat of economic sanctions
- (b)The ability to get outcomes through attraction rather than coercion
- (c)The size of a country's armed forces
- (d)The number of treaties a country has signed
Answer(b) The ability to get outcomes through attraction rather than coercion — Joseph Nye introduced the term in 1990 as the counterpart of hard power.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is not part of the Washington Consensus prescriptions?
- (a)Trade liberalisation
- (b)Privatisation of state enterprises
- (c)Expansion of price controls across the economy
- (d)Fiscal discipline
Answer(c) Expansion of price controls across the economy — the Washington Consensus prescribed deregulation and market pricing, not administered prices.