| Approach | Core question | Exponents & example | Criticism |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophical | What is the just state? What ought to be? | Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Rawls (A Theory of Justice, 1971) | Speculative; unverifiable; ignores facts |
| Legal | What does the law/constitution provide? | Blackstone tradition; Dicey on constitutional conventions; the study of the Government of Nepal Acts and the 2015 Constitution | Law-in-books ≠ law- in-action; silent on power behind law |
| Historical | How did institutions evolve? | Seeley (The Expansion of England); studies of the Rana regime's collapse; Nepal's constitutional history (Government of Nepal Act 2004 BS → Interim 2063 → 2072) | Descriptive; biased toward elites and documents |
| Institutional | How are organs structured? | Studies of parliament, presidency, courts; formal descriptions of Nepal's federal parliament | Static; formalism — ignores voters, parties, culture, power |
Common defect of the traditional approaches: they studied the state from the top down and from the inside out — constitutions rather than citizens, formal structures rather than behaviour.