What political thought is: the systematic reflection on political life — the state, power, authority, liberty, equality, justice, rights, obedience and revolution — across time. Political theory systematises it; political ideology weaponises it (your Political Theory course's distinction).
Why law students must study it (the relation to law — the syllabus's own question):
1. Every legal order embodies a political theory. A constitution is applied political philosophy: who is sovereign (Hobbes/Rousseau), why rights exist (Locke), what the state may do (Mill), whom the law serves (Marx — Jurisprudence Unit 3's six schools each answer politically).
2. Every political theory produces a theory of law: Plato's philosopher-lawgiver, Aristotle's rule of law, Cicero's natural law, the contractarians' legislated order, Mill's liberty-limitation principle, Marx's superstructure — this course and Jurisprudence are one story told twice.
3. Legal argument's deepest vocabulary — justice, consent, sovereignty, representation, liberty — was minted here; lawyers argue with these thinkers' coins daily.
4. Nepal's own constitutional debates (sovereignty of the people, inclusion, secularism, socialism-oriented economy) are the syllabus's East-West debate in Nepali dress.
The map of the course: classical (this unit) → contractarians (U2) → moderns (U3) → Eastern thinkers (U4) → socialism, including its Nepali career (U5).