IB Diploma Programme Global Politics SL (first assessment 2019; 2016 guide). The core is shared by SL and HL, and this topic covers its opening unit in full — UNDERSTANDING POWER AND GLOBAL POLITICS — from the nature of power through sovereignty, legitimacy and interdependence to the source-analysis craft the papers demand. The course's key concepts (POWER, SOVEREIGNTY, LEGITIMACY, INTERDEPENDENCE) frame every answer, and the worked examples are original and reconciled.

Must-know for the core unit:

Power 权力 is the ability to influence outcomes and the behaviour of others — fundamentally RELATIONAL (A has power only over B, in a context), and visible as three FACES: the power to decide (visible), the power to set the agenda (hidden), and the power to shape preferences so the agenda is never questioned (invisible). Hard power 硬实力 compels — military force, sanctions, economic leverage; Soft power 软实力 co-opts — culture, values, the attraction of a model (the concept's coiner counted a country's universities, brands and media among its instruments); SMART power is the deliberate blend. The unit's key move is measuring power AS SITUATED: the US commands the hardest arsenal and the largest soft-power machine, yet could not prevent allies from defecting on specific votes — power is capacity in a context, not a score.

Sovereignty 主权 is supreme authority within a territory — the Westphalian settlement's principle (1648) that no outside authority overrides the state inside its borders. Its components: INTERNAL sovereignty (the state's monopoly of law inside), EXTERNAL sovereignty (recognition by other states), WESTPHALIAN sovereignty (non-intervention). The challenges: FROM ABOVE — global institutions and treaties binding states (trade rules, climate commitments, human- rights courts); FROM BELOW — separatist movements and non-state actors claiming authority inside; FROM WITHIN — failed states whose sovereignty is nominal. Sovereignty is bundled, not binary: states pool it (the EU), lease it (bases treaties) and lose it (sanctions regimes) by degrees.

Legitimacy 合法性 is the recognition that makes authority rightful (the difference between power and AUTHORITY. WEBER's three types still frame the field: TRADITIONAL (custom, monarchy), CHARISMATIC (the leader's personal bond) and LEGAL-RATIONAL (rules and offices, the modern state). Legitimacy rests on consent and is TESTED by performance: regimes delivering prosperity and security keep it, regimes failing amid corruption and inflation lose it — and illegitimate power must pay the hard-power price to stay (the authoritarian's dilemma). Internationally, legitimacy flows from recognition, treaties and institutions: a UNSC mandate converts an intervention from violation to enforcement in world opinion.

Interdependence 相互依存 is mutual dependence: states' outcomes are linked by trade, finance, security alliances and the shared environment — symmetric when dependence is mutual and balanced, asymmetric when one side can bear the relationship's rupture more cheaply (the leverage of sanctions). Interdependence creates both incentives for cooperation (the costs of conflict rise) and vulnerabilities weaponised in rivalry — chokepoints, dollar clearing, chip supply: dependence is power politics by other means.

The papers test source analysis 来源分析: identify the CLAIM (what the source asserts), the EVIDENCE offered (data, example, authority), and the PERSPECTIVE (who speaks, from what position, with what interest) — then weigh how the perspective shapes the claim. The toolkit is the history student's OPVL adapted: origin and purpose explain the source's angle; value and limitation are RELATIVE TO THE QUESTION — an official communiqué is limited on motives and excellent on the position a government wanted recorded. A political source's SILENCES — what it does not mention — are evidence too. For the stimulus-based papers, every answer ties concept to case: define power, sovereignty or legitimacy in a sentence, then apply it to the case's named actors and institutions, and weigh the counter-view — the same argue-weigh-judge spine as every essay in this course.

Worked example. A stimulus reports that a mid-sized state defied a great power's sanctions threat and signed a regional trade initiative anyway. The analysis writes itself in the unit's terms: the initiative's banks and market gave the mid-sized state an asymmetric-interdependence hedge (it could bear the rupture more cheaply than the threatener assumed); the great power's hard power was real but its agenda-setting (second-face) power failed because the regional institution had already reframed defection as sovereignty asserted, not defiance — legitimacy, not capability, decided the outcome.

• Power defined relationally; the three faces; hard/soft/smart with one example each (power).
• Sovereignty's four components (internal, external, Westphalian, and the bundling insight); the three challenge directions with a named case each (sovereignty).
• Weber's three legitimacy types; consent and the performance test; the authoritarian dilemma; international legitimacy via recognition and institutions (legitimacy).
• Interdependence: symmetric vs asymmetric; dependence as leverage; chokepoints and clearing as power politics (interdependence).
• Claim, evidence, perspective on any source; silences as evidence; concept-to-case tie in every answer (sources).

Boundary notes: the stimulus papers reward CONCEPT-CASE discipline — a definition, the named actors, the weighing of a counter-view — and the essay's top band demands synthesis across perspectives. All worked examples are original; the classic study facts cited are the standard record.

IB Diploma Programme Global Politics SL (first assessment 2019; 2016 guide). The thematic studies are shared by SL and HL: RIGHTS AND JUSTICE, DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY, and PEACE AND CONFLICT, each studied through contemporary cases. Each kit below gives its concepts, its institutions and law, its classic debates, and a worked case framing — the course's concept-to-case discipline applied across its whole middle.

Must-know for the thematic studies:

Human rights 人权 are universal entitlements by virtue of personhood, codified in the Universal Declaration 世界人权宣言 (1948) and its two Covenants (civil-political; economic-social-cultural) — the THREE GENERATIONS: liberty (speech, vote), equality-claims (work, education, health), and solidarity rights (development, environment, peace). The enforcement architecture is STATE-BASED and weak by design: treaty bodies report, special procedures name, but the hard instruments (sanctions, prosecution) need politics. The theme's central tension: UNIVERSALITY versus CULTURAL RELATIVISM — whether rights claims override local practice (the debate the “Asian values” argument ran), and its modern face, Humanitarian intervention 人道主义干预: when does the responsibility to protect (R2P, 2005) license crossing the sovereignty the core taught? Cases: the International Criminal Court (1998 Rome Statute) prosecuting individuals where states cannot or will not; a humanitarian crisis (Libya 2011, mandated; Syria, blocked) showing the Security Council's veto deciding who is protected.

Worked framing. An essay on R2P writes itself in the course's spine: define R2P (the state's duty, the international community's fallback); apply to Libya (Resolution 1973's no-fly mandate — protection invoked, contested in execution) and to Syria (veto blockage — protection acknowledged, action impossible); weigh the counter-view that R2P legitimises the strong's interventions and so undermines the order it claims to serve; judge: R2P realigned legitimacy without disarming sovereignty — the gap between norm and enforcement is the theme's permanent finding.

Development 发展 is the expansion of people's capabilities — not just income — measured beyond GDP by the Human Development Index 人类发展指数 (health, schooling, income) and pursued through the MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (2000–15) and now the SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (17 goals, 2015–30) with their integration of poverty and planet. Sustainability 可持续性 (the Brundtland formulation) meets present needs without compromising future generations — the definition the geography student already carries, now applied to politics: who decides, who pays, who is heard. The debates: AID versus trade (does aid build capacity or dependence? — the studies disagree, the question is conditional: what kind of aid, in what institutions); DEBT (the burden the Jubilee campaigns targeted); SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT'S contradiction (growth-driven poverty reduction against the emissions budget); and the GLOBAL GOVERNANCE of all three — institutions (the UN development system, the World Bank and IMF with their structural-adjustment history) whose conditionality is itself a power relation.

Worked framing. On SDG implementation: the goals are universal (every state reports, not only the poor ones) and integrated (climate action inside poverty action), the innovation; the counter-case is the accountability gap (no enforcement, voluntary review) — and the judgement: the SDGs redefined legitimacy and direction more than they bound behaviour, exactly the norm-versus-enforcement gap.

The theme's first distinction is Wilsonian 威尔逊式 collective security (one for all, against any aggressor) versus WESTPHALIAN restraint (intervention only in self-defence) — the UN Charter 联合国宪章's architecture tries to run both: the Security Council's Chapter VII powers and the Article 2(4) prohibition. CONFLICT's modern form is INTRA-state (civil wars, with interstate war rare) and the concept toolset is DPIR — the conflict cycle 冲突周期 (DPIR) of defusing, PREVENTION, INTERVENTION and RESOLUTION — applied at every stage from early warning to peacebuilding. Peace 和平 itself divides NEGATIVE (the absence of violence) from POSITIVE (the presence of justice and institutions; Galtung's distinction, and the reason a ceasefire can be unstable. Cases: a peacekeeping mandate (consent-based Chapter VI versus robust Chapter VII), a peace agreement's design (power-sharing, transitional justice), and a nuclear or arms-control regime (deterrence as stability) each anchor the concepts to institutions.

Worked framing. On collective security: the Council's record — Korea (1950, absence-of-veto accident), the Gulf (1991, reversal of aggression by mandate), Rwanda (1994, absent), Libya (2011, contested), Syria (blocked) — reads as the architecture working exactly when the P5 converge and not otherwise: collective security is the great powers' concert with a charter, the critique and the realism in one judgement.

• UDHR 1948 + two Covenants; three generations; universality vs relativism; R2P 2005 with Libya and Syria (rights).
• The ICC (Rome 1998) prosecuting individuals; enforcement's state-based weakness (rights).
• Development as capability; HDI; MDGs to SDGs; aid/trade/debt debates with their conditionality critique (development).
• Sustainability's Brundtland definition and the SDGs' universality-integration-accountability triad (development).
• Wilsonian vs Westphalian; the Charter's Chapter VII and 2(4); DPIR's cycle; negative vs positive peace (peace).
• The case spine: each theme's two worked framings and the norm-versus-enforcement gap as the course's recurring finding (all).

Boundary notes: the thematic papers reward CONCEPT-TO-CASE discipline with contemporary examples (post-2000 preferred), and the top band synthesises across the theme rather than stacking cases. All worked framings are original; the classic facts cited are the standard record.

IB Diploma Programme Global Politics SL (first assessment 2019; 2016 guide). The internal assessment is shared by SL and HL: the engagement project 参与式项目: a 2 000-word written report on a political issue the student genuinely engages with beyond the classroom, worth 25% at SL and 20% at HL. This handout walks the four marked components — the issue and its synthesis, the research, the engagement itself, and the analysis-and-reflection spine — with the worked homelessness example throughout.

Must-know for the engagement project:

The issue 议题 must be political — about power, decisions and who gets what: not “the ocean is polluted” but “who decides what is dumped where, and who pays”. It must be DEBATABLE (real competing perspectives, not a settled question), GLOBALLY CONNECTED (a local manifestation of a global issue, or vice versa — the levels-linked framing), and ENGAGEABLE (something a student can genuinely act on: join, observe, interview, volunteer, campaign). The framed question names the issue, the level (local-to-global) and the key concepts from the core: “How does [my city]'s sanctuary policy exercise power and construct legitimacy, and whose rights does it serve?” beats “Is immigration good?” on every criterion.

The research plan 研究计划 follows: the sources needed (documents, data, reports, and PEOPLE to interview or observe), the PERSPECTIVES to represent (at least two, ideally the interested parties themselves), and a timeline that fits the engagement. The plan criterion rewards exactly this — an issue framed with concepts, a source map, and a realistic engagement route.

Engagement 参与 is the project's heart: FIRST-HAND experience of the issue — volunteering with the NGO, attending the council committee, interviewing the organiser and the affected, joining the campaign, observing the tribunal. It must be PURPOSEFUL (chosen to answer the framed question, not generic volunteering) and DOCUMENTED (notes, transcripts, photographs, logs — the evidence the report cites). Ethics 伦理 run through: informed consent for interviews, anonymity where requested, and the researcher's position owned in the reflection.

Research 研究 supplies the second stream: published sources — reports, statistics, treaty texts, journalism, scholarship — so the report can weigh what the engagement shows against the documented record, and compare PERSPECTIVES: the official, the activist, the affected, the academic. The synthesis criterion wants perspectives EVALUATED, not just quoted: whose account is self-serving, whose is evidenced, whose voice is missing.

The report 报告 (2 000 words) is structured as: the ISSUE and its context (levels-linked, concepts applied); the RESEARCH findings (sources and perspectives compared); the ENGAGEMENT (what was done, found, heard); the ANALYSIS (concepts applied to the experience — power observed, legitimacy contested, rights distributed) and the REFLECTION (what the engagement taught that research alone could not; the limits of what was learned; what the student would do differently — and the positionality: who the researcher was in the field).

Worked example. Issue: the city's response to street homelessness: a service question on its face, a power-and-rights question underneath. Framing: “How does [city]'s encampment-clearance policy exercise power over the unhoused, and on what legitimacy does it rest?” Engagement: twelve shifts at an outreach charity; interviews with an organiser, a housing officer and two residents of a cleared site (consent, anonymity). Research: the council's policy documents, national homelessness statistics, the housing charity's reports, one academic study of clearance effects. Analysis: the clearances show second-face power (the agenda set before residents are heard) and the legitimacy contest between procedure (mandated, consulted) and performance (the cleared return); rights frame the loss of shelter against the neighbourhood's claims. Reflection: the engagement showed the document-record gap — the official account of “support- first” bore no relation to the residents' experience; the project's limits (two residents, one city, twelve shifts) are named.

• The issue: political, debatable, globally connected, engageable — framed as a question with two key concepts (framing).
• The plan: sources mapped, perspectives identified, a realistic engagement route (framing).
• Engagement first-hand, purposeful, documented, ethical — consent and anonymity (engagement).
• Research: published sources weighed against the experience; perspectives evaluated, silences named (research).
• The report's four parts with reflection owning positionality and limits; the worked example's finding (report, worked).