IB DP Global Politics – Core topic – Legitimacy in global politics Study Guide

This study guide teaches the core prescribed topic Legitimacy in global politics for IB Diploma Programme Global Politics. It follows the IB Diploma Programme Global politics guide (first assessment 2026, published February 2024), the course examined from the May 2026 session onwards. The topic sits inside the core topics, “Understanding power and global politics”, and is common to SL and HL. Core topics are the content of Paper 1, and they feed into the integrating essays of Paper 2.

Use it with the revision notes and the practice questions. For the whole course, see the Global Politics hub, the printable checklist and the syllabus guide.

What this unit covers

The guide lists four items of prescribed content under this topic. All four can be examined directly.

Prescribed content	What you must be able to do	SL/HL
Sources of state legitimacy, including government legitimacy	Explain where legitimacy comes from; separate the state from the government in office	SL and HL
Challenges to state and government legitimacy	Analyse challenges from inside the state and from external stakeholders	SL and HL
Sources of legitimacy of non-state actors	Judge non-state actors on representation, interaction, ability and efficacy	SL and HL
Legitimation processes and loss of legitimacy	Explain how legitimacy is gained, strengthened, reduced or lost	SL and HL

What legitimacy means

The guide’s starting idea is simple: an actor or an action is legitimate when a population broadly accepts it as proper. Legitimacy is the reason people accept being governed, and it underpins every form of governance.

Three points follow from this.

• Legitimacy is about acceptance, not force. Power is the ability to effect change. A government can hold power through coercion and still lack legitimacy. Ruling by force alone is costly and unstable.
• Legitimacy is not the same as legality. A law can be passed legally and still be widely rejected. A protest can be illegal and still be widely seen as justified.
• Legitimacy has audiences and degrees. Always ask: legitimate in whose eyes? A government may be accepted by its own citizens and shunned abroad, or the reverse. Individual actions by a state can also be more or less legitimate.

The guide notes that democracy or constitutionalism, where the governed regularly choose who governs, is the most widely accepted form of state legitimacy today. Where that is not the norm, other sources, such as hereditary or traditional leadership, may be claimed. Treat the concept as contestable: different stakeholders weigh the sources differently.

State legitimacy and government legitimacy

The guide asks you to keep these apart.

• State legitimacy is acceptance of the state itself: its borders, its institutions and its right to exist and rule a territory.
• Government legitimacy is acceptance of the particular people or party in office, and of how they gained and use power.

A government can lose legitimacy while the state keeps it. In Sri Lanka in 2022, mass protests during an economic crisis forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee and resign. Nobody questioned whether Sri Lanka should exist; the anger was aimed at the government.

The reverse also happens. Kosovo declared independence in 2008. Many states recognise it, but Serbia, Russia and China do not, and it is not a UN member. Here the legitimacy of the state itself is disputed.

Links with sovereignty

Sovereignty describes a state’s independence and control over its territory. Legitimacy describes acceptance. The two often go together, but not always. After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, they held effective control of the territory, yet their government has received very limited formal recognition from other states. Control without wide acceptance shows sovereignty and legitimacy coming apart. The sovereignty study guide covers the other side.

Sources of state and government legitimacy

The guide lists fifteen possible sources. Grouping them makes them easier to use in an answer. The grouping below is a study aid, not an IB classification.

Group	Sources from the guide	The question it answers
Process	free and fair elections; representation; consent of governed people; transparency	Did power come from the people, openly?
Performance	government performance; citizen welfare; order and stability; economic, political and social development; sustained development; quality of governance	Does the government deliver?
Identity	history; ideology; national identity	Does rule fit a shared story or belief?
Recognition	leadership recognition; international recognition	Do others accept these leaders and this state?

Most real governments combine several sources. A democracy relies mainly on process but loses support if it fails to perform. A one-party state may rely more on performance, order and ideology. China’s government, for example, is often analysed as drawing on economic development and stability, alongside party ideology, rather than on competitive national elections. Some analysts see this as durable; others argue that legitimacy built on performance is exposed when growth slows.

Worked example

Question: Explain two sources of legitimacy that a monarchy without national elections may draw on. (Paper 1 style, AO2.)

Step 1 – choose a case and name it precisely. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy ruled by the Al Saud family.

Step 2 – first source, with an explanation. History and tradition: hereditary rule links the present king to the founding of the state. The king also holds the title Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, which ties the monarchy to religious identity for many citizens.

Step 3 – second source, with an explanation. Citizen welfare and development: oil revenue has funded public-sector jobs, subsidies and services. The Vision 2030 plan, announced in 2016, presents the government as the driver of economic diversification.

Step 4 – show the limit. Performance legitimacy depends on revenue. International standing has also been damaged by human-rights criticism, for example after the 2018 killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Each source is named, linked to the case and explained. Step 4 is not required for “explain”, but it shows the evaluative habit you need for higher-mark questions.

Challenges to state and government legitimacy

The guide asks you to consider challenges from within the state and from external stakeholders. Its areas to consider are political, economic and social instability; inability to govern effectively; inability to ensure the well-being of citizens; excessive use of force and threats; and violence, oppression and human-rights violations.

Challenge	Example	What was damaged
Economic and social instability	Sri Lanka, 2022: shortages of fuel, food and medicine	Performance and citizen welfare
Inability to govern effectively	Lebanon: the Beirut port explosion in August 2020, after which the government resigned	Quality of governance and transparency
Excessive force; human-rights violations	Myanmar: the military’s response to protests after its February 2021 coup	Consent of the governed; international recognition
Disputed elections	Belarus, 2020: the EU did not recognise the presidential result and imposed sanctions on officials	Free and fair elections; international recognition

External challenges include non-recognition, sanctions, suspension from regional bodies and criticism from UN bodies. After the Myanmar coup, ASEAN excluded the military’s leaders from its summits from late 2021. That is a regional audience withholding recognition.

A challenge to legitimacy does not always remove a government. Some keep power through coercion. The analytical point is that coercion replaces acceptance, which is costly, and which is why such governments often seek new sources of legitimacy.

Worked example: tracing a challenge

Question: Analyse how a crisis can damage government legitimacy without damaging state legitimacy.

1. Case: Sri Lanka, 2022.
2. Source damaged: performance. The government could not secure fuel, food or medicine.
3. Audience: citizens, who protested in large numbers.
4. Outcome: the president fled and resigned in July 2022; parliament chose Ranil Wickremesinghe as his successor.
5. State legitimacy: intact. The constitution was used to transfer power.
6. Recovery: a presidential election in September 2024, won by Anura Kumara Dissanayake, renewed government legitimacy through process.

Sources of legitimacy of non-state actors

The guide puts strong emphasis here. Non-state actors include NGOs, social movements, companies, resistance movements and other groups. Their legitimacy matters towards governments, but also towards other actors: donors, members, communities, IGOs and each other. The guide gives four areas to consider.

• Representation: how far the actor represents the interests of groups in society.
• Interaction: how it relates to state and non-state actors.
• Ability: what means it has to exert influence.
• Efficacy: how far it achieves its goals.

Actor	Representation	Interaction	Ability	Efficacy
Médecins Sans Frontières (NGO)	Does not claim to represent a group; relies on humanitarian principles	Negotiates access with governments and armed groups; stresses neutrality	Medical expertise; mainly private donations, which protect independence	Visible outcomes: patients treated
Fridays for Future (social movement)	Claims to speak for young people and future generations; no elected mandate	Greta Thunberg addressed the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019	Mass mobilisation and media attention	Contested: raised attention, but policy change is hard to attribute
Large technology companies	Answer mainly to shareholders	Contested relationship with regulators, e.g. the EU’s Digital Services Act of 2022	Very large resources and user bases	High in delivering services; contested on social impact
Hezbollah (party with an armed wing)	Has seats in Lebanon’s parliament and support in some communities	Several states list it as a terrorist organisation; the EU lists its military wing	Armed force; social services	Contested and judged very differently by different audiences

The last row shows why the audience matters. The same actor can be seen as legitimate by one constituency and illegitimate by others. Present such cases in balance and avoid personal verdicts.

Legitimation processes and loss of legitimacy

Legitimacy is not fixed. The guide describes it as something that can be gained, strengthened, reduced or lost through actions, interactions and outcomes. It lists four processes.

1. Formal recognition from an actor in an authority role (“top down”). South Sudan became independent in July 2011 and was admitted to the UN days later. NGOs can gain consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council.
2. Self-legitimation by the actor. Holding elections or referendums, publishing reports, using national symbols or ideology. Self-legitimation can fail: the referendums Russia organised in occupied regions of Ukraine in 2022 were declared invalid by a UN General Assembly resolution.
3. Organic recognition from stakeholders or audiences. Turnout, membership, donations and public trust that build from below.
4. (De)legitimation by opposing or alternative actors. Opposition boycotts, NGO reports that name and shame, rival claims to represent the people.

Using this topic in the exam

Paper 1 (1 hour 15 minutes, 25 marks; 30% at SL, 20% at HL) is source-based and draws on the core topics. You answer four compulsory structured questions. They move from understanding a source (AO1), to applying knowledge to it (AO2), to comparing and contrasting two sources, and finally to evaluating the sources and synthesising them with your own knowledge (both AO3). Paper 2 section B essays integrate the core topics with the thematic studies; see Peace and conflict and Rights and justice for how legitimacy works there.

Watch the command terms. “Distinguish” asks you to make differences clear. “Evaluate” asks you to weigh strengths and limitations. “To what extent” asks for a supported conclusion.

Common errors

• Treating legitimacy as legality, or as power. Show the gap between them.
• Writing “the state lost legitimacy” when only the government did.
• Assuming only elected governments can be legitimate. The guide names other sources.
• Listing sources without naming the audience that grants or withholds acceptance.
• Stating an example without explaining it. The guide asks you to contextualise cases.
• Ignoring external challenges such as sanctions, suspension or non-recognition.
• Treating all non-state actors as illegitimate, or all as legitimate. Apply the four areas.
• Relying on old cases. The guide treats roughly the past two decades as contemporary.

Next steps

Condense this into the revision notes, then test yourself with the practice questions. For exam technique, read exam preparation.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Global politics guide, first assessment 2026 (published February 2024). Prescribed topic: “Legitimacy in global politics”, within the core topics “Understanding power and global politics”.