IB DP Global Politics – Core topic – Power in global politics Revision Notes

These revision notes condense the prescribed topic Power in global politics from the core topics of 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 content is common to SL and HL. It covers both prescribed content items: definitions and ways of understanding power, and classifications and types of power.

For full explanations and worked examples, read the study guide first. Then test yourself with the practice questions. The course hub and the printable checklist show the whole syllabus. For paper formats, see the assessment revision notes and the exam preparation guide.

Core definition

• The guide’s starting point: power as an ability to effect change.
• Its second view: power as a feature of relations among people in a social organisation, not a separate force.
• Capacity view: power is held and can be counted (armies, GDP, votes).
• Relational view: power exists only in a relationship; it depends on how others respond.
• Resources are not outcomes. An actor rich in resources can still fail to get its way.

The types of power the guide lists

Type	One-line definition	Guide’s example	Another real example
Hard	Coercion: threats, force, penalties	Military intervention; sanctions	Russia halting gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria in April 2022 after they refused to pay in roubles
Soft	Persuasion and attraction	Culture, ideology, economic aid	Qatar hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup (critics called it “sportswashing”)
Smart	Hard and soft combined to fit the aim	Climate approaches; negotiations	Sanctions plus diplomacy before the 2015 Iran nuclear deal
Structural	From position in rules or institutions	UNSC membership; heads of state	IMF votes: major decisions need 85%, and the US holds over 15%, so it can block them
Relational	From ties between actors	Alliances; civil movements	AUKUS (2021); Black Lives Matter protests in many countries in 2020
Economic	Control of money, trade, supply chains	–	Export controls on advanced chips
Political	Authority to make binding decisions	–	A legislature passing a law
Social	Networks, norms, ability to mobilise	–	The campaign behind the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning landmines
Cultural	Shaping values and identity	–	Film, music and language reach
Power over	Control of others’ actions	–	A state forcing policy change by sanction
Power to	Capacity to act or achieve	–	A state’s ability to run elections
Power with	Collective power through cooperation	–	Small island states jointly pushing for the 1.5°C goal

The guide gives its own examples only for the first five rows; the others are Marlbridge examples.

Thinkers in one line each

Thinker	Remember
Lukes	Three dimensions: decisions, agenda, shaping wants
Nye	Soft power (1990); smart power
Mearsheimer	Power = material, mainly military; maximise relative power
Arendt	Power = acting together; violence is its opposite
Foucault	Power is exercised through institutions and knowledge
Gramsci	Hegemony through consent in culture and education
bell hooks	Reject power as domination; margins can resist
Eric Liu	Citizens must understand power to use it
Mignolo	Colonial matrix of power still ranks knowledge and peoples
Pitkin	Power to versus power over
Qin	Relational power: shaping and using webs of relations

Method in steps

Classifying power in a case

1. Name the actor, the target and the action (with a year).
2. Ask: what resource is used? (military, money, votes, ideas, people)
3. Ask: does it work by force/penalty or by attraction? -> hard or soft
4. Ask: does it come from a position or from ties? -> structural or relational
5. Ask: over others, to act, or with others? -> over / to / with
6. Note any overlap and say which label fits best, and why.

Evaluating a classification as a tool

1. Strength: what does the label reveal about this case?
2. Limit: what does it hide or blur? (overlap, measurement, hidden power)
3. Perspective: would a realist, a Gramscian or a decolonial thinker read it differently?
4. Judgement: how useful is the label here, on balance?

Worked reminders

• Sanctions on Russia after 2022: economic and hard power; exercised as power over; given force by coalitions of states (relational). Their effect is debated, because some states kept trading with Russia.
• Russia’s Security Council veto (February 2022): structural power blocking a resolution. The General Assembly’s 141-vote resolution days later shows relational pressure, but it was not binding.
• Korean Wave: cultural power producing soft power. The state helps but does not control it.
• NATO enlargement: Finland (2023) and Sweden (2024) joined after the 2022 invasion. Relational power: security comes from the tie created by Article 5, not from their own armies alone.
• Fridays for Future: social and relational power, built from numbers and networks. It works as power with its members and aims at power over governments’ agendas.

Must-know distinctions

• Hard vs soft: coercion versus attraction. The resource does not decide it; the way it works does. Aid can be either.
• Soft vs smart: smart power is a strategy that combines tools; soft power is one kind of tool.
• Structural vs relational: position in a system versus ties between actors. A permanent seat is structural; an alliance is relational.
• Power over vs power with: control of others versus collective capacity. One coalition can be both: power with its members, power over its target.
• Power to vs power over: capacity to act need not involve controlling anyone.
• Lukes’ second vs third dimension: keeping an issue off the agenda versus shaping what people want so they never raise it.
• Power vs legitimacy: power is the ability to effect change; legitimacy is whether it is accepted. Keep them apart. See the legitimacy guide and the sovereignty guide for the neighbouring core concepts.

Power in the exam papers

• Paper 1 (1 hour 15 minutes; 25 marks; 30% SL, 20% HL) is source-based and draws on the core topics. Four sources, four compulsory structured questions. The paper always includes a non-textual source, such as a table or image.
• Early questions test understanding and application: pick out a type of power in a source, or explain a term. Later questions ask you to compare two sources, then evaluate a claim using the sources and your own knowledge.
• Paper 2 (1 hour 45 minutes; 30 marks) has section B integrating questions that link the thematic studies with the core topics. Power is the natural bridge.
• Key command terms: identify and outline (AO1); explain and distinguish (AO2); compare and contrast, evaluate and to what extent (AO3).
• Actors matter: the stakeholders and systems guide covers who holds power in each case.
• Link power to the thematic studies: who can enforce rights in rights and justice, and how the balance of power shapes war and peace in peace and conflict.

Quick self-test

1. Give the two views of power in the guide’s initial guidance.
2. Which type of power does the guide pair with coercion, and which with persuasion?
3. State two examples the guide gives of structural power.
4. State two examples the guide gives of relational power.
5. Who coined the term “soft power”, and in which book?
6. What is Lukes’ third dimension of power?
7. Which thinker distinguished “power to” from “power over”?
8. Why can economic aid be classified as either soft or hard power?
9. Classify a coalition of small states pressing for a stricter climate target.
10. Give one limitation of soft power as an analytical tool.
11. According to Arendt, how does violence relate to power?
12. Which type of power does a permanent member use when it casts a veto?

Answers

1. Power as an ability to effect change; power as an aspect of relations among people in a social organisation.
2. Hard power with coercion; soft power with persuasion.
3. UN Security Council membership; heads of state.
4. Alliances; collective civil movements.
5. Joseph Nye, in Bound to Lead (1990).
6. Shaping people’s wants and beliefs so that conflicts of interest never surface.
7. Hanna Pitkin.
8. It depends on use and perception: aid given freely attracts (soft); aid with conditions or debt leverage can coerce (hard).
9. Power with among its members (relational); it may also seek power over larger emitters.
10. Any one: hard to measure; not fully controlled by governments; depends on how others see the actor; overlaps with economic power.
11. They are opposites: violence appears where power, the ability to act together, is being lost.
12. Structural power, from its position in the UN Security Council; the veto is also a form of political power.

Where marks are usually lost

• Defining a type of power with no real example, when the guide says to apply types to cases.
• Giving an example with no actor or date (“some countries used sanctions”).
• Calling sanctions soft power because no weapons are used.
• Describing smart power as “hard plus soft” without naming the tools or the aim.
• Treating structural power as purely economic and missing institutional positions.
• Listing thinkers without applying their idea to the source or case in front of you.
• In Paper 1, ignoring the source and writing only from own knowledge.
• Never judging the classification itself, when the guide invites you to weigh its strengths and limits.
• Confusing power with legitimacy or sovereignty; these are separate core concepts.

Official syllabus

These notes are aligned to the International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Global politics guide, first assessment 2026 (published February 2024): core topics, prescribed topic “Power in global politics”.