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

This study guide teaches the prescribed topic Power in global politics, part of the core topics (Understanding power and global politics) 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 core topics are common to SL and HL, so everything here applies at both levels. It covers the two prescribed content items: definitions and ways of understanding power, and classifications and types of power.

Use it with the revision notes and the practice questions. The IB DP Global Politics course hub and the printable syllabus checklist show where this unit sits. For the wider course, see the syllabus guide and the theoretical perspectives guide, which reads power through realism, liberalism and other lenses.

What this unit covers

Prescribed content	What you must be able to do	SL/HL
Definitions and ways of understanding power	Compare several definitions and approaches, and evaluate them	SL and HL
Hard, soft and smart power	Define each and apply it to real cases	SL and HL
Structural and relational power	Tell them apart and apply them to real cases	SL and HL
Economic, political, social and cultural power	Classify real examples, noting overlaps	SL and HL
Power to, power over, power with	Use each to analyse who can act and how	SL and HL

The guide is clear on two points. First, each listed type must be taught explicitly. Second, you should not just list or define them in the abstract. You should use them on real cases and judge their strengths and limits as tools of analysis.

Defining power

The guide’s starting point is that power can be seen as an ability to effect change. It adds a second view: power is not a thing someone owns but a feature of relations between people inside a social organisation. Much of the debate below is a choice between them.

Power as capacity or as relationship

• Capacity view: power is what an actor has – troops, money, votes, ideas. You can count it and compare it.
• Relational view: power exists only between actors. A large army gives no power over a state that does not fear it.

A related distinction is resources versus outcomes. An actor can hold vast resources and still fail to get what it wants. The United States kept troops in Afghanistan for almost 20 years. Yet the Taliban took Kabul on 15 August 2021 as US forces withdrew. Resources did not turn into the outcome sought.

Thinkers the guide suggests

The guide names eleven thinkers who might be useful. You need not know them all; each offers a different way in.

Thinker	Core idea about power	Useful for
Steven Lukes	Power: A Radical View (1974) sets out three dimensions: winning open decisions; keeping issues off the agenda; and shaping what people want so conflict never appears	Seeing hidden power
Joseph Nye	Coined “soft power” in Bound to Lead (1990): getting others to want what you want through attraction. Later developed “smart power”	Hard, soft and smart power
John Mearsheimer	Offensive realist: power means material capability, above all military strength and the wealth and population behind it; great powers seek to maximise relative power	Capacity view, hard power
Hannah Arendt	On Violence (1970): power is the human ability to act together; it belongs to a group. Violence is not power and appears where power is being lost	Power with
Michel Foucault	Power is exercised, not owned. It runs through institutions, knowledge and everyday rules (e.g. prisons, schools, medicine) and produces behaviour	Diffuse, structural power
Antonio Gramsci	Hegemony: a ruling group stays dominant mainly through consent built in culture, education and the media, not force alone	Cultural power
bell hooks	Criticised equating power with domination; valued power as the capacity to act and transform, and saw the margins as a site of resistance	Power to, power with
Eric Liu	Power is the capacity to get others to act as you would want; ordinary citizens must learn how power works in order to use it	Civic power
Walter Mignolo	Decolonial thinker: a “colonial matrix of power” still ranks knowledge, peoples and economies, favouring the West	Critique of dominant definitions
Hanna Pitkin	Wittgenstein and Justice (1972): separates “power to” (a capacity) from “power over” (a relation to others)	Power to / power over
Yaqing Qin	A Relational Theory of World Politics (2018): actors exist in webs of relations; power includes the ability to shape and use those relations	Relational power

Lukes’ first dimension is Robert Dahl’s 1957 idea: A has power over B if A gets B to do what B would not otherwise do. His second draws on Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz, who pointed to “non-decisions” that keep issues off the agenda.

Hard, soft and smart power

Hard power is coercion: using force, threats or penalties to make others act. The guide’s examples are military interventions and economic sanctions.

• Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is military hard power.
• The sanctions that the EU, the UK, the US and others imposed on Russia in response are economic hard power.

Soft power is persuasion and attraction. The guide’s examples are cultural influence, ideology and economic aid. Nye names three sources: a country’s culture, its political values and foreign policies that others see as legitimate.

• South Korea’s cultural reach (the Korean Wave) grew through K-pop and film. Parasite became the first non-English-language film to win the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020.

Smart power is an eclectic mix of hard and soft power, chosen to fit the aim. The guide’s examples are approaches to climate change and negotiations.

• The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (2015) on Iran’s nuclear programme came after years of sanctions (hard) combined with multilateral diplomacy (soft).
• The EU leads by example in climate talks (soft), but its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which began a reporting phase in October 2023, puts a charge on carbon-heavy imports (economic pressure).

Worked example: classifying economic aid

Task: China’s Belt and Road Initiative (launched 2013) funds ports, railways and power plants abroad. Classify it.

1. Identify the resource. Loans, investment and construction – economic resources.
2. Ask how it works. If partners join because they want the projects, it attracts: soft power.
3. Test for coercion. Critics argue that debt can become leverage. They cite Sri Lanka’s 2017 lease of Hambantota port to a Chinese company for 99 years. Other researchers dispute the “debt-trap” label and say borrowing governments made their own choices.
4. Conclude. The same aid can be soft or hard depending on how it is used and seen. That is a limit of the hard/soft split, and it is worth saying so in an answer.

Structural and relational power

Structural power comes from an actor’s position in a system of rules or institutions. The guide’s examples are UN Security Council membership and heads of state.

• Under Article 27 of the UN Charter, substantive Security Council decisions need nine votes and no veto from the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US). On 25 February 2022 Russia vetoed a draft resolution on its invasion of Ukraine. The position, not the argument, decided the outcome.
• A head of state holds power from the office. A US president can veto bills passed by Congress, whoever holds the post.
• The term is often linked to Susan Strange, who saw power in control of four structures: security, production, finance and knowledge.

Relational power comes from ties between actors. The guide’s examples are alliances and collective civil movements.

• NATO’s Article 5 treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. Finland (2023) and Sweden (2024) joined after Russia’s 2022 invasion to gain that relationship.
• Fridays for Future grew from one school strike in Sweden in August 2018 into a global youth movement. Its power came from numbers and networks, not formal position.

Structures and relations interact. After Russia’s veto, 141 states voted in the General Assembly on 2 March 2022 to demand Russian withdrawal. That was relational pressure working around a structural block. In April 2022 the Assembly also agreed that it will meet after any veto is cast.

Economic, political, social and cultural power

Type	Rests on	Real example
Economic	Control of money, markets, trade and supply chains	US controls on exporting advanced chips to China (October 2022); China’s export controls on gallium and germanium (2023)
Political	Authority to make and enforce binding decisions	Security Council resolutions; a legislature passing law; the EU setting rules for its single market
Social	Networks, norms, status and the ability to mobilise people	The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize
Cultural	Shaping values, identity and taste	Hollywood, Bollywood and the Korean Wave; global reach of the English language

These overlap: sanctions are economic and hard, and cultural power often feeds soft power. Say which type dominates in your case, and why.

Power to, power over, power with

• Power over is control of others: getting them to do what they would not choose. Sanctions and military threats fit here. This is Dahl’s and Lukes’ focus.
• Power to is the capacity to act or achieve something: a state’s ability to vaccinate its population, or citizens’ ability to vote. Pitkin separates it from power over.
• Power with is collective power built through cooperation. The term is usually traced to Mary Parker Follett in the 1920s, and it echoes Arendt. The Alliance of Small Island States (formed 1990) pushed for the 1.5°C goal. The Paris Agreement (2015) commits parties to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.

Using the classifications as tools

The guide asks you to judge these categories, not just use them.

Advantages

• They give precise vocabulary instead of “X is powerful”.
• They reveal non-military power, such as a youth movement or a film industry.
• Comparing types shows why a strong actor can fail.

Limitations

• Categories blur. Aid, trade and sanctions shift between soft and hard.
• Soft power is hard to measure. It lives in how others see you, and governments do not fully control it.
• Most terms come from Western, state-centred scholarship. Mignolo and Qin argue that this hides colonial hierarchies and relational ways of thinking.
• Lukes’ third dimension warns that the most effective power may leave no visible trace to classify.

How this is examined

Paper 1 (1 hour 15 minutes; 30% at SL, 20% at HL) is a source-based paper on the core topics: four sources, four compulsory structured questions, 25 marks. One source is always non-textual. Power questions may ask you to explain a term, compare sources or evaluate a claim. Paper 2 section B essays integrate the core topics with the thematic studies. Know the command terms: distinguish (AO2) means make the differences clear; evaluate (AO3) means weigh strengths and limitations.

Common errors

• Treating all economic power as soft power. Sanctions are coercive; the guide lists them as hard power.
• Calling smart power “a mix” without saying which tools were combined and for what aim.
• Confusing structural power with power from structures of the economy only. The guide’s examples are institutional positions such as a permanent seat.
• Mixing up power over and power with. A coalition of equals is power with; a coalition used to pressure an outsider may also be power over that outsider.
• Naming a thinker without applying the idea to your case.
• Vague examples. Give the actor, the action and the year.

Next steps

Test yourself with the revision notes, then work through the practice questions. To see power at work in a thematic study, read the peace and conflict guide and the rights and justice guide. For paper formats, use the assessment revision notes.

Official syllabus

This page is 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”.