IB Diploma Programme Global Politics: Syllabus Guide

This guide covers the full syllabus structure of IB Diploma Programme Global Politics, first assessment 2026, for both Standard Level (SL) and Higher Level (HL) students. It complements the subject overview and the assessment revision notes already on the site by listing what is actually taught – the core thematic studies, the internal assessment, and the HL-only extension.

Total teaching time is 150 hours at SL and 240 hours at HL. Unlike some DP individuals and societies subjects, the core content hours (125) are identical for SL and HL – the difference between the two levels comes from the internal assessment allocation and, at HL, an entire additional extension component.

Core (125 hours, both SL and HL)

Understanding power and global politics

The foundational strand introducing core concepts – power, sovereignty, legitimacy and interdependence – that are then explored critically throughout the rest of the course. Rather than being taught and assessed as a stand-alone block, this strand functions more like a toolkit: students return to these four concepts again and again as they work through the three thematic studies, applying them to genuinely different political contexts each time. Power is examined not just as a single idea but through multiple lenses – who holds it, how it is exercised, and how it is limited or checked – while sovereignty, legitimacy and interdependence are each explored as contested rather than fixed concepts, since real political actors frequently disagree about what counts as legitimate authority or genuine independence.

Thematic studies – three required themes

• Rights and justice – how rights are claimed, contested and enforced (or denied) across political systems.
• Development and sustainability – how development is pursued and measured, and its tensions with environmental and social sustainability.
• Peace and conflict – the causes, dynamics and resolution of political conflict.

Unlike the geography course’s optional themes, all three thematic studies here are compulsory for every student, at both SL and HL – there is no teacher-selected subset to confirm. This means every DP Global Politics student, regardless of school or teacher, studies the same three thematic studies alongside the same foundational strand on power – a genuinely shared syllabus core across the whole subject, not just a shared assessment structure.

Internal assessment – engagement project (25 hours SL / 35 hours HL)

A written report on a political issue explored through the student’s own engagement and research. The HL allocation is 10 hours longer than SL’s because HL students complete a genuinely extra task: they carry out further research and must formulate a recommendation addressing the identified political issue. The written report has a limit of 2,000 words at SL and 2,400 words at HL (a teacher assesses only the first 2,000 or 2,400 words of a report that runs over), and the HL recommendation is assessed by an extra criterion, F: Recommendation (6 marks), which asks whether the report includes a well-supported recommendation appropriate for the analysed context; criteria A to E are the same at both levels. This is a specific additional requirement, not simply a call for greater depth in the same written report. As with the fieldwork-style internal assessments in other DP individuals and societies subjects, the strongest engagement projects tend to come from students who commit to a specific, well-scoped political issue early – one they can genuinely engage with directly, whether through research, interviews or participation – rather than a broad topic that only allows for secondary-source summary.

HL extension only – Global political challenges (80 hours, HL only)

This entire component does not exist for SL students. It is examined separately in Paper 3, which only HL students sit, and is worth 30% of the HL final grade on its own – a larger single-component weighting than either Paper 1 or the engagement project at HL. The extension is not additional prescribed content taught by the teacher; it consists of independent student research into cases the student selects, connected to eight named HL topic areas set by the syllabus: borders, environment, equality, health, identity, poverty, security and technology. Each HL student must research at least two different case studies across at least two different topic areas. The extension is organised by those topic areas and by the student’s own cases, not by the three thematic studies: it is not a synthesis exercise across Rights and justice, Development and sustainability and Peace and conflict, although concepts and knowledge from the core topic and the thematic studies can inform the analysis of a researched case.

How to approach it

Because the three thematic studies are compulsory (not options, as in several other DP individuals and societies subjects), build revision coverage across all three from the start rather than gambling on which one might come up – Paper 2’s extended-response questions draw on prescribed content from the thematic studies directly. The recurring concepts from “Understanding power and global politics” (power, sovereignty, legitimacy, interdependence) are meant to be applied inside every thematic-study answer, not recalled as a separate definitions list, so practise naming which of the four concepts a given real-world case actually illustrates as you work through Rights and justice, Development and sustainability, and Peace and conflict in turn. HL students should treat the global political challenges extension as a genuinely separate 80-hour block of content with its own paper and weighting, not a light add-on to the shared core.

Because this course is explicitly built around “contemporary real-world examples and cases”, the strongest revision resource most students underuse is simply following current political news across the year the course is taught, rather than relying only on textbook case studies written before the course started – a live, ongoing example you can discuss with genuine up-to-date detail is usually more persuasive in an extended-response answer than a well-known but dated case everyone else in the cohort is also using. Keep a running case-study log by theme (Rights and justice, Development and sustainability, Peace and conflict) as the course progresses, noting which political concepts each example illustrates, so that by the time Paper 2 and the engagement project arrive you have a ready bank of material rather than needing to research examples from scratch under time pressure.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief – Individuals and Societies: Global Politics, first assessment 2026, © 2023.