IB Global Politics SL cheat sheet

Power is the capacity to influence others' behaviour; hard power uses coercion (military, sanctions), soft power uses attraction (culture, values, legitimacy), smart power combines both.

Sovereignty has four dimensions: territory, population, authority, and recognition by other states; internal sovereignty means supreme authority within borders, external sovereignty means independence from outside interference.

The 1648 Peace of Westphalia is the conventional origin of the sovereign state system: no higher authority above the state, non-interference in domestic affairs.

Realism (Morgenthau, Waltz) assumes states are rational unitary actors pursuing survival and relative gains; liberalism emphasises institutions, interdependence, and absolute gains; constructivism holds that identities and norms constitute interests.

Anarchy in IR means absence of a world government, not chaos; self-help and the security dilemma follow, where one state's defensive build-up looks offensive to others.

Sovereignty is eroded by humanitarian intervention (responsibility to protect, 2005), international courts, IMF conditionality, and transnational corporations, but states retain legal equality.

The UN Security Council has five permanent members with veto power (China, France, Russia, UK, US) and ten elected members serving two-year terms.

Relative gains concern how much one state gains compared with another; absolute gains concern total benefit regardless of distribution - realists stress the former.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is non-binding; the two binding covenants are the ICCPR (civil and political) and the ICESCR (economic, social and cultural), both adopted 1966.

Three generations of rights: first (civil/political, 'liberty'), second (economic/social/cultural, 'equality'), third (collective/solidarity - development, peace, environment).

Civil and political rights are often framed as immediately enforceable and justiciable; economic and social rights are subject to 'progressive realisation' according to available resources.

The responsibility to protect (R2P), endorsed by the UN World Summit in 2005, covers genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity - not general human rights abuse.

Universalism holds rights apply to all people everywhere; cultural relativism argues rights must be read through local culture; the Vienna Declaration (1993) reaffirms universality while noting national and regional particularities.

Human rights enforcement mechanisms include treaty bodies, the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review, special rapporteurs, and regional courts such as the European Court of Human Rights.

Derogation allows states to suspend certain rights during declared public emergencies, but rights such as freedom from torture are non-derogable.

The ICC (Rome Statute, 1998, in force 2002) prosecutes individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression under complementarity.

GDP measures total output; GDP per capita divides by population; GNI adds net income from abroad; PPP adjusts for price differences to compare living standards.

The Human Development Index combines life expectancy, mean and expected years of schooling, and GNI per capita (PPP) into a geometric mean between 0 and 1.

The Gini coefficient ranges from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality); a rising Gini in a growing economy means growth is distributionally skewed.

Modernisation theory (Rostow's stages) predicts linear transition to industrial capitalism; dependency theory (Prebisch, Frank) argues the periphery is structurally exploited by the core.

The Washington Consensus (1989) prescribed liberalisation, privatisation, deregulation, and fiscal discipline; the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals replaced the MDGs with 17 goals to 2030.

The Brandt Line divides a wealthier global North from a poorer South; the term 'Global South' is now more political than strictly geographic.

Foreign aid types: bilateral vs multilateral, tied vs untied, humanitarian vs development, and ODA, where donors target 0.7% of GNI (UN target, rarely met).

Microfinance, remittances, and FDI are alternative development finance flows; remittances often exceed ODA in low-income countries.

Galtung distinguishes direct violence (visible acts), structural violence (harm built into institutions, e.g. poverty, discrimination), and cultural violence (legitimising narratives).

Negative peace is the absence of direct violence; positive peace includes social justice and the absence of structural violence.

Conflict stages: latent, emergence, escalation, stalemate, de-escalation, settlement, post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation.

Conflict resolution vs conflict management vs conflict transformation: resolution addresses root causes, management contains symptoms, transformation changes relationships and structures.

Intrastate conflicts (civil wars) have outnumbered interstate wars since 1945; proxy wars involve external states backing local parties.

Peacekeeping principles: consent of parties, impartiality, and minimum use of force - traditional peacekeeping monitors ceasefires; multidimensional missions include civilian protection and institution-building.

The conflict trap (Collier) describes how poverty and weak institutions make relapse into civil war likely; roughly half of post-conflict states relapse within a decade.

Just war theory: jus ad bellum (just cause, proportionality, last resort, legitimate authority) and jus in bello (discrimination, proportionality, military necessity).

The internal assessment is an engagement activity: the student chooses a real political issue, engages with it (interview, survey, campaign, simulation, observation), then writes an analytical report with a clear research question.

The report structure: focus and research question, context and actors, evidence from the engagement, analysis linking evidence to political concepts, and conclusion.

The research question must be narrow, answerable, and political - it should identify a specific actor, decision, or outcome rather than a broad theme like 'poverty'.

Engagement must be documented: dates, participants, roles, and sources; primary evidence from the activity should be distinguishable from secondary research.

Political concepts to apply include power, legitimacy, authority, accountability, participation, representation, sovereignty, and citizenship.

A political issue involves collective decision-making, contested values, or the distribution of resources and power - a purely personal problem is not sufficient.

Analysis requires weighing evidence and considering counter-perspectives; description alone earns limited credit.

Active citizenship forms: voting, campaigning, petitioning, joining pressure groups, protesting, volunteering, contacting representatives, boycotting, and online activism.

Paper 1 stimulus questions require using the provided source, but every question must also be answered with own knowledge; citing the source alone is insufficient.

Extended-response questions are marked on knowledge and conceptual understanding, application and analysis, and synthesis and evaluation.

Command words: 'describe' needs accurate detail, 'explain' needs causal links, 'evaluate' or 'discuss' needs a judgement supported by evidence on both sides.

Define key concepts (power, sovereignty, legitimacy, development) at first use; imprecise definitions cost conceptual marks.

Use contemporary, specific examples (named states, institutions, dates) rather than generic ones like 'some countries'.

A strong conclusion states a position and justifies it against the strongest counter-argument, not a restatement of both sides.

Case studies should be chosen to cross domains - for example, an intervention raising both human rights and sovereignty issues.

Link back to the research question or command word in each paragraph's topic sentence to maintain focus.