Power, Sovereignty and International Relations
Domain 1 examines how power is exercised, legitimised and constrained in a system of sovereign states. Extended-response questions here reward precise definitions, named evidence and a judgement tested against explicit criteria, not a description of institutions.
Core concepts
- Power is relational: on Dahl's formula, A gets B to do what B would not otherwise do, so power must be analysed inside a specific relationship rather than as a thing a state owns.
- Four faces (Barnett and Duvall): compulsory (force), institutional (rules and forums), structural (positions in the system), productive (shaping identities and interests).
- Soft and smart power (Nye): attraction through culture, values and policy; smart power combines it with hard capabilities.
- Sovereignty: internal supremacy within a territory, external recognition and non-interference; it is pooled (EU), contested (failed and de facto states) and conditional in practice.
- Legitimacy: legal-rational, traditional or charismatic authority (Weber); input versus output legitimacy. Legality is not legitimacy.
Worked example
Claim: international institutions have eroded state sovereignty. Set criteria first: legal pooling, operational constraint, reversibility. For: EU law primacy and qualified majority voting; IMF conditionality; Security Council Resolution 1973 (2011) authorising intervention in Libya. Against: states design and exit institutions (Brexit, 2020); the P5 veto makes enforcement selective; Brazil's 'responsibility while protecting' reframed R2P. Judgement: erosion is real but uneven, deepest where states are weak or aid-dependent and shallow for great powers. The reasoning earns the marks, not the verdict.
Traps
- Reducing power to military capability, or sovereignty to complete freedom of action.
- Treating legality and legitimacy as synonyms.
- Ignoring the command term: 'evaluate' needs criteria, 'to what extent' needs a spectrum.
- Naming no examples or scholars, so every claim stays abstract.