Practice IB Global Politics Topic Core: Understanding Power and Global Politics with authentic exam-style questions for both SL and HL students. This question bank focuses on the exact syllabus content for Core: Understanding Power and Global Politics and mirrors Paper 1, 2, 3 style where relevant.
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Source
Text extract (adapted): "In October 2017 a regional government staged an independence vote that the national constitutional court had banned. Millions cast ballots; the central state sent in police, suspended the region's autonomy and prosecuted its leaders."
Using the source and your own knowledge, how a nationalist or secessionist movement can challenge the sovereignty of an existing state.
Source A
Adapted from public records on self-determination referendums, 2011 to 2021.
South Sudan (January 2011): about 99 percent voted to secede from Sudan; internationally recognised independence followed in July 2011.
Scotland (September 2014): 55 percent voted to remain in the United Kingdom in a referendum agreed with London.
Catalonia (October 2017): an independence vote held against the ruling of Spain's courts; the result was not recognised and direct rule was imposed.
Bougainville (November to December 2019): about 98 percent voted for independence from Papua New Guinea in a non-binding referendum requiring parliamentary ratification.
New Caledonia (2018, 2020, 2021): three referendums rejected independence from France; the third was boycotted by many pro-independence voters, who disputed its legitimacy.
Using Source A, three things the data suggest about the relationship between referendums and legitimacy.
Source
Adapted from "The Provider of Order," a discussion of hegemonic stability theory, published in an international relations textbook, 2020.
An open and stable international order does not arise on its own. It depends, this theory argues, on a single dominant state powerful enough, and willing, to supply the public goods that cooperation requires: open markets, a stable reserve currency, secure sea lanes and the enforcement of agreed rules. Because such goods benefit even states that do not pay for them, only a hegemon has both the capacity and the incentive to bear the cost. While the leading power underwrites the system, trade flows and commitments hold. As its relative strength declines, and rivals free-ride or challenge the rules, the order it built begins to fray.
With explicit reference to the source and one example you have studied, how hegemonic stability theory accounts for the maintenance of an open international economic order.
Source
Text extract (adapted): "Access to its vast consumer market is a privilege it grants and withdraws. Foreign firms quietly rewrite their rules, and foreign governments soften their words, rather than lose entry to it."
Using the source and your own knowledge, how an actor can use economic power to influence others in global politics.
Source A
Adapted from "Rules for the Powerful? International Institutions and State Interest," World Order Studies, 2022.
International institutions are often presented as neutral referees, yet their design reflects the power of those who built them. The permanent members of the UN Security Council hold vetoes; voting weight at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank is tied to financial contributions, giving wealthy states disproportionate influence. Critics argue that powerful states obey international rules when convenient and ignore them when core interests are at stake, pointing to interventions launched without Security Council authorisation. On this view, global governance is less a constraint on the powerful than a tool they use to legitimise their preferences.
Source B
Adapted from "Even Great Powers Are Bound," Journal of International Law and Politics, 2021.
It is too simple to say that international institutions merely serve the strong. Powerful states invest heavily in maintaining rules because predictable order serves their long-term interests, and they pay real reputational and economic costs when they break them. Trade rulings at the World Trade Organization have gone against the United States and the European Union, and both have complied. Sanctions, diplomatic isolation and loss of credibility follow visible violations of international norms, as Russia found after 2022. Institutions constrain even their most powerful members, this argument holds, because the alternative, a world without shared rules, would be worse for everyone, including the strong.
Using both sources and your own knowledge, the claim that global governance institutions do little to constrain the world's most powerful states.
