"The Diploma Programme global politics course draws on multiple disciplines in the social sciences. Many theories and analytical approaches have been put forward to further debates in these disciplines. Consequently the course is rich in potential theoretical foundations. Some examples of theoretical foundations that are likely to be helpful throughout the course are provided below; however, different or additional foundations may be relevant depending on the issue at stake.
While the key concepts help students understand interrelated big ideas behind specific political issues, theoretical foundations give students some alternative interpretations of these big ideas advocated by various camps of political debate across time and space. " From the IB Guide.
The IB outlines some theories that you could use but there are also others.
Not every theory is relevant to every section of our course! The main issue is using the wrong theory for the context of an essay.
Some theories are more flexible than others: constructivism, feminism, environmentalism and post-colonialism are more flexible and can be more successfully fitted to different scales and units of the course. Realism, liberalism and Marxism are more specific to certain areas.
Some of the units also have content specific theories.
For example:
Unit 1: Theories of international relations
Unit 2: Cultural relativism versus universality in human rights
Unit 3: Theories of development
Unit 4: Galtung's theoretical framework for categorizing types of violence.
Realism and liberalism are best applied to Unit 1 and parts of Unit 4 (though you can apply them to specific parts of 2 and 4 as well).
For example, realism is a theory about how states behave. This means it is focused at the scale of international / global, for example about inter-state conflicts. It is not the best theory to use to discuss cultural loss due to globalization as part of development.
(Adapted from: https://www.glopopolis.org/concepts-theory-and-toolkit/theory)Â