IB Global Politics Extended Essay: The Complete Guide
By Michael Thompson · Former IB Diploma Programme coordinator; 10 years at Bromsgrove School · Published 4 September 2026
The global politics extended essay is one of the few places in the IB Diploma Programme where you choose the political question and find your own evidence to answer it. That freedom is also the most common source of lost marks: vague research questions, over-description of events, and weak links to political theory. This guide covers every component you need to plan - the essay itself, the engagement activity, the five assessment criteria, and how to manage both pieces alongside your other commitments. The IB is also updating the Extended Essay framework, with first assessment under the new model in May 2027, so the rules here reflect both the current structure and what is changing.
Key Takeaways
- Research question quality is everything.: A strong global politics EE question is political, contested, and answerable with available evidence - not a description of events or a question with an obvious answer.
- Five criteria, 34 marks total.: Under the current model the essay is marked on focus and method, knowledge and understanding, critical thinking, presentation, and engagement - each with a different weighting.
- The engagement activity is separate from the essay.: It is the internal assessment component: a real-world political event or situation you personally engage with, followed by a written report within a strict word limit.
- Theory must drive your analysis, not decorate it.: Concepts such as power, sovereignty, legitimacy, and interdependence should frame your argument from the introduction - not appear as an afterthought in the conclusion.
- Primary and secondary evidence serve different functions.: Your own engagement activity provides primary evidence; the essay relies on secondary sources, and examiners notice when the two are confused or when sources are uncritically used.
- The EE framework is being revised for first assessment in May 2027.: New criteria shift to five strands totalling 30 marks, and the interdisciplinary pathway absorbs the old World Studies route - check the IB update page before finalising your approach.
In This Article
- What the global politics extended essay actually is
- The five criteria and how marks are allocated
- Writing a research question that works for the global politics extended essay
- Linking political theory to your case study without over-describing it
- The engagement activity: how the IA differs from the extended essay
- Sources and evidence: what examiners look for in the global politics EE
- Managing the timeline for your EE and engagement activity alongside exams
- What to do next
1. What the global politics extended essay actually is
The global politics extended essay is a 4,000-word independent research paper and a compulsory component of the IB Diploma Programme core. According to the International Baccalaureate, all extended essays are externally assessed by IB-appointed examiners and marked on a scale of 0 to 34, which maps onto five grade bands from A (excellent) to E (elementary).
Students have two routes into the EE. The first is a subject-focused essay rooted in one DP subject, in this case global politics. The second is an interdisciplinary route that integrates two DP subjects, previously known as the World Studies Extended Essay. The IB's curriculum updates page confirms that the World Studies EE has now been absorbed into a formal interdisciplinary pathway under the new EE framework, which launches in February 2025 with first assessment in May 2027.
One non-obvious implication of that change: if you plan to combine global politics with, say, economics or history, you are no longer writing a World Studies EE. You are writing an interdisciplinary EE under the new model, which carries its own distinct assessment criteria.
Regardless of pathway, the process is the same. Three mandatory reflection sessions with a supervisor are required, culminating in the viva voce, a concluding interview that forms part of the assessed experience.
2. The five criteria and how marks are allocated
Per the International Baccalaureate, all extended essays are marked on a scale of 0 to 34, with scores mapping to five grade bands: A (excellent), B (good), C (satisfactory), D (mediocre), and E (elementary).
The current model distributes those 34 marks across five criteria:
| Criterion | Focus |
|---|---|
| Focus and Method | Research question clarity, methodology |
| Knowledge and Understanding | Subject-specific knowledge and context |
| Critical Thinking | Analysis, argument, evaluation |
| Presentation | Structure, referencing, formal conventions |
| Engagement | Reflection shown across supervisor sessions |
One counter-intuitive point worth noting: Engagement is assessed entirely through the Reflections on Planning and Progress Form (RPPF), not the essay itself. A strong 4,000-word paper cannot compensate for thin or superficial RPPF entries, which means the essay and the reflection document carry equal procedural weight even though the essay is what most students spend almost all their time on.
From May 2027, the model changes. The IB launched a revised framework in February 2025, with first assessment in May 2027. The new model has five criteria totalling 30 marks:
| Criterion | Marks |
|---|---|
| Framework for the essay | 6 |
| Knowledge and understanding | 6 |
| Analysis and line of argument | 6 |
| Discussion and evaluation | 8 |
| Reflection | 4 |
Reflection has been redefined in the new model to focus specifically on a student's growth and transferable skills gained through the EE experience, rather than process documentation alone.
If your first assessment sits before May 2027, the current 34-mark rubric applies to you. If you are assessed in May 2027 or later, use the incoming 30-mark framework when planning your global politics extended essay from the start.
3. Writing a research question that works for the global politics extended essay
A good research question for the global politics extended essay must do three things: address a genuinely political issue, be contested rather than factual, and be answerable using sources you can actually obtain. If the question could be resolved by reading a single government report or Wikipedia article, it is descriptive, not analytical, and examiners will mark it down accordingly.
The contested-but-answerable tension is where most questions fail. Questions that are too broad generate summary essays; questions that are too narrow run out of arguable ground before 4,000 words. The 4,000-word limit, confirmed by the International Baccalaureate, is tight enough that a well-scoped question is not a luxury but a structural necessity.
Weak versus stronger questions (written-for-this-guide examples)
| Type | Example question | Why it falls short or works |
|---|---|---|
| Too descriptive | "What has the UN done to address climate displacement?" | Invites a list, not an argument |
| Too broad | "How does nationalism affect international relations?" | Cannot be argued meaningfully in 4,000 words |
| Stronger | "To what extent did the EU's 2015 relocation scheme fail because of intergovernmental bargaining rather than logistical constraints?" | Scoped actor, policy, and period; forces a causal argument |
| Stronger | "How far did economic sanctions shape Iran's nuclear negotiating position between 2012 and 2015?" | Defined timeframe and mechanism to evaluate |
Notice that the stronger questions name a specific actor, policy, or period. That specificity is what makes genuine argument possible rather than coverage.
Interdisciplinary pathway
The IBO's updated extended essay model, launching for first assessment in May 2027, formalises two pathways: subject-focused or interdisciplinary (integrating two DP subjects). If you combine global politics with, say, economics or history, the rationale for crossing disciplines must be explicit from the research question itself. Both subjects must each do analytical work; one cannot simply provide background for the other. A question like "How far did austerity economics constrain Greece's political sovereignty during the 2010-2015 debt crisis?" genuinely requires both disciplinary lenses. One that merely describes economic events before a political conclusion does not.
Settle your research question before your first supervisor reflection session. Revising it late costs you argument-building time you cannot recover.
4. Linking political theory to your case study without over-describing it
The most common structural failure in the global politics extended essay is spending the bulk of the essay retelling events. An examiner reading a 4,000-word account of the Syrian refugee crisis, with two paragraphs of "analysis" at the end, will find almost nothing to reward under the Critical Thinking criterion. The case study is not the argument. It is the evidence you use to test one.
The fix is to commit to a theoretical lens before you write a single word of the body. Concepts like hard and soft power, sovereignty, legitimacy, and interdependence should appear in your research question itself, not be introduced in your conclusion as an afterthought. A question such as "To what extent did the EU's loss of normative legitimacy constrain its response to the 2015 refugee crisis?" forces you to define legitimacy upfront, apply it to specific decisions, and reach a defensible conclusion. The case study provides the evidence; the concept does the explanatory work.
A practical structure that follows from this:
- Introduction: define the theoretical concept precisely, explain why your case is a useful test of it, and state your argument.
- Each body section: open with a claim about the concept, present the minimum factual context needed to make that claim legible, then analyse how the evidence supports or complicates it.
- Factual narrative: limit it to what a reader genuinely needs to follow your analysis. If a paragraph could appear unchanged in a history textbook, cut it.
One counter-intuitive trade-off worth knowing: students who choose highly dramatic cases (wars, coups, humanitarian disasters) often produce weaker essays, because the temptation to describe rather than analyse is hardest to resist when the events themselves feel important. A quieter case with a sharper conceptual fit frequently produces cleaner arguments.
This structure directly serves both the Critical Thinking and Knowledge and Understanding criteria, where marks go to essays that demonstrate conceptual command, not factual recall.
5. The engagement activity: how the IA differs from the extended essay
The engagement activity is the internal assessment component of the IB Global Politics course. It is assessed by your teacher and moderated by the IB, and it is entirely separate from the extended essay, which is a DP core requirement submitted externally. Students sometimes confuse the two because both involve independent research, but the underlying task is different.
What counts as a qualifying engagement
The IB requires direct, personal participation in a political event or situation. Acceptable examples include:
- Attending a local council or planning committee meeting
- Participating in a Model UN conference
- Joining an organised protest or public demonstration
- Interviewing an elected official, candidate, or political activist
- Taking part in a community campaign that has a clear political dimension
Watching a documentary, reading news coverage, or attending a lecture as a passive observer does not qualify. The engagement must be something you did, not something you witnessed from a distance.
The written report
The report is capped at 2,000 words. It requires you to connect your personal experience directly to the political concepts, theories, or tensions studied in the course. Examiners assess how well you move from lived experience to analytical argument, not how dramatic the event was.
Where marks are lost
The counter-intuitive pitfall is this: students who had a genuinely significant experience often write the weakest reports, because they spend most of the word count describing what happened rather than analysing it. A half-page attending a small parish council meeting, analysed rigorously through the lens of legitimacy or sovereignty, will outscore a vivid account of attending a national protest that never touches theory.
A separate, practical error: do not recycle secondary sources you used for the global politics extended essay into your engagement report. The IA is assessed on the quality of your primary engagement and your analytical response to it. Padding the report with academic references dilutes the score rather than strengthening it.
6. Sources and evidence: what examiners look for in the global politics EE
Examiners expect two distinct types of sourcing, and the balance between them signals your academic maturity more than your word count does.
Primary sources are the raw material of political analysis: UN Security Council resolutions, treaty texts, government white papers, official statistical datasets, and NGO field reports. They give you direct evidence of what states, institutions, or actors actually said or did.
Secondary sources interpret and contextualise that raw material: peer-reviewed journal articles, quality newspaper reporting from outlets with editorial standards, and think-tank analysis. The IB's published global politics EE examples, accompanied by examiner commentaries, show that strong essays draw on both layers rather than leaning entirely on one.
A non-obvious gotcha: your engagement activity generates primary evidence, but only for the IA. It cannot substitute for rigorous secondary sourcing in the EE itself. Attempting to use your own engagement interviews as the analytical backbone of the essay is a category error that examiners will flag.
Common source errors to avoid:
- Citing Wikipedia or unattributed web content as evidence for a contested claim
- Quoting a source without interrogating its institutional perspective or funding interests
- Building an argument almost entirely from one ideological direction on a disputed issue
That last error is the most damaging to your Critical Thinking marks specifically. If your research question touches a genuinely contested political issue, for example, the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention, you should be able to name sources that argue opposing positions and explain why you find one more persuasive. Sourcing diversity is not a box-ticking exercise; it is the evidence that you can think critically rather than just report.
7. Managing the timeline for your EE and engagement activity alongside exams
The non-obvious trap here is that the EE and the engagement activity run on separate clocks. Students who treat them as a single project tend to let the engagement activity drift, then discover their EE argument depends on findings they haven't collected yet.
A workable two-year schedule looks like this:
| Period | EE milestone | Engagement activity milestone |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1, Term 1 | Topic selection and supervisor approval | Initial planning; identify your engagement format |
| Year 1, Term 2 | First reflection session with supervisor; refine research question | Draft engagement activity design |
| Year 1, summer | First full EE draft underway | Complete engagement activity; record observations |
| Year 2, Term 1 | Revised draft submitted; second and third reflection sessions | Data and insights fed into EE argument |
| Year 2, Term 1 end | Final EE submission (most schools) | RPPF submitted alongside EE |
The International Baccalaureate requires three mandatory reflection sessions with your supervisor, culminating in a concluding interview called the viva voce. Missing a session, or attending one underprepared, directly affects your Engagement criterion score.
The assessed document for reflection is the RPPF (Reflections on Planning and Progress Form), as confirmed in the IB's teacher support material. Write genuine process notes after each session, not a polished reconstruction at the end. Examiners read the RPPF for authentic evidence of intellectual development; a tidy, uniform tone across all three entries signals it was written in one sitting.
Anything left unfinished by Year 2 Term 2 competes directly with exam revision. Track both deadlines in your planner as distinct items from day one.
8. What to do next
Before you finalise your research question, confirm one thing with your global politics teacher this week: which assessment model applies to your cohort. The new EE framework, launched in February 2025 and first assessed in May 2027, carries a revised five-criterion rubric worth 30 marks, with Discussion and evaluation weighted most heavily at 8 marks. Students submitting before May 2027 work under the current model. That distinction affects how you weight your argument relative to your descriptive analysis, and getting it wrong at the planning stage costs marks you cannot recover later.
Check the IB EE updates page for the latest criteria, then ask your supervisor which pathway, subject-focused or interdisciplinary, your school has registered you for. Do both of those things before your next supervisor meeting.
FAQ
What is a good research question for a global politics extended essay?
A strong global politics EE question identifies a specific political issue, is genuinely contested rather than factually resolvable, and is narrow enough to be argued within 4,000 words - for example, comparing how two states have exercised soft power in a defined region over a defined period.
How is the global politics extended essay marked?
Under the current model, the EE is assessed across five criteria on a scale of 0-34, mapped to grade bands A (excellent) through E (elementary); the new model launching for first assessment in May 2027 shifts to five criteria totalling 30 marks.
What is the difference between the extended essay and the engagement activity in global politics?
The EE is a 4,000-word externally assessed research paper forming part of the DP core, while the engagement activity is the subject's internal assessment - a personal, direct participation in a real political event followed by an analytical written report.
Can I do my extended essay on global politics as an interdisciplinary essay?
Yes - under the current model you can take the World Studies interdisciplinary route using global politics alongside another IB subject; under the new model launching for May 2027, a formal interdisciplinary pathway replaces the World Studies EE and requires an explicit rationale for how both disciplines contribute analytically.
Where do students most commonly lose marks in the global politics EE?
The most frequent errors are over-describing events rather than analysing them through a theoretical lens, using a vague or descriptive research question, relying on low-authority sources, and failing to engage with more than one perspective on a contested issue.
What counts as an engagement activity in IB global politics?
A qualifying engagement involves direct, personal participation in a political event or process - such as attending a council meeting, interviewing a public official, participating in a Model UN conference, or joining a political campaign - rather than passive observation or secondary research.
References
- What is the extended essay? - International Baccalaureate® - https://ibo.org/programmes/diploma-programme/curriculum/dp-core/extended-essay/what-is-the-extended-essay
- DP extended essay updates - International Baccalaureate® - https://ibo.org/university-admission/latest-curriculum-updates/dp-extended-essay-updates
- Teacher support material - https://ibpublishing.ibo.org/extendedessay/apps/dpapp/tsm.html?doc=d_0_eeyyy_gui_1602_1_e&part=3&chapter=3