Paper 3 Global Politics · Power and developments

Power and developments · Notes

Sub-topic lookup view of the walk-through.

About these notes. This is the sub-topic lookup version. For the full narrative lesson, use the Walk-through. For active recall, use the MCQ Quiz.

Likely exam angles. What kind of power matters most today, and how is it distributed? The topic is the conceptual core of Paper 3B and is tested through Q3 and synoptically across the paper.

1. What power is

Robert Dahl's shorthand - power is the ability to get others to do something they would not otherwise do - is the starting point. The five Edexcel theorists to know across the topic are Nye (hard/soft/smart), Strange (structural), Waltz and Mearsheimer (realist state power) and Fukuyama (development and liberal democracy).

Power is not influence. Power is the resource - what gives you the ability to act. Influence is the outcome - actually changing what others do. A state can hold great power but little influence if it uses it badly, and the reverse.

2. The four types of power

Type	What it is	Key thinker and example
Hard	Coercion and inducement - military force, sanctions, conditional aid, frozen assets.	Waltz and Mearsheimer (realists): power as material capability. Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine is the bluntest current use.
Soft	Attraction and emulation - culture, political values, foreign policy others want to be associated with.	Nye (coined 1990): South Korea's K-pop strategy; states queuing to join the EU.
Structural	Rule-setting - shaping the frameworks others operate within. Strange's four faces: security, production, finance, knowledge.	Strange (1988): the dollar's role in global finance is structural power at work.
Smart	The deliberate combination of hard and soft tools in one strategy.	Nye's later term: the Western response to Russia in 2022 - sanctions plus arms plus coalition-building.

The limits. Hard power is expensive and provokes backlash (Iraq 2003, Afghanistan - regimes toppled, stable client states not built). Soft power decays (post-2016 erosion of US standing; the Khashoggi killing).

3. Polarity - how power is distributed

Bipolar: two dominant powers, as in the Cold War (US and USSR). Realists argue bipolarity is relatively stable because each side balances the other.
Unipolar: one dominant power - the post-1991 "unipolar moment" of US dominance after the Soviet collapse.
Multipolar: several great powers, the direction of travel today with the rise of China, India and others. Some see it as flexible, others as unstable.

The live debate. Is the world still unipolar (US dominant), already bipolar (US versus China) or becoming multipolar? The answer shapes every question about global governance and the balance of power.

4. State classification and systems of government

Superpower: global reach across military, economic and soft power - only the US clearly qualifies today.
Great and emerging powers: China, Russia, the EU, India, Brazil - significant but not global in every dimension.
Failed and failing states: governments that cannot maintain order or provide basic functions (Somalia, Syria at points), a source of instability and a test for global governance.
Systems of government: liberal democracies, illiberal democracies and authoritarian states behave differently and are judged differently in development terms.

5. Development

Development asks how states and peoples move from poverty toward prosperity, and by what measures. Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis argued liberal democracy and the market were the endpoint of political development - a claim the rise of authoritarian China and democratic backsliding have since challenged.

Measures: GDP and growth, but also the Human Development Index (health, education, income) and measures of inequality and sustainability.
The debate: whether the liberal-democratic, market-led model is the route to development, or whether state-led models (the "Beijing consensus") deliver faster.

6. Exam method

Lead with the four types and judge which matters most for the case in front of you - the answer differs for Russia (hard), the EU (soft, structural) and the US (all four).
Tie power to polarity: the distribution of power is the synoptic link to global governance and regionalism.
Name the theorists: Nye, Strange, Waltz, Mearsheimer, Fukuyama - and use them as competing readings, not labels.
Keep the power-influence distinction sharp - a state can hold power without converting it into influence.

📜 Walk-throughThe full narrative lesson on power, polarity, states and development. 🧠 MCQ quiz15 questions across the topic. 📚 All topic packsBrowse every Paper 3 pack.