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IB DP Global Politics — HL extension: Global political challenges | HL | Equality
📋 What You Will Learn
- Define equality, equity and related concepts, distinguishing between formal and substantive equality
- Describe the main dimensions of inequality — political, economic, social, gender, racial — and how they intersect
- Explain how global structures and historical processes produce and reproduce inequality
- Analyse how different actors — states, IGOs, civil society, social movements — respond to inequality
- Compare theoretical perspectives (liberal, Marxist, feminist, postcolonial) on the causes of and solutions to inequality
- Evaluate the claim that global inequality is a political challenge requiring political solutions, not merely a technical or economic problem
🔍 Guiding Question Is global inequality an inevitable feature of the international system, or is it a political choice — and who has the power to change it?
🌍 Why This Matters In 2023, Oxfam reported that the world's five richest men had doubled their wealth since 2020, while five billion people became poorer. At the same time, women, racialised minorities and people in the Global South remain systematically underrepresented in the institutions that make decisions about their lives. Inequality is not an accident — it is produced, sustained and contested through political processes.
🔑 Key Concept Link Equality engages all four key concepts simultaneously. Power determines who benefits from existing arrangements and who can challenge them. Sovereignty shapes whether states can redistribute wealth or are constrained by global markets. Legitimacy is at stake when unequal systems claim to be just. Interdependence links the prosperity of wealthy states to the conditions of poorer ones through trade, finance and supply chains. Return to these links throughout.
What Is Equality? Defining the Core Concepts
The word "equality" is used in political debate to mean very different things. Before analysing global inequality, it is essential to distinguish between these meanings — because the definition you accept shapes the policies you advocate.
📖 Definition — Equality Equality refers to the condition of being equal in status, rights, opportunities or outcomes. In political discourse it is contested: formal equality means treating all people by the same rules regardless of circumstance; substantive equality means ensuring that people actually achieve comparable outcomes, which may require differential treatment.
📖 Definition — Equity Equity refers to fairness and justice in the distribution of resources, opportunities and burdens. Unlike formal equality, equity recognises that people start from different positions and may need different levels of support to achieve comparable outcomes. The distinction between equality and equity is central to debates about redistribution and affirmative action.
Key distinctions students must command
- Equality of opportunity: all individuals face the same rules and have the same formal access to education, employment, political participation — the dominant liberal position.
- Equality of outcome: the goal is comparable results across groups; structural barriers must be actively dismantled — associated with socialist and many