POL-16 · Social Sciences · Fully written

Learn Politics & IR with any AI

Theory, systems & world order

Politics is the study of power — who holds it, how it's used and justified, and how societies decide. International relations extends the question to the anarchic world of states. Together they ask the oldest practical problem there is: how should we live together, and who gets to decide?

Studied well, it gives you the tools to see past the day's headlines to the structures beneath them. Set your level below.

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§01

Compose your prompt

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Prompt settings

Subject

POL-16 · Politics & IR

This prompt is scoped to Politics & IR. Browse the full library to switch subjects.

Which prompt

Your first contact with a topic, pitched exactly at your level.

Level

How deep to pitch it — from a curious start to full university depth.

Topic — optional, narrows the focus

Study time — used by the syllabus builder

British English

Keeps spelling and exam framing UK-style. Turn off for US spelling.

§02

A map of Politics & IR

Power, at home and abroad

From political theory to the world stage.

Political theory & ideologies — the great arguments about how societies should be run.
Comparative politics — how different systems actually work.
British politics & the constitution — power in one unwritten-constitution system.
IR theory — realism, liberalism and constructivism: rival lenses on world affairs.
Security & geopolitics — strategy, conflict and great-power competition.
International law & institutions — the attempt to bring order to anarchy.

§03

The canon

The thinkers who framed power

Real figures, real works.

Plato & Aristotle — the origins of political thought, and of the study of constitutions.
Machiavelli — The Prince: power described as it is, not as it ought to be.
Thomas Hobbes — Leviathan: order out of chaos through the social contract.
John Locke — rights, consent and the roots of liberalism.
Rousseau — the general will, and popular sovereignty.
Karl Marx — politics as, at bottom, a struggle over class and economics.
Max Weber — the state as the body with a monopoly on legitimate force.
In IR — Thucydides as realism's ancestor; Hans Morgenthau its modern voice.

§04

The live debates

The arguments that organise the field

Real, unresolved divides.

Realism vs liberalism vs constructivism. Is world politics a jungle of self-interested powers, a system that can be made cooperative, or a construction of shared ideas?
How much power should the state have? Liberty against order — the question under every political argument.
Democracy and its discontents. Best system yet devised, or in trouble?
Nationalism vs globalism. Where loyalty and authority should sit.
Can international law bind great powers? Or only those too weak to ignore it.

§05

Where to start

A route in

A route in — everything runs from the panel above.

Run Orientation on the main ideologies, or on the three schools of IR theory.
Use Great Debates on realism vs liberalism, or on the power of the state.
Apply it with Real-World Applications to a current geopolitical event.
Read Machiavelli and Hobbes in excerpt alongside a modern textbook.

Behind every headline, ask the same question: who has power here, and how are they justifying it?