Contexts

Real-world context is at the heart of the global politics course. How in-depth you study a context changes whether it is an 'example', a 'case', or a 'case study'. A case study is the most detailed and will take more time.

The IB Global politics subject guide clearly states that it is important real-world contexts come from different scales and should be diverse. 

Diversity

In the IB Global politics course, 'diversity' refers to the range of contexts and real-world examples. Through the course you will study diverse cultural, geographical, economic and institutional contexts.

In assessments, avoid only using examples from one region or country. You need to show global knowledge. This is a global politics course, not a regional or national politics course.

Examples, cases and cases studies should be contemporary. The IB Global politics course views "contemporary" as events occurring approximately over the past two decades. 

Of course, to understand global politics today, we have to look at history. However, the emphasis of your study should be contemporary. For example, to understand the contemporary political relations between Argentina and the United Kingdom it is important to understand the colonial history of the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands). However, if you were writing about this as a case in an essay, a higher proportion of your discussion should be about recent events.

This is completely up to you... as many as you need to answer the assessment questions. 

Some teachers structure the whole global politics course around six core case studies (HL students do more). The GloPoPolis approach takes a theme approach rather than a case study approach. 

Whilst the number doesn't matter, it is important that you can discuss global politics at different scales and you have a diverse range of real-world contexts to draw on. The more real-world contexts you study, the more you will see patterns, similarities and differences in how peoples and places experience global politics.